Great news -- 22 weeks and doing great!

Amy and I have been looking forward to this ultrasound exam. We were anxious to see what progress Max had made while cooking in the oven--so to speak. Amy was subjected to getting cold, gooey, weird, lime green jelly rubbed all over her belly for about 45 minutes and being prodded with a metal probe--maybe an hour.

I looked at the computer monitor and noticed that Max was, fidgeting, wiggling and sucking a thumb--yes. The technician told us that Max was moving a lot and that it would be a challenge to get all the images that the radiologist would review later.

The technician quickly went to work on Amy's belly and identified, catalogued and measured Max's tiny, wiggling parts. Arms, legs, tiny fingers and toes, internal organs, circulation, swallowing reflex and nervous system. Everything is where it should be. The heart was beating at 140 beats per minute, healthy. A movie was also recorded of his little heart, beating and keeping him going as they needed to make sure that the heart's valves were synchronized within normal ranges. Toward the end of the exam, the technician needed the help get better pictures of the heart's valves because Max was moving so much.

We opted not to find out what gender Max is as we'd like a surprise--like a Christmas present--ok, it's in August but still... Anyway, as far as we know, Max is still "baby X". We almost broke, we almost asked if we could find out what gender the baby is but we didn't.

So here's what we saw...

In this side profile, I think the baby resembles Amy's profile but she disagrees.

This one takes a lot of patience to observe.

Getting this image was challenging because Max was playing peek-a-boo (he appeared to be doing that--maybe he was just cold from the jelly and getting probed--poor little dude.)

It was nice to hear Amy say, "ok, now I can relax--let's just let him grow big and strong now..."

I think the History Channel needs to make a show called, "Baby Tech on Modern Marvels". I'd like to get more emotional about Max when I see him pop up on a computer screen but I'm completely fascinated by the technology hospitals have. The overwhelming feeling of joy and fascination usually hits me about six hours later. I can't help the baby tech gadgets though--they're just so cool! The world that Max is coming into is a fantastically fast world of innovation, light and science wizardry.

When I was born, we only knew about nine planets in our solar system and that we were somewhere in the milky way galaxy--that was it. I was five when I saw Apollo 11 land on the moon as I watched through a snowy, noisy tiny black and white television. Science was still mostly newtonian and computers were the size of a house. We lived in TJ and it looked like Iraq.

In the world that Max is coming into, we're back down to eight planets, a new asteroid (Pluto) in our solar system, over ten thousand identified planets in other solar systems whithin our galaxy and have identified millions of galaxies and black holes within our expanding universe. Affluent citizens are now vacationing in space. Science is quantum and computers are now the size of pinheads and getting smaller. We don't live in TJ anymore but it still looks like Iraq--I guess some things never change.

We'll keep this baby fascinated with this wonderful world. Max has a blog now, an email address (max.tinymax@gmail.com) and a cell phone (baby monitor).

I'm not sure how we're going to explain all the wars that we still fight and all the stupid reasons.