A rose is a rose is ...

Angus.

We do not yet know the sex of Spazzface 2.0, or, as my husband calls the life form that has now reached approximately the size of an avocado in my abdomen, "El Segundo."  But we are now referring to it as "Angus."

I had pointed out (quite rightly!) that although we still have our short list of favorite girls' names ready to go, we shot our metaphorical load with "Ian," because our short list for boys names was exactly that long.  Which means that SHOULD my unborn child happen to be a boy (and I'm told there's approximately a 50/50 chance for every fetus ever conceived), "Spazzface" is what we've got for his birth certificate so far.

Forgive me for thinking this is not a recipe for long term success.  I can just see the look on the face of every teacher he will ever have on the first day of school when he or she must say "Spazzface?" during roll call.

In the course of looking up boys' names, my husband became attached to "Angus."  It must be conceded that "Ian and Angus" does roll trippingly off the tongue, but unfortunately, when you say the word "Angus" to people, they immediately free associate and say, "BEEF!"

Which brings us to the reason we've nicknamed the fetus "Angus."  (I should point out we're aware that we run the risk of getting Ian so attached to that name that our only option for changing it is to actually have a girl.)  Most of you know I've been a vegetarian for 8 years or so.

That is, I WAS a vegetarian until I fell into the clutches of the werewolf in my belly.  I had a lot of trouble with specific foods upsetting my system (I'll spare you the details, they don't interest me either) from quite early in my pregnancy.  The net result was that everything I usually eat was making me sick.  Tragically, this included chocolate cake. So I put my plans to ride it out on a cake diet until the second trimester on hold.

When I caught myself salivating (literally) over the RAW stew beef being purchased by the woman in front of me at the grocery store, I knuckled under.  Please don't judge me, fellow veg folks- I was hungry.  And besides, I blame the baby.

I fully expected my experiment with the joys of (eating) the flesh to end in more illness after an 8 year hiatus, but the opposite was true.  Meat turned out to be pretty much the only thing on Earth that DIDN'T make me sick.  So Angus and I had leftover beef and barley stew for lunch yesterday and Crock Pot Coq au Vin for dinner, and we both enjoyed it very much.

(FYI, for those who are interested, I'm told the money in the betting pool is on "girl."  Mine is on, "don't care, I already saw five fingers and five toes on the ultrasound and I just know this baby is lovable in every way.")

PS- our risk for Open Neural Tube Defects has been assessed as less than 1:5,000. If you're wondering, that's GOOD.