PENIS!!!

(And more on various parasites.)

• It's a boy! Which freaks me out, because I was 100% sure it would be a girl. Come to think of it, though, I thought that for all three of my babies, so my success rate at predicting their sex is 33.3%. Don't come to me if you want your future read.
  I'm very happy (as I would have been with a girl). Marie will stay the only girl in our brood, which I hope will lessen the effects of her being a middle child, and Jack is loving the idea of a little brother. I am a little sad Marie won't have a sister of her own, but never say never and she'll just have to have good girlfriends.
  I'm very glad to have been told now (as opposed to when it pops out), because I now have twenty weeks to get my head around the idea of another boy. A boy! Would you believe it?
  *smiles beatifically into the distance*
• Also on the topic of parasites, there really should be a warning on the tin when you first get a child. They come with their very own ecosystem and dependent organisms. As if the lice weren't enough, we have now seen the arrival of our first wart. This little bugger has nestled itself on Jack's foot sole, and I am less than impressed. The poor thing (meaning the boy, not the wart) will get it frozen off next week. The chemist suggested we stop visiting the swimming pool so he doesn't get any more - which is like not having sex if you don't want to get pregnant, or forsaking alcohol if you want to lose weight: not going to happen.
• While I'm talking of vermin anyway, have you read that story about the retired US general who claims that the Dutch army failed to stop the Bosnian massacre at Srebrenica because some of its soldiers were openly gay? Yeah, really.
• And while I'm on a roll with the beasties, a frog is trying to climb into the house from the terrace right next to where I'm sitting. Someone needs to explain the concept of "window glass" to this animal.