Rumfy is a Girl!!

We found out on Friday that our forthcoming little bundle of joy is a Rumfette!

Also, Mama Claudia is at 20 weeks along, right on schedule for a Halloween delivery!

20 Weeks Pregnant

Your Pregnancy: Week 20
Hooray! You're halfway there! And in case you don't believe 20 weeks is a milestone worth celebrating, consider that it's longer than a semester at college—or any relationship you had in high school. Congrats! This is also the week your bambino is able to flash you on the sonogram, revealing what exactly he or she is packing. Why not celebrate with a bottle of sparkling grapefruit juice? It's not as sexy as champagne, but it's got bubbles, and that counts for something, right?

Your Body
Stretch marks are the battle scars of pregnancy.  They're caused by your skin stretching to accommodate your growing belly—a necessary evil!  And it doesn't stop there. Other skin changes like acne and rashes are also common while pregnant. So if you're breaking out all over, you're not alone and it will go away.

Your Baby
Your baby has established sleep patterns akin to a newborn now. Many babies even have a favorite sleep position already. Some snooze with their chins resting on their chests, while others nap with their head flung back. Many babies at this age fall into noticeable cycles of sleep and activity, so you may know before she arrives whether you have a night owl or an early bird.

If your baby is a boy, the testes have begun descending from the pelvis into the scrotum. If it's a girl, her uterus is completely formed and the rest of her "parts" are in development. (Is that TMI?) 

From this point forward, your baby will put most of her energy into gaining weight and, not coincidentally, so will you! Right now your baby weighs approximately 10½ ounces and is about 6½ inches long, about the size of a can of Red Bull (which has way too much caffeine for a pregnant woman to be drinking). 

Rumfy's Growth at 17 Weeks

17 Weeks Pregnant

Your Body
Talk about mixed messages. After spending your whole life trying to avoid gaining weight, now you're told you must pack on the poundage. But not too many pounds, of course. And not the wrong kind of weight. It's exhausting. ... Now's not the time to diet. You should never try limiting calories while you're pregnant. Don't worry about gaining more weight than you should while pregnant. You can lose it after the baby is born. Remember that a pregnant woman needs about 300 extra calories each day, which is just a small snack, like a small bag of trail mix or some crackers with cheese.

Your Baby
Speaking of packing on the pounds, that what it's all about for baby this week. He's adding fat stores that will keep him warm and cozy after he's born. Your baby's weight will increase approximately six times over the next four weeks. Good to know you're not the only one tipping the scale. Also this week:
Your baby is hard at work honing his sucking and swallowing reflexes—all the better for eating that 2 AM (and 5 AM, and 8 AM ...) meal in a few months! The finger- and toenails are beginning to grow from their nail beds, which would explain why he'll need them trimmed almost as soon as he's born! 
Your baby weighs nearly 5 ounces and is a little over 5 inches long—about the size of a baked potato (load on the butter and sour cream, please). 

Your Life
If the heir to your throne will have his or her own room (instead of his or her own sock drawer), now is the time to start thinking about how you'd like to decorate the nursery.
Don't spend a fortune. CLAUDIA! These things will get barfed on, pooped on, and chewed on—and that's just in the first week.  Choose durable and scrubable surfaces, such as nontoxic painted or varnished wood or heavy-duty, PVC-free plastics. 
Try to buy regular furniture that will grow with your child. For example, a regular dresser with a removable changing pad is a better investment than an official diaper-changing table.
Decorate the nursery to hide dirt. That means forget about the white rug.
Splash out on a fabulous new robe or a comfy pair of slippers for yourself. You'll thank yourself during those early days at home ... and those late-night feedings.

Rumfy is 16 weeks along!

And that means we're only a month away from knowing if it's a little boy Rumfola or a little girl Rumfola!

Grow, Rumfy, Grow!

16 Weeks Pregnant

Your Body

No, you don't have a new superpower, although it'll feel like it because you're able to smell pizza, burnt toast or a pulled-pork sandwich from miles away. Your heightened sense of smell isn't the only new trick your nose is doing. You're probably noticing some extra nasal congestion and maybe even some nosebleeds to go along with it....But enough about your nose. Let's talk about your ever-enlarging ta-tas. Your boobs might still be tender, especially your nipples, and they're continuing to grow, grow, grow. 

