We went in yesterday for our ultrasound. I thought it would be about a fifteen-minute affair, but we were there for about an hour. Very thorough. Checking the kidneys, the heart, the brain, the spine, the bone structure. All there. Ten fingers, two nostrils, one mouth, and a brain. At least that’s what I was told. Really, to me, it just looked like one alien blob. 
(The technician said, “There’s the heart. And there’s the brain,†to which, of course, both Adam and I had the same thought: “All we need now is courage,†I said, and Adam continued, “And we’d have the entire The Wizard of Oz cast.â€) They said the spine looks terrific, and I made sure there was no tail on the kid. The feet are nice and straight (this was necessary to check as the Tweedle Twirp was born with little club feet and had to spend her first years of life in casts and braces). But there was one odd mutant factor that I’m not quite sure how to deal with. My daughter—my beautiful, feminist daughter who will travel the world three times over, have Martha tendencies, and yet be the first female NFL player (as a kicker, of course, for the Miami Dolphins)—my wonderful daughter is a mutant. Apparently, my daughter has a penis. (Which reminds me of the Mel Brooks/Marlo Thomas skit from Free To Be … You And Me in which Mel Brooks says [or something awfully close to it], “Don’t look! Ugggh. A girl with a penis. Yuck. Disgusting.†Now, don’t worry, I’ll love my mutant just as much as I would love my non-mutant. This will just take some mental adjustments, but I think I can make this hurdle. Babies with penises can be feminists, too, you know.
By the way, we are not 100 percent sure about our name choices (last name included) and we are no longer going to discuss them with anyone. You may refer to him as Baby Brown Medros for the time being or by the nickname we’ve been calling him, if you happen to know what that is. The baby name will be announced when he makes his first actual appearance.
