I suckered Whoorl into taking pictures of me looking pregnant. The shots I take of myself just weren’t cutting it and Toby has about had it up to here with the whole “look at me, I have a belly!” gig. Actually, he’s proud of me. He thinks my belly is cute, he just doesn’t have a lot of time to shoot pictures of me. He’s too busy shooting pictures of houses and important work stuff (yawn). Someone’s gotta help me save up for that expensive bugaboo stroller I have my heart set on.

I look like I’m trying to be sexy but I wasn’t. I was trying to hold my head in such a way so that my Britney Spears double chin wouldn’t show up.

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In other news, I started my month long temp job on Tuesday. It’s so boring! It’s not really the job, it’s just that they don’t really have any work for me yet. So I just sit around and stare at my computer all day. I think I worked on three documents today and all I did was add quotations to some copy. Really taxing. Hopefully there will be more work for me in the coming weeks.

It’s just really weird going back to work after working for yourself for a year. I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing. If this happened at home I’d go do the dishes or water my plants or blog something. But I don’t think I should start blogging from work yet, since it is only my second day.

I don’t have many pictures from my trip to New Orleans in 2003 but I have a lot of pictures in my heart. I’ll always remember what it was like to walk down the broken sidewalks in the French Quarter. The dusty dark little antique and thrift shops that I ducked into to buy old postcards… the scary voodoo shop, the boys on the street who beat their drums for money. I feel lucky to have visited. It will never be the same. My heart goes out to those people who call that old place home.

We didn’t realize how much Toby wanted a boy until the ultrasound technician announced that she was 99% sure our baby was a girl. We were so excited, watching every little blurb of movement on the monitor with wide eyes. Look at those hands! Look at that belly! And then when the moment of decision arrived…it was like the wind just blew right out of Toby’s sails. I could almost hear him deflate.

He just sunk down in his chair and said nothing. I didn’t know what to think. It was as if it was my birthday and I was opening a really pretty present with super cool fancy wrapping and then when I held up my gift to show Toby, it was like I was holding up a vacuum cleaner bag or an old shoe or something. It really bummed me out. In fact, it’s still bumming me out and I totally wanted a girl all along!

Not to worry though, Toby wanted a girl too. He’s definitely going to love his little girl like no other, it’s just that he just wanted a boy first. He feels like he’s playing the lottery and if he could just win a boy first then the rest would be easy. Now with our odds, we’re thinking we might have to have eight more kids before we pop out a boy.

I’m actually happy about it. I love girls. I’m most happy because that means we can name her the girl name we’ve picked out. I love our girl name! It’s so perfect. I was worried that if we didn’t use it right away, somebody else might snatch it up. And don’t get me started on boy names. Ugh! Toby has his heart set on a boy name that I just can’t stand. I mean I really really can’t stand it. It conjures up images of idiots. But I can’t think of a better one so I was going to have to default to his choice.

So even though today is a little bit of a downer, cheers to my little baby girl who will be the most adorable baby ever! I mean, look at that profile! And she’s got shoulders too!