Your Baby
Your baby is already mugging for the camera as she practices all sorts of facial expressions, such as squinting, yawning and grimacing, which will come in handy when you introduce her to pureed spinach. Check out what else is happening in utero:

You're just getting comfortable with being a new mom, but you're actually on the road to being a grandma. If your baby is a girl, her uterus is fully developed and the ovaries already hold primitive egg cells. Did that just make you feel a thousand years old, or what? 

Your baby weighs about 3 ounces this week and measures between 4 and 5 inches, about the length of your mascara. 

Rumfy is 14 weeks along

Looking less like a weasel and more like a little monkey these days.

Way to grow, baby!

14 Weeks Pregnant

Your Pregnancy: Week 14
You're officially in your glory days: the second trimester. Energy levels come back up, nausea levels go down and you may have a cute little bump that's beginning to show. It's a great time to celebrate the happy news ... if people haven't guessed already. And you'll be surprised at how oblivious some folks are. 

Your Body
You have reached the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, the light at the end of the firsttunnel (there will be more). Chances are good that you're feeling as good as you've felt in weeks. If you're not feeling it yet, don't worry, it'll come soon. 

If you're feeling little contractions or pulling and stretching sensations this week, don't panic. It's just your ligaments stretching and your organs moving to accommodate your growing baby. (Don't worry, your organs will all plop back into place shortly after Junior is born.)

Your Baby
Think of it this way: You're a third of the way through and baby's a third of the way cooked. Now that the "big stuff" (like skeletal and organ development) is taken care of, your baby starts a period of rapid brain growth, fat buildup and detail work. Highlights this week include:

Your baby now has fingerprints! Book 'em, Danno! Believe it or not, he actually created them himself while swimming around in the amniotic fluid. As he moved his hands, the skin on the tips of his fingers formed unique ridges and folds. That's why no one on earth has the same fingerprints, not even identical twins! Cool, right? Baby's arms are now in proportion to his tiny body, but his legs are still on the short size in comparison.

Your baby continues to gain new and impressive skills such as practicing and controlling voluntary muscle movements (this will help him fling food across the room later in life). Your tiny dancer's movements are no longer the jerky, uncontrollable twitches of yore—he now moves with graceful control. 

Your baby is now weighs about an ounce and is the length of a flip phone, or roughly 3.5 inches—he's tripled in size from a mere three weeks ago! Luckily, you haven't done the same.

Geeks with Edge

This is what happens when nerds get inked:

Science Tattoo Emporium

"Leave the atoms and come to the earth."

"My favorite thing from my undergrad classes has been learning about quantum mechanics."

From the Discover Blog.

How to Be a Bat

How To Be A Bat [Life in Motion]

This is too cool.  Watch videos of bats (even VAMPIRE BATS!) doing all kinds of cool stuff like flying and...running.  No, really.  Watch 'em.

Bat on flower from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

From the Discover Blog.

Keeping up with Rumfy--Week 13!

This little alien weasel is actually starting to resemble a mini-human!

13 Weeks Pregnant

Your Pregnancy: Week 13
Welcome to the last week of your first trimester. Any day now you'll start to feel your energy (and libido!) return. You may even be able to hold down a bite of food. Imagine that! 

Your Body
Say hello to the girls! Your boobs are probably looking pretty glorious at this point. You can thank your hormones for your newfound cleavage. (Yes, those same hormones that had you hugging the porcelain throne for the past 12 weeks. See, they're not all bad!) Estrogen and progesterone are stimulating the milk-producing glands in your boobs and making them grow, grow, grow. Your belly may be popping out a bit now as well. If you're feeling "huge" already, just wait. You ain't seen nothing yet! 

Your Baby 
Your baby can make a fist and even suck his or her thumb this week—both skills that are über-cute during infancy ... and not so much at the age of 9. If you're really lucky, you might catch a glimpse of baby's thumb sucking on an ultrasound photo. That's a framer! Other exciting developments include:

Your baby's eyelids are fused shut to protect his eyes as they develop. His bones and skull are solidifying and soon itsy-bitsy ribs may appear. (Baby ribs! How cute is that?!) Baby's intestines are finally right where you want them—in his or her belly instead of poking out into the umbilical cord. Baby's tooth sockets are all loaded and ready to pop out baby teeth six or seven months after baby is born (causing baby a lot of pain and you a lot of lost sleep).

