Now You Are Three

I can't believe it's gone by so fast! My dear little first child is three today!

Em - You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

You are joyful, funny, fun, conniving in a totally obvious way, precocious, a little rambunctious and the light of my life. You make me smile every single day, and you take great pictures!

Today, you like baseball (SO MUCH), dinosaurs, trains, dressing up in costumes (but only for a little while).

Your favorite foods are PB&J, tofu, BBQ chicken wings, french fries, cherry tomatoes (which you call "gwapes"), bananas and yogurt. You steal my toast every morning.

You don't understand pictures that don't move (it's like you grew up in a magical Harry Potter world) and when we FaceTime with Grandma, you always take her on a tour of the house. You introduce me to my parents every time they come to visit.

You want to play with friends but you haven't quite figured out how to do it well all the time, so you spend a lot of time playing chase and taking direction from older kids.

You are so inquisitive! You question everything, which is wonderful and frustrating. And you set me up with your questions all the time:

"Mama, where do rockets come from?"
"They come from NASA, Em"
"No they don't mama. They come from owta space."

"Mama, what's that?"
"It's a tractor, Em"
"No it isn't mama, it's a Bawbcat"

You are so good at riding your strider bike, you can throw a ball better than any other 3 year old I've seen (with your left hand, no less!), and you think you can cartwheel but really, you can't.

You know the letters E, H and O, and you call the letter A a triangle. You have long conversations in the bathtub on your foam letter "W."

When you get in trouble, you often say "honnnnnnnnnk" like the dump truck in "Little Blue Truck" and then you happily sit in the rocking chair in your room until time out is over.

When you count, it usually goes like this: "one, two sree, sore, sive, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, leven, twelve, firteen, fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, THREE TWO ONE blastoff!"

You are a big cousin and a big brother now, and you're so good at it. You help all the time, and give big hugs and kisses, and you transitioned so well to having to share all the adults in your life with two babies.

Happy birthday darling boy. I love you so much!!!!!

Circular Conversations

E#1 can't say Rs yet. (E#2 can't really say anything yet aside from "A-goooo" but that's to be expected). Anyways, E1 can't say Rs, but he can hear them. Which leads to lots of hilarious conversations between him and me.

E: I want to build a wamp with my bwocks!
Me: A wamp?
E: No, a wamp!
Me: A wamp?
E: No mama, a WAMP!
Me: A ramp?
E: Yeah! A wamp!

E: Auntie, I want a cwackew!
Kel: A qwacker?
E: No, a qwackew!
Kel: A qwacker?
E: No Auntie, a QWACKEW!
Kel: A cracker?
E: Yeah, a qwackew!

This also happens with the word "spiderweb" and it makes me laugh so hard every time.

E: Look mama, a spidewob!
Me: A spidewob?
E: No, a spidewob!
Me: A wob?
E: No mama, a WOB!
Me: A web?
E: Yeah! A wob!

It was especially funny at Halloween - decorations all over the place, plus the kids dressed up all in things he couldn't pronounce properly, but could pronounce adorably.






An astwonaut, a dwagon and a wobster!

Visiting

We've had a whirlwind of visitors the past few weeks!

First my brother, his girlfriend, and their daughter came for a quick trip to meet the baby.

Just a little while after that, we got Gertie, the St. Bernard pup, which made it feel like we had a visitor at first, though now it's almost like she's always been here.

Then Ross's dad and his lovely lady came to visit - lots of fun! We took the ferry to SF for dim sum at Yank Sing, grabbed a drink at Forbidden Island, and just had some good family time.

And 3 days after they left, mom came to see us! This was probably the longest time we've gone without seeing her since the first kiddo was born - almost 2 months! I really can't wait until she and dad have a place up here, and can split their time between Alameda and Orange County - less than a year left til Dad retires and the party is on!

It's been lovely, but it'll be nice to have a few weeks of downtime, a chance to settle in to a normal routine as a little family of 4 + dog, before the holidays get going!

Dad will be here for the big kid's birthday in a few weeks, and then it's Thanksgiving, and before we know it, we'll all be piling into the car for a trip down south for Christmas!

New Additions

So, we had a baby, which has been pretty exciting, and he's awfully cute! Looks so much like Ross, even down to his frequent grumpy faces.

almost smiling...almost!

And then, because things were just too calm around here (ha!), we got a puppy!

5 months old and already a giant!

Gertrude will probably grow up to be more than 100 lbs, maybe even bigger! E#2 will probably get that big too, eventually, but it's gonna take him a lot longer!

List #12 - Random Things

1. I've discovered that Unsweetened Silk Soy Milk, with just a tiny bit of honey, a good dash of vanilla, and lots of cinnamon is a good replacement for Horchata...one of the things I've been missing most on this carbs-forbidden diet. (Or at least, it's good enough considering I haven't been allowed to have a real honest to goodness tall cup of deliciousness like Horchata in over a month. No juice or chocolate milk either.) It's awfully nice to have something a little sweet that's also good for me!

2. We bought the kiddo a used toy kitchen and he is mad in love with it. It's really adorable. Today he made me "soup" with eggs, oranges, mushrooms, tomatoes and milk. Mmmmm.

3. Looks like my sub is all lined up for my maternity leave! Hooray! It was a little nerve wracking there waiting for months for the District to get stuff together, but I think (fingers crossed) it's handled now. I've got a huge Google Drive folder full of things for her to use, and we're probably getting together on Friday to go over lessons and procedures and things.

4. I saw an article that said there were going to be a whole bunch of new emojis, but they still don't have a "fingers crossed" emoji. That's silly...I'd use it all the time if they had one. Maybe with the next update...fingers crossed.

5. I really want French Onion Soup for dinner tonight...but we have no onions. We also don't have giant croutons.

6. Ross's artwork is really amazing me lately. I'll do a post soon about what he's been up to at the old Naval Air Station on the island...or maybe I'll get him to write it!

7. We're also, hopefully, fairly close to being able to launch his artist website! I've got an Instagram account set up for him, we've bought the domain RossBecht.com, claimed RossBecht.wordpress.com, and have worked out how to link it all together. So it's mostly just a matter of getting all the right photos together and putting them on pages on the site!

8. I've joined a really great group called Alameda Family Collective - a bunch of families on the island with young kids who plan fun outings and get-togethers and are just awesome. The kiddo is really enjoying playing with other kids his age, and I'm really enjoying time to talk to other moms about mom things...I don't get to do a ton of that, aside from with my sister and mom, and so (I never thought I'd say this but it's totally true) I'm really appreciating sitting around talking about potty training and pregnancy and husbands and all that stuff.

9. Some good stuff has happened with regard to the diabetes and Kaiser and that whole mess. I put a little update at the end of the post where I wrote about it. And I think I'm finally ready to share that one with the larger crowd, not just the couple of you awesome people who subscribe to my blog or have my page bookmarked on your phone  :-)

Letter to Target

I like Target. It might be a bit of a guilty pleasure in the super hippie, buy-local, boycott-corporations part of society that I tend to hang out in, but all the same, I like it. The clothes are comfortable (if a bit limited in color palate), the people are really nice, the stores are clean, and they usually have whatever it is I'm looking for.

But today, I really noticed for the first time just how gendered their toy aisles are. I've seen it before, but usually while rushing the kiddo past so he doesn't notice that there are piles of things he might want, like a princess outfit or a drum or a bike or cars or a doll or a new ball or any of the other fun looking stuff that's there. Today I was on my own, and perusing to see if they had a kid-proof digital camera. We're planning to give the kiddo one when his new baby cousin arrives to help him feel involved. "Take pictures, E!"

Anyways, the aisles with the "girl" stuff in them are not only filled solely with toys marketed to girls, but the shelves themselves were painted hot pink. Same thing for the boy aisles, but replace pink with blue. No dolls to be found in any gender-neutral way, no lego sets that aren't "girly" in the girl section...just a message of "These are the toys boys can like and these are the toys girls can like. The end." The only non-gendered stuff was the sports and swimming stuff, but even that has clearly been influenced - lots of black and blue and tan baseball gloves, but no pink ones. Swim stuff was available in all sorts of gender neutral colors, which means blue is an option for everyone, but pink is not. Ugh. I'm so sick of it.

So I wrote to Target Corporate. And I'm gonna Tweet them and Facebook them and hopefully, maybe, if they as cool of a company as I hope they are, they'll make some easy changes to their store setup, and not contribute anymore to making kids feel like they have to be a certain way. Cause kids definitely don't. I should have taken a picture today...I will next time I'm there.

Here's my letter. Fingers crossed.

