You can tell it's a boy....

...when the gun is black and not pink.

Maybe other people experienced this too, but I've noticed Andy's attitude toward baby stuff has been mostly "ah more presents for you (as in me, not the baby)". To me this means he feels pretty unconnected, sort of side-lined if you will. The night before our ultrasound we were hanging out talking about Nugget. He was saying how he thinks it is a girl, but he was hoping it was a boy. It kind of hurt my feelings (no big surprise there) that he wasn't more excited about the possibility that it could be a girl. I get that for some reason, maybe that whole having an hier thing, some men would choose to have a boy, rather than a girl, ya know if they could pick. I know I was reading too much into it, but it kind of made me think that he valued girls less. I don't think that is it. I think it is more that he knows what to do with a boy. He knows how to handle all aspects of boys, having experience with it himself and all that. Anyhoodles, obviously I couldn't have cared less which way it went and I still don't. If Nugget pops out in March with a vajayjay, it wouldn't matter at all to me. But I also am kind of excited that our little family has the potential to be like my family growing up. I have an older brother, which if you have been following my blog for a while, you will know I refer to him as Big Butter. He is awesome. I loved having an older brother growing up....or at least I did until he fought the law and the law won and the whole deal caused my parents all sorts of turmoil, but in the end he turned out to be one of the best human beings and the most caring and loving brothers a girl could ask for. I have to admit, knowing what Big Butter was like in his teenage years and then finding out what Andy was like around that same age, I am seriously contemplating military school for Nugget from like 15-18. I am going to try not to be freaked out and just take things as they come, but seriously peeps, boys that age are trouble. Well they are either trouble or they play in the marching band and get together with their friends in costume to play Magic or whatever that card game is. Yes obviously my view of possibilities for boys is limited. I realize that there are all sorts of possibilities of what could happen in the next 50-some years and there isn't a whole lot I can control about how Nugget will be. The thing that makes me feel good about whatever is ahead of me, is knowing that Andy and Big Butter turned out great in the end. So I will just keep that in mind. Whoa I am bouncing way off the trail.

The whole point of this post was to say: after the ultrasound, I saw an opportunity to get Andy really excited about being a dad. So we stopped off at Gander Mountain to look at the Crickets. For those unfamiliar, Crickets are tiny kid rifles, they shoot baby 22 bullets, and they come in pink or black....actually I think there are more choices than that, but most places just carry the two colors. Andy had always said if it was a girl he would get her a pink one. Anyway, so we went in to look and this little fella was $99. Obviously it is going to be a few years before Nugget's arms are even long enough to learn how to use it, but I knew how happy it would make Andy, so I told him to get it if he wanted to. So he did. And ever since then he has been talking about it as our new "home defense" gun. We had to fill out the paperwork for them to do a background check and we were laughing about the guy on the other end who would be looking at Andy's records. He would be like "hmmm. Okay he has a high-cap. shot gun, a fighting carbine, an A.K., a sniper rifle, a 1911 and a glock. He is a licensed firearms instructor and he has a legal concealed carry license, ...but I just think he has bad intentions with this Cricket....it is probably a sign he is going to snap". Seriously though, do you think they look at all the guns you own and wonder why you would ever want a tiny 22 bolt action gun? If so, it might be kind of hilarious to be the person on the other end of that background check.

It was going to be a ridiculously long wait for the background check and plus there was this really annoying guy at the counter next to us trying to "school" the gun salesman with all his sweet knowledge about the new generation of glocks, which Andy pointed out he was wrong about. You could just tell the salesman was like 'I hate my job'. We didn't want to stand there and watch that any longer, so Andy decided he would come back the next day to get it. That was the day I went off to the big consignment sale with my SSIL and my SMIL, so I came home to a really excited Andy who had spent most of the day playing with the tiniest, least expensive gun we own.

So of course I took pictures and laughed at him. But you know what he said 'I am finally starting to get really excited about being a dad. I can't wait to teach him how to shoot'. And then he went into a schpeal about making him a tiny ghillie suit (camouflaged sniper suit) and posing him in the back yard to make it look like he is stalking up on someone. Needless to say, you guys might be in store for some pretty hilarious pictures here in the next few years.