Of course, I was confident from the beginning in my feeling that this one was a girl, but it is nice to have this actually confirmed. Mary has had a couple of previous ultrasounds, but our daughter was apparently shy about showing the relevant region, so the technicians couldn't tell us what she was until yesterday's ultrasound.
I'm glad our daughter is a girl, because (a) I justed moved 47 cartons of girl baby and toddler clothes from our old house to our new house, and would have been royally ticked off if we then had to dump it (contengency plan called for this ad in local classifieds: "It's a Boy! Infant girl clothes available cheap!); and (b) we were having a terrible time coming up with suitable boy names. We wanted something as original as Tigana, but all the boy names we thought of were either too common or too effeminate. We couldn't find one we liked at all. Mary proposed "Kerrison", my mother's maiden name, but it abbreviates as "Kerry", which Mary did not like at all. I suggested "General" or "Sir" to give the child a leg up in their future career, but Mary vetoed that. Mary suggested "Grayson", but I figured out that was a shot at my age, so I vetoed that one! And everything else just seemed, well unsuitable for one reason or another.
But then, we were not really trying because we both knew boy names were a mere intellectual exercise. We knew it was a girl, and we know what her name is. Well, more accurately, we know two out of three of her names -- we've told Tigana she may choose one (middle) name for her baby sister, so that has been subject to change -- we've had "Grace" and "Rose" (neither of which Mary and I like much, but which do oddly fit with the names we've chosen, so we would have been okay) but which this week is Pocahontas. We may have to exercise a parental veto....