Hello,

I'm a regular Target customer, and I really like your stores a lot. But I hate the way your toys section is set up. It's awful. The "girl" toys are in shelves that are painted pink and the "boy" toys in shelves painted blue and the things that are supposedly gendered don't have to be that way. Why are all the Legos for boys? Why is all the dress up stuff only for girls? I get that you have to market things to a target (ha!) audience, but you don't have to play into it THAT much. I would be so much happier as a supporter of your stores if you sent down a directive to remove a significant amount of the pink/blue gendering of toys. Girls like legos, and cars. My son likes horses and crowns. And bikes, and sports stuff, and basically all the toys. But soon, he'll learn from society that some of those things aren't "for him." And it would be so easy for you, as a corporation, to not be part of that stupid message that makes kids feel awkward and inferior for liking things they aren't supposed to. Thanks for your time, and I hope to hear back from you, and see some changes soon.

Lynds

New Item!

Check out this awesome painting Ross did over the past couple days. It's his spirit animal! I'm about it put it up on Etsy, but I don't know what to call it...

Also, we had this very entertaining conversation today over gchat while I was waiting to see my boss...

Lynds how are you guys doing?
Ross fine... I'm almost done w/ the moose... the kiddo is currently working on a piece using opaque pigmented wax and dining implements...
Lynds oooh, creative
Ross very avant garde
his working title is.... crayon on place mat #31
or just 31 for short
Lynds alternately, "daddydrawatrain?"

I have no idea if this is funny to people who don't know us...but since pretty much only people who know us are reading this, you'll probably get a kick out of it.

Dangit, Thomas

My kid loves Thomas the Tank Engine. So do lots of others. But it turns out even this show, which I usually tolerate just fine for my kid (aside from the incessant theme song) has a problem with pink.

A conversation I just had with my mother:

I really hope all these conversations about kids' toys, and the messages we send our children about what parts of them are valuable, and which parts are shameful, gets us somewhere, but I'm not feeling too encouraged. Amazon, a pretty good indicator of how shopping looks across America, looks like this:

"Toys" section preview - only dolls and art have any pink in them at all, even though nothing is technically gendered

"Girls" toys - all pink, all the time, except for the one thing that's white with a rainbow. The rest of the page was just as pink

"Boys" toys. No pink to be found. Boys get to have all the other colors, though, including purple.

On the upside, there are Goldiblox, which are pretty awesome. I plan to buy a bunch of sets for the kiddo when he's old enough to understand how to not chew on them. And if I ever have a daughter, I'll get even more of them for her.




Goldieblox gets it - pink isn't what makes girl's toys frustrating! These girls do all sorts of great things, and they still get to like pink! They still get to be proud of being girls, who like girly things! I love it.

PS - here's the original Goldieblox commercial, featuring a version of The Beastie Boys "Girls," which they've since had to take down from most places. I like it with both songs, but it's nice to have the lyrics, too.

Magic Snow, or how to make a giant mess

I really truly cannot figure out how all these pristine mommy-bloggers do it! They craft gorgeous educational activities, photograph them every step of the way, engage their kids in them (neatly, of course!), put up stunning pictures and still seem to have time to do things like cook dinner afterwards! It's amazing.

 That is so not how crafty fun time goes at my house. I had been wanting to try this "magic snow" recipe and activity for ages (since before Christmas) but I always had a feeling it wasn't going to go as smoothly as it looked here, where I found it first (lovely photos of this activity happening indoors are about 1/3 of the way down the page).

I was so right. The kiddo had a great time, don't get me wrong. But neat and pretty this was not. My back porch is still recovering, and I'm pretty sure there's cornstarch in all the crevices of my phone.

We did two "scienspeewments:"  magic snow and oobleck. Of course, I didn't take the proper ingredients picture until after the hurricane of kid fun had ended.

Hopefully your kitchen ingredients don't look like this! 

To make snow, mix together baking soda and shaving cream until it's the consistency you want. It's actually cool stuff...smells like clean soap, feels a bit cool to the touch, and is kinda squishy but moldable. I'm sure there are actual amounts you're supposed to use, but we kept adding more shaving cream about every 5 minutes. Mostly because E would get ahold of the shaving cream and put more in there. He's way too good at reaching things. It did seem to dry out fairly quickly, though, so I think he was on the right track.

Squish

 We made a snowman. I used parts of the plants I have growing on the porch for the eyes and nose.

It looks like he's stoned and vomiting.

 Oobleck was next. I was excited about this, because I used to love teaching about this stuff when I worked at a preschool. Simple stuff - just corn starch and water, mixed well. I have no idea about amounts, but you've probably made this before, because I think most everyone has, so you should be ok. Just mix til it does that weird thing where it looks like it's a liquid but when you press on it, it's not.