Your baby-to-be now weighs about 20 grams and is nearly 3 inches long, or about the size of a Nutter Butter, covered in chocolate. OK, it doesn't have to be covered in chocolate, but isn't everything better that way?

Rumfy is now 12 weeks formed!

That means Claudia is at the end of her first trimester and might possibly stop bitching about everything all the damn time.  

Looooove Yoooou!

12 Weeks Pregnant

Your Body
You can barely brush your teeth without gagging so the mere thought of visiting the dentist may make you retch. Still, healthy teeth and gums are especially important during pregnancy as poor dental care can lead to a variety of problems such as pregnancy-related gingivitis and periodontal disease, neither of which sound like any fun at all. Plus, poor dental health during pregnancy has been associated with premature and low-birth-weight babies. 

Book an appointment, but be sure to let your dentist know you're expecting, so you can avoid dental X-rays. If you notice strange lumps on your gums, don't worry. It's just another perk of being preggo. Many women develop harmless, non-cancerous oral tumors when pregnant. And just when you were feeling really sexy ...

Your Baby
Baby's face is looking more human as his eyes have moved to the front of his head and his ears are in place. Hooray! Other amazing fetal highlights this week: 

Your baby is able to swallow this week and practices on the amniotic fluid he or she floats in. (And you thought baby food was kind of nasty!) And in case you're wondering how your kid can breathe in all that fluid, here's your answer: Fetuses get oxygen from the blood pumped into their bodies by the placenta and don't breathe with their lungs. Mystery solved!

Junior has doubled in size over the past two weeks and now weighs almost ½ ounce. He's also now around 2 ½ inches long, about the length of your pinky finger or a Vienna sausage, which, in a few months, will be indistinguishable from one another. 

So, if you didn't know it, Claudia is 11 weeks pregnant

This is a very exciting time for all of us Chicks!

Not to mention that by this week, "Rumfy" (the pre-child) has begun to look much more like a baby than an alien weasel.  

We've been monitoring his/her progress on this site:

 

11 Weeks Pregnant

Your Baby

All of your baby's vital organs are now formed and functioning, so the risk of defects decreases this week as your baby becomes less susceptible to outside influences. Phew! Other exciting developments include:

Baby's ears are assuming their proper place this week and the fingernail and toenail beds are beginning to form. Your little "pumpkin head" really lives up to his nickname as his head is nearly as big as the rest of his body.

Your baby now weighs a third of an ounce, about the same as two small, Starbucks-sized packets of sugar, is about 2 inches long, the length of one of those sugar packets. Isn't that sweet? 

We still have another 9 weeks before we'll know Rumfy's gender for sure, but I just feel like we have a girl on the way.

Claudia promised to post the first-ever photo of the baby later today.

A triumph of the ten-year-old girl imagination

There's only one pink dolphin the world...

and it lives in Louisiana!  Very close to my parents!

It's like all my Lisa Frank dreams have come to life!

Something I read in Los Angeles

At the Museum of Jurassic Technology 

All of nature in its awful vastness and incomprehensible complexity is in the end interrelated - worlds within worlds within worlds: the seen and the unseen - the physical and the immaterial are all connected - each exerting influence on the next - bound, as it were, by chains of analogy - magnetic chains. Every decision, every action mirrors, ripples, reflects and echoes throughout the whole of creation. The world is indeed bound with secret knots.

--Valentine Worth

So we can all be the Terminator

Geekologie Blog posted this item yesterday about a "Sixth Sense Device."

"The device...can turn any surface into a touch-screen for computing, controlled by simple hand gestures. The gadget can even take photographs if a user frames a scene with his or her hands, or project a watch face with the proper time on a wrist if the user makes a circle there with a finger. The device can recognize items on store shelves, retrieving and projecting information about products or even providing quick signals to let users know which choices suit their tastes."

Needless to say, I both fear and desire it.

Holy Crap, Flubber is Real.

As seen on the Geekologie Blog today...

Non-Newtonian fluid on a speaker.

Weird Science, indeed.