You say bambina, I say jicama …

(By Erik)

For those of you who might be wondering, our little girl is about the size of a jicama.

Yeah, I had to look that up, too. Turns out a jicama (HEE-kah-mah), also known as a “Mexican potato,” “Mexican turnip” or “yam bean,” is a large-ish root that looks a bit like a big onion. It’s got a sweet and starchy flavