16 week update: avocados and more about twitter

What’s been baking for 16 weeks and weighs less than a stick of butter?? Yup, you guessed it, my baby. If you think that food/baby reference is bad, wait till you hear this one from the twitterverse …

justfndoit: @rookiepops yum…..hmmmmm. You eat your young? http://myloc.me/NJJ1
Sun Sep 27 15:55:11 2009

Let me explain…. first the crazy reference, then the crazy twitter syntax.

Sunday marked the day the my wife and I celebrated our pregnancy entering its 16th week.  Like every other Sunday of late, I awoke much earlier than one should on their day off of work.  The crazy thing was, it was just to check my email. You see, every Sunday I get an email from the Baby Center describing the miraculous and amazing developments inside of my wife’s womb. Don’t get me wrong, the Baby Center isn’t actually inside of her womb, nor is her womb even wired for email yet.  What her womb does however have inside of it, is my rapidly growing son or daughter. We don’t know which yet, but you’d know that if you’ve been following this blog or me on twitter

Now where was I … oh yeah, eating my young. So, I read my weekly baby update and here’s what it said:

How your baby’s growing:

Get ready for a growth spurt. In the next few weeks, your baby will double his weight and add inches to his length. Right now, he’s about the size of an avocado: 4 1/2 inches long (head to rump) and 3 1/2 ounces. His legs are much more developed, his head is more erect than it has been, and his eyes have moved closer to the front of his head. His ears are close to their final position, too. The patterning of his scalp has begun, though his locks aren’t recognizable yet. He’s even started growing toenails. And there’s a lot happening inside as well. For example, his heart is now pumping about 25 quarts of blood each day, and this amount will continue to increase as your baby continues to develop.

4.5 inches long, 3.5 ounces and pumping 25 quarts! Wow, that tiny heart is pumping a lot of blood and fast. Two random tangents, 1) the pitter patter of my baby’s heart on the doppler device is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling/achieving nirvana; and 2) Lets also hope the boy’s scalp (if its a boy) has a “fuller” pattern than mine. (That’s worth at least 2 future posts.)

Back to my story, for some crazy reason, the avocado reference got me thinking about guacamole which in turn resulted in me buying some guacamole, which then resulted in me sending out the following tweet (tweet = a message on twitter):

rookiepops: shoppings done. now for a little football, while i start working on my next post for the blog. my baby’s the size of an avocado, yum!
Sun Sep 27 15:44:03 2009

soon after I got this:

justfndoit: @rookiepops yum…..hmmmmm. You eat your young? http://myloc.me/NJJ1
Sun Sep 27 15:55:11 2009

So no, Mr. Justfndoit, I do not eat my young, nor do I care to. Smother? Definitely. But eat, no.

I do, however, eat guacamole, which is made out of avocados which are roughly the size of my baby this week although not nearly as cool.

Here’s a random thought … what is my kid going to think about all of my ridiculous posts when he or she is old enough to understand?

I’m sure it won’t be pretty…. I can see it now … In a fit of teenage angst, “I hate you dad! Your blog compared me to avocados and embarrassed me in front of all of my friends! You don’t understand me or where I’m coming from!” I’d reply, “Chill out kiddo.” After reminding my teen that I taught (him or her) how to speak, I’d reference this post and say, “See, I knew you when you were still swimming in your moms belly and  the size of an avocado!” Should they then dig thoroughly through this site and follow up with, “You didn’t enough love me enough to put my 15 week update up on your blog when mom was pregnant with me!” I’d reply with, “i knew you were going to say that.” Here’s last week’s update:

How your baby’s growing:

Your growing baby now measures about 4 inches long, crown to rump, and weighs in at about 2 1/2 ounces (about the size of an apple). She’s busy moving amniotic fluid through her nose and upper respiratory tract, which helps the primitive air sacs in her lungs begin to develop. Her legs are growing longer than her arms now, and she can move all of her joints and limbs. Although her eyelids are still fused shut, she can sense light. If you shine a flashlight at your tummy, for instance, she’s likely to move away from the beam. There’s not much for your baby to taste at this point, but she is forming taste buds. Finally, if you have an ultrasound this week, you may be able to find out whether your baby’s a boy or a girl! (Don’t be too disappointed if it remains a mystery, though. Nailing down your baby’s sex depends on the clarity of the picture and on your baby’s position. He or she may be modestly curled up or turned in such a way as to “hide the goods.”)

I would then look my teen in the eyes and say, “How do you like them apples?”

So what does this all mean:

1. My wife is probably right, I am nuts.
2. I’m already making corny parent jokes that make no sense… Darn, that happened a lot faster than I thought.
3. I am still way too obsessed with being a first time dad.

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Now for those of you who don’t know much about twitter, here’s a quick lesson on basic twitter syntax since i’m pretty sure i’ll be referencing tweets quite a lot in future posts. Let’s breakdown that tweet from before…

justfndoit: @rookiepops yum…..hmmmmm. You eat your young? http://myloc.me/NJJ1
Sun Sep 27 15:55:11 2009

Justfndoit is the username of the person who sent (or more accurately, posted) the tweet. you can see that his name in blue links to his twitter page which is http://www.twiiter.com/justfndoit

You can see anyone’s twitter page by throwing their username after twiiter.com …. like this http://www.twitter.com/username

Next you might be wondering why there is an @ sign before rookiepops. That is because he is indicating within his tweet that he is talking to a twitter user named rookiepops. Everyone can still see the message but now everybody knows (and most importantly I know) that he is referring to or replying to me. This is cool because it tells twitter automatically to make anything after the @ a link to that username’s twitter page – in this case mine, http://www.twitter.com/rookiepops

The time and date below refers to the time and date that the tweet was sent.

Finally, you may have noticed the link at the end of @justfndoit ’s tweet – http://myloc.me/NJJ1

One thing that the twitter-craze has resulted in is about a million and one add-ons or services that somehow use twitter. The myloc.me link at the end of the tweet is one such add-on. Myloc allows justfndoit to use his cell phone to broadcast his tweet and his location at the time the tweet was sent. Don’t worry its only sent when he specifically requests it to be, because  I know what you’re thinking … sounds a little too Will Smith and Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State for my taste.

Here’s something else you see a lot of on twitter: retweeting. This is a tweet I saw a couple of days ago.

Stacey0313: RT @rookiepops: “Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it.”- Marshall McLuhan
Tue Sep 29 23:15:30 2009

“RT” is short for re-tweet. It is sort of like a forwarded email but for a tweet. I sent out the tweet  – “Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it.” by Marshall McLuhan and @Stacey0313 liked it enough to share it will all of her followers. She wanted to give me credit for the post so she retweeted it.