My baby, the monster demon

Yesterday, Jesse and I bounced and bounded our way to the hospital for our anatomy ultrasound, aka the congrats-you're-halfway-through-being-pregnant ultrasound, aka THE ONE WHERE THEY TELL YOU IF IT'S A BOY OR A GIRL!!!

And ladies and gentlemen .... Gizmo is a girl, just as I knew all along (I'm quite smart when it comes to these things).

I always knew I would have a girl first, and I'm glad my firstborn will be a girl for practical reasons as well. You see, ... how do I put this gently for the guys who read this ... well, boys are ... boys are ... they're slow. Male babies/children are generally dumber than females.

They have worse language skills at the same age; they have more trouble learning to read and are later at hitting most important milestones; and apparently their potty training abilities leave a LOT to be desired. So while I'm learning the ropes as a parent, I'd rather learn on the smarter of the two genders. After raising me and my sister first, my mom genuinely wondered if my little brother was retarded or something. Turns out he's just male, which has many of the same symptoms as retardation. Sorry boys, but this really shouldn't surprise anyone.

So anyway. There we were at our appointment, looking at wee baby Gizmo on the ultrasound, and the tech was measuring femurs and lemurs and so on until she drifted over to where our sweet babe's face was resting. She told us it was the baby's face, but all I could see was some darkish smears that looked nothing like any face I've ever seen. So then she pointed out where the eyes and nose and mouth were, and suddenly I realized what I was looking at. And at the exact same moment, Jesse and I both shouted in terror. Because dude ... you know how in The Exorcist (the original), the demon's face sometimes shows up in the corner of the frame and it's absolutely terrifying? Baby Gizmo's face looked exactly like this:

So it turns out that all those times I bitched that nobody based movie monsters on fetuses even though fetuses are scary, I guess I wasn't giving credit where credit was due. William Friedkin, genius and director of The Exorcist, I salute you. Your devil looks just like my baby.

OMG so cute, right?!

Then the tech was like "so do you want a picture of this?" and I shrieked "God no! I can't look at it anymore!!!" Now I sort of wish I'd said yes so I could show you all how seriously terrifying it was. Nah, but it's cool though little baby. I still love you and all. You can't help that you're a monster.

Once all was said and done, we walked out of there with smiles on our faces and a whole bunch of pictures. I wasn't really sure what to make of the facial profile view, though. You see, Gizmo is holding her hands up in front of her, and she kind of looks like ... well, I'll let you decide:

Maybe it will help if I turn the picture vertical:

Here's what I think:

Badly-drawn meerkat?

T-Rex?

THIS?!?!?!?!?!!??!

I think it's that exaggerated jawbone that's throwing me off. Really, she looks like a mummy or something.

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"

Someday, my kid is gonna read all this and she'll either think it's really funny or she'll hate me forever. But I'm just saying -- she looks like a mummified T-Rex demon. Is that really so controversial?? IS IT!??!?!?!?!!?!?