I am now on the 2-week rotation with my doctor, wherein every two weeks I get the enviable task of peeing in cup and getting weighed. Every girl should wish for as much. It is all the great lead up to my highly anticipated task of having to squeeze the equivalent of a Ford Pinto through an opening the size of a mail slot.

A brief ray of sunlight shone upon me this week, however, when I was informed that a.) I had NOT given myself gestational diabetes over the holiday season, and b.) I had actually lost 3 pounds over the two weeks since the new year began. Booyah! So I promptly went home and made a gargantuan pan of brownies.

Here’s the part of the story where all of you who are DISGUSTED by the fact that we aren’t finding out the sex of the wriggling mass in my uterus will jump to attention. While listening to the heartbeat, I asked my midwife where the numbers were – to which she said they were in the 140s and, OFFHANDEDLY COMMENTED THAT THEY SOUNDED “BOYISH”. There you have it. Almost as scientific as the string and pencil test.

This week we also started seranading SJ with a random selection of tunes from the iPod. Unlike Stella, who was subjected to listening to the bombastic classical music CD that came stock with the belly-phones kit, we have given SJ a much larger and more diverse range of listening pleasures. It is hard to tell whether the violent kicks I get each time we listen are telling me that SJ is dancing or trying to kick the apparatus off my person. Given that my insides are regularly being rabbit kicked – regarless of whether music is being pumped in – it is hard to tell exactly what this kid is doing in there. Sometimes I wonder it if it has started playing Dance Dance Revolution to pass the time. The other night at the movies, it literally kicked me NONSTOP through the entire 2+ hours. My memories of Brokeback Mountain will forever be comingled with the sensation of having my ribcage extended beyond it’s natural reaches.

It really is hard to believe that I have so little time left before we become a family of 4. This pregnancy has gone by quickly. The diversion of being subjected to a crash course in Toddler 101 has inevitably changed the dynamics of pregnancy this time around – something I have been pondering non-stop lately. I think I have finally resolved myself to the reality that it defies all logic to think that parity can exist when raising more than one child. Sure, there are superficial things we can do to help even the playing field a little bit, but when it really comes down to it, everything about our lives is different than it was 2 years ago – and because of that, this new child will be born into it’s own unique reality. And, if experience says anything, these kids will probably have nothing more than some DNA in common. As the second child, there will be many rewards that come from the fact that we have done this all before. It won’t be the same and really, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our priorities are new and different and our parenting style has evolved (hopefully, for the better), but more than anything, the idea of giving both Stella and this new baby all the opportunities that come from sharing your life with a sister or brother is how the whole puzzle really fits together…which is what I will tell them each time they come to me wanting to murder each other.