Its a Boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, our little "it" has just become a "he". William Arthur Douglas Lionhood II will be welcomed into the world on approximately 4/14/2009. The ultrasound confirmed that we are having a little man added to the household. One more Lionhood male who can carry on the family name now makes two in the next generation so far. "Baby" has now become Billy, Willie, Will, William, and the little guy.

Speaking of the little guy, we have the ultrasound video. Its 12 minutes long and we can send it to any of you that want to see it. To spice it up a bit, we have added a musical soundtrack and additional comments so that you can follow along with the video. It is still an ultrasound, so we're not going to send it to everyone unless you really want to see it, but for those of you that want to see it, email me and I'll send you a copy of it. It is pretty neat.

Little Billy is moving along in the ossification process, or the hardening of the bones. Each passing week, his bones get stronger. If you get the ultrasound, you'll see his bone structure clearly defined. His nervous system continues to grow exponentially with millions of connections being made weekly. He has rudimentary senses of taste, sight, smell, and hearing at this point. Myelin, a substance that allows signals to pass smoothly over the nerves, begins coating the entire nervous system. During the ultrasound, the baby weighed in at 6 ounces on the dot, which is solid for a baby in week 18.

The summary of the ultrasound is that he's clear for Down Syndrome, does not appear to have any heart defects with all four chambers pumping at 147 beats per minute (normal), has good kidney development, has a well developed spinal cord, excellent brain progress including proportional halving, has all of his fingers and toes, and even sleeps with his feet crossed like his Daddy.

I'm sending you all a picture of his new shoes that Mom and Dad bought him. While we probably got screwed out of $4 since babies at 0-3 months have no need for shoes what-so-ever, his Momma was convinced they would look so cute on his feet, so sucked in we were. Especially the mountain hiking sandals. He'll probably need those since by the time he grows out of them, he'll be lucky if he can stop his head from flopping around uncontrollably, let alone rolling with the Sherpas to the top of Mount Everest. Oh well. He's our first son!!!