About 3 seconds after I got this picture, he dumped the bowl on my pants

We had a good time with the Oobleck for a bit, but he kept finding the darn shaving cream and trying to add it to stuff.

All proper back porches should have an unusable desk chair

 Finally, we decided to mix the snow and oobleck together. It turned out just about how you'd expect. Half snowy play-dough, half gooey fake liquid stuff. Totally fun to play with.

Mixing, very messily

 And then, the kiddo realized the hose was right there. So he added water. Then sprayed me.

See, if I hadn't been trying to take pictures, I would've been able to get out of the way of this!

 After that, I realized any semblance of neatness was totally lost, and just let him go for it. And it was adorable! He splashed and giggled and got this stuff all over the place.

A seriously happy kid

 So to all you parents who can do this kind of stuff inside - I commend you. You must be incredibly good at multi-tasking! Or you have 8 arms. Or maybe you're cyborgs who can just take photos by blinking. And have children who actually stop spraying you with a hose when you shout "No no no stop please hey kiddo you're getting water in the house!" Mine just giggles. But then again, I did too.

How can you not smile at that happy mess of a child?

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today, I'm thankful for Pinterest, cause I wouldn't have found this fun project without it. Also for gummy bears, Diana Krall albums, ginger ale, and most definitely our washer and dryer.

Pink is NOT Just for Girls, and it's NOT the Problem!

A particular Huffington Post article has been making the rounds on my Facebook this week. It's mostly a great article, and it's been bringing a ton of attention to one of my biggest pet peeves, which is awesome. The hook is an adorable Lego ad from 1981:

The article goes on to mourn that we don't have ads like this anymore. And I so agree! I wish we treated girls, and by extension girl toys, as wholly developed things that don't have to be frilly or sparkly or pink in order to be something that girls want. And I wish marketers weren't doing this to the toys of my childhood, as they "modernize" them:

Dolls don't need to be sexier. They don't need to be made skinnier, or given bigger eyes and longer hair and more porcelain skin. Dolls and female characters can be girls without bows and boobs and makeup. I don't know why toy companies are so very insistent that young children believe that all girls want to look like this, or should look like this. I don't know why they want all children to want the same thing! It's infuriating.

Toys should be toys. For kids. Whichever kids want them. We shouldn't be allowing all the toys in our country to be divided up into boy toys and girl toys. It does our children a huge disservice, and it's going to cause problems for us all in about 15 years, when the kids who grew up in this atmosphere are young adults with no concept of gender-neutral.

But the HuffPo article made me pretty angry right off the bat with this line:

The LEGOs are not pink or "made for girls." She isn't even wearing pink.

Aaaarrrggghhh!! Pink isn't the problem! Why does it matter if she's wearing pink, or not wearing pink? Pink is not our enemy. Girls should be able to wear pink if they want to! Why do people, whenever they respond to this kind of problem (and I see it all the time) think that eliminating the pink toys is the solution?

Why is there never any outrage that pink wasn't included in the original Lego set? I dare you to find a gender-neutral toy that includes pink. Or is all pink. It's nearly impossible. I can't dress my son in pink. But I can damn sure find blue clothes and toys meant for girls. Why? Why are we so afraid of pink? Is it because it's associated with feminine, and we are scared of feminine becoming the norm?

We use feminine words as insults all the time:

"You throw like a girl"
"Don't get your panties in a twist"
"Quit being such a pussy"

And we imply that a loss of manhood is the worst thing that could happen to a man:

"Turn in your man card"
"Did someone put your balls in their purse?" 

Jessica Valenti, in Full Frontal Feminism wrote:

“What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.
You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.” Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.” 

And it's true! Even the majority of our vulgar and insulting words equate to a woman's genitalia! I won't list them, but I'm sure you can think of plenty.

In Chicago several years ago, there was a contest to pick a new color to represent the newest train line. A young girl wrote an essay advocating for the color pink. “Who does not like pink?" she asked. "It’s so bright and lively … if it’s pink people will want to ride it.” The CTA agreed with her, and The Pink Line was born. And with it came outrage on the part of many Chicagoans. From Salon:

A pink train would be humiliating to the good people of Chicago. We are the hardworking, meat-eating, bar-brawling, sports-loving, dirty-politicking, multiple heart attack-surviving hog butcher for the world! We are men, except for the slightly more than half of us who are not! And you expect us to pay good money to ride on something called the “Pink Line”? Why not just put a tutu on the Sears Tower, or fill Soldier Field with tampons, or come to my house and cut my balls off?

 And there, I think, is the real problem. It's not so much that we now offer almost exclusively pink (and purple!) toys to girls. It's that we don't offer them to boys. And by doing so, by leaving pink out of all gender-neutral items, out of all "boy" toys, we are teaching both boys and girls that pink is an other.

That only someone who is less-than will want pink. Pink has been made to represent the underlying hatred our society has for all things feminine, and that sucks. Because I like pink. And I like girly things. And that makes me no less capable than anyone else.

I just wish society would agree with me on that.

***Whoops! Turns out the original title of this blog post was used already by the excellent Bob "MovieBob" Chipman. Here's a link to his great discussion of the same concept: Pink is Not the Problem.

Why so few kids movies?

It might be silly, but I love taking my kid to the movies. I love going to the movies, so that might be part of it, ha! When he was just born, we went to see The Muppet Movie together, and it was great. He slept, and nursed, and since he loved songs from very early on, it was an easy way to get out of the house.

He hadn't been to any other movies since then, until just before his 2nd birthday, when we took him to see Disney's Planes. We'd heard it was perfect for little ones, and it'd been so long since I saw a movie, I would have been willing to sit through almost anything! And it was adorable! Not so much the movie itself, which was pretty mediocre, but watching the kiddo watch the movie. He was enthralled. He danced to the songs, pointed out the planes, and loved the popcorn.

Since then, I've taken him to two more flicks - Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, and Frozen. They were both great. Fun, funny at times (Meatballs more so), and a nice way for the kiddo and I to have a special adventure together.

But now that I have a kiddo of movie-going age, I've noticed the serious lack of kids movies in theaters. And I'm not just talking about good kids movies. Seriously, right now, Frozen is the only thing in the theaters. It's been the only thing in theaters for at least a month! I'm not saying I want to take him to movies all the time, but especially over winter break time, I would've thought there would have been at least two options! I hope this is just a weird lull, because I'd be sad for my kid if he hardly ever got to experience good films in the theaters - it's just too fun!

That said, I can't wait for the Lego movie to come out. Ross has loved Legos his whole life, and I just know the kiddo is going to too. And also, the movie looks awesome. Seriously, check it out!

List #7 - Things I Said and Really Meant in 2013

Have you ever noticed how having a kid makes you say really odd things? I think it's just about the funniest thing, so last year, I kept track of things we said to the kiddo that were just too ridiculous to believe. And as my final goodbye to 2013, I'm sharing the top 10, without explanation, in order of hilarity.

10. "Where the hell did that Maypole come from?"
9. "Cars don't drive on guitars"
8. "We don't drink milk through curtains"
7. "That necklace looks so pretty on your dinosaur"
6. "We don't put hammers in gravy"
5. "Oh, it's ok, that banana doesn't need it's hair combed"
4. "Aw, now my butt is wet too"
3. "No no no, don't throw that horse!"
2. "Did you put a crouton in that bird?"
1. "E, where are your berries? And your banana?"

I have a feeling it's gonna get even funnier in 2014. Can't wait!

A Science Experiment - Think You Know the Result?

You may know this, or you may not, but my stunning amazing little sister is going to be having a baby in April!!! I'm crazy excited - I get to hold and smell and love on a new little one so soon, and Kelle is going to be an amazing mom, and it's all just so much to be ridiculously happy about that some days I think I may explode.

Glowing, happy, gorgeous!

So a couple of days ago, after we went to the Tilden Steam Trains, we dropped the kiddo off at home for a nap and headed out to Park St. for a much needed pedicure. Seriously, my toes were sporting some green polish and remnants of daisies from the last time I visited my family in SoCal, which was over the summer. Totally not sandal-worthy. Not that there's any reason to be wearing sandals right now. It would be a bad idea to wear sandals, actually, because it's been chilly here, so really, I could have just taken off the nail polish and no one would have ever known, because no one's seeing my toes right now except for Ross, and he for sure doesn't give a damn if they're polished or not.

But we went anyways, because our pedicure spot is awesome and it comes with a massage chair. Plus we got Thai food beforehand. I'd been craving dim sum, but Kelle vetoed that, and there's no way I'm going to contradict a hungry pregnant woman, so Thai it was! And really, how can you be unhappy with a meal that includes a Thai ice tea. It's just not possible.

While we were pedicuring, we talked to Sophie, the owner, about the baby-on-the-way, and about how we both think it's a girl. Which got us to talking about all the old wives tales regarding predicting a baby's gender. Which of course led to a caper, because when Kel and I spend any length of time together, something very silly is going to happen. And it sure did. We found websites. With lots and lots of silly ways to predict your baby's gender. And it was all downhill from there.

At first, it was only about cataloging the easy ones - What does she think the baby will be (mother's intuition is one of the more reliable predictors - cool, right?) She thinks girl, and so does everyone else, except her man!

Is she carrying high or low? (we didn't know what this one meant, but lots of people say she's carrying high, so it must mean something!) Beach ball or football? (Apparently girls make a mom's belly wider than boys do)  Looks pretty footbally to us!

Also, pretty sneechy

 Feeling pretty or feeling unattractive? (Girls "steal your beauty," the jerks) I think she's extra stunning as a pregnant lady! Is the dad gaining weight? (He wouldn't fess up, and Kel's smart, so we left this as the other "maybe?") Is she craving sweet things or salty things? (Definitely sweet...she cried a few weeks ago because Tommy brought home lemonade instead of limeade.) Girls apparently make you want sweets.

But why stop there? There's so much more ridiculous stuff to consider! Like: How does she grab a key when it's presented to her? (Fat part=boy, skinny part=girl, because, of course).

I surprised her with this one in the supermarket. It's not that startling of a thing, but she jumped a mile into the air. I think it runs in the family.

Is she extra moody? (Women are happier while pregnant with a baby boy because "they have a little penis inside them.") I'm not gonna put in a vote on this one, because I'm not that dumb, and Tommy wouldn't either (good man)...but Kel said she thinks she's been moody, so I'll go with it.

Is there a "V" or branch shape on her eyeball? (This was almost impossible to get a picture of because I kept tearing up when I looked at her eyes. Sorry if it does the same to you. You can just pretend you're crying because you watched that awesome video I posted about last week.)

We decided yes, there was...which apparently means girl. Again, how are these things related? 

What happens when we hold a needle or a gold ring over her belly? Does it move in a circle, or a straight line?

Or does she just make a sassy face?

Ok, it was circle. But of course Ross had to explain the physics behind why, because he likes to ruin our capers. He was all "the rotation of the Earth will cause things to spin blah blah blah" and we were all "but this is way more sciencey than adding her age and the year together to find something out (which we had just done with the Chinese gender test) so just let us do this experiment" and then he was like "ok, whatever, but if you get criticized for your methodology don't say I didn't warn you" and we were like "yeah, I don't think that's gonna be what people criticize us for."

Next: Are her legs large? (Compared to what?) We thought no, and didn't take that one seriously enough to investigate any further. Is her pee a dull color? (Also, compared to what? Like the time I had to do a lab test involving peeing all day and the technician asked me if I needed a big cup or a little one...I was like, I don't know, what do you usually give people? And she was like "I give people what they need - do you pee a lot or a little?" And I was like "compared to what?" and then got all huffy and just gave me one of the cups...I don't know if it was a big one or a little one, so I still don't know if I pee a lot or a little. Good tangent. Moving on.) 

If you are currently thinking "Lynds, shut up about the pee already," you should just stop reading this now and read about something else cool from today, like Batkid or Rob Ford's interrogation or mustaches. Because the next bit involves lots of pee.

Apparently, if you mix a pregnant woman's urine with things, it will tell you the secret gender of your unborn baby. And since we were this far into the whole thing anyways, and Kelle is too impatient to just wait until the day after Thanksgiving when her ultrasound is scheduled for (and by "Kel is too impatient" I mean I wanna know now if I'm having a niece or nephew!), we went ahead and did those tests too!

Baking soda test - no fizz at all, which means girl!

Drano test - a little reaction there, which meant boy (aw).

Cabbage test - it stayed purple - girl again!

does anyone need half a red cabbage? We have extra....

And finally, baking powder. In retrospect, I should have read the internet more closely, because it turns out this isn't actually a real test. It was just a gross science experiment that ended up with a pee explosion and told us nothing! Boo.

Is it weird that I feel like I should apologize for my dirty table?

Now, with all that work, we could have just taken this online quiz from Childbirth.org, which supposedly combines all these things (except the pee tests) into one and gives you a percentage. At the end of the night we did, and she scored 72% girl, which just about matches up with what we discovered. But doing it this way was more fun. Also more gross. But so are babies. Fun and gross (see the poo sandwich incident from yesterday if you want more proof). So there.

The final tally - 11 points for girl, 2 for boy, 2 unknowns, and 1 explosion