I’m delighted to report that we’ve come up with a name to call the embryo (it’s an embryo now, soon to be a fetus, but no longer a blastocyst — but isn’t blastocyst a cool name? It sounds like I was growing a superhero.): Smudge.

We’d talked about other pre-birth names, and I was leaning towards the ridiculous literary. Like Klytemnestra, after Sarah’s collegiate efforts to have a distinct name called when her coffee shop order was ready. (I hadn’t come up with anything that was either boy appropriate or gender neutral.)

But when we looked at the pics from the ultrasound, s/he just LOOKS like a Smudge. No other name was possible.

And, when Jill gets into a particularly silly hip-hop mood, which often happens when we’re watching brain candy on VH1 or MTV, we call it Lil Smudge. So far, that’s been great fun. But I have to start worrying a little bit about what we’re listening to — according to the developmental calendar on pregnancy.org, either yesterday or today is when Smudge’s inner ear begins to develop.

My reading rate has dropped off considerably — in part, because I’m now sleeping all the dang time and in part because I’m being a good wife.

The being a good wife involved going to a staged reading on Monday night, which was actually a lot of fun, although I learned the importance of carrying snacks at all times. We were afraid that we brought the average age down 10 or 15 years, but fortunately, some of the younger cast members had friends arrive just before curtain, so we were not the conspicuously youngest people there. That honor went to the theater interns, so blonde and pert. Toto, I think we’re in the South.

It also involved staying awake to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeover several members of the Red Sox, including my new favorite baseball player Johnny Damon. I’ve never had a favorite baseball player before, but he was so funny on the program that now I do. I’d actually fallen asleep before the show started, but got up to watch it.

Happily, last night, we had a relaxed dinner out and then I came home and went to bed. Mmmmmm. Bed.