Grippy continues to grow fast, and he is also ever more active. Whether Cindy just had a meal, or if she has just woken up, Grippy is moving around, pressing on various organs, poking a foot into Cindy's bellybutton (which is still resisting becoming an outie, despite Grippy's fervent attempts at inverting it) and often creating spectacular waving motions in Cindy's belly.

On October 8, a fourth set of sonograms was taken. Because Grippy is getting bigger and bigger, more and more details can be seen in the pictures. Below you can see three shots of his head, including a close-up of his nose. We were quite amazed to see hairs on the back of Grippy's head, although we really had to stretch our imagination to recognize it as such, even when the doctor was pointing it out to us. The last two sonograms are Grippy's weapons of choice for poking kidneys and ribs.

At this latest checkup, Grippy was 33 weeks old. The measurements with the sonograph indicated his size is more typical of babies that are about 36.5 weeks old, so Grippy is still growing fast. The most likely reason for this is simply that both Cindy and Rob are tall, so it is quite likely Grippy will be tall - or long in babytalk - from the start as well. The sonographer came up with a weight estimate at this moment of 6 lbs 5 oz (2870 g), but she warned us that the estimates with the sonograph are usually too high.

A nice tradition in the U.S. is the baby shower. This has little to do with cleaning babies. Rather, it is a celebration of the pregnancy, and the mom to be is showered with gifts. We were fortunate enough that Cindy's family, friends and coworkers have organized these. On October 7, two of Cindy's best friends organized a baby shower at our place, and many friends and also Cindy's parents came. We received many beautiful clothes for Grippy, and many other baby paraphernalia, such as a diaper container, feeding bottles and teethers. But the brightest of all gifts was a red cape, given to Cindy by her mom, to keep her warm now that the nights are getting colder. To the right you have already seen Cindy in this comfortable and warm outfit, which quite often provokes people to call her.... exactly!

Have you entered our Grippy Guessing Game already? If not, check out some previous guesses, and email us your guess!

Grippy's head	Grippy's head again	Grippy's nose
Large or Annotated version	Large or Annotated version	Large or Annotated version
Grippy's hair	Grippy's hand	Grippy's foot
Large or Annotated version	Large or Annotated version	Large or Annotated version

Grippy in Motion

Click on the left image to see Grippy move his arm and head. The middle movie shows Grippy's beating heart, and the movie on the right is a long one, showing Grippy's head, arms, legs, hands, feet... everything, really. The movies 3.1 Mb, 2.3 Mb and 14.0 Mb in size, respectively. Click on the images to download the movies from a fast server, or on left movie, middle movie or right movie to download them from our slower server (which takes at least one minute per megabyte).

Hear Grippy's heart beat without the movie, in WAV format (134 kb) or MP3 format (25 kb).

A History of Grippy

See Grippy at 8 weeks:
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See Grippy at 19 weeks:


See Grippy at 29 weeks:

A History from the Outside

June 23, 2001	July 23, 2001	August 23, 2001
September 23, 2001	October 21, 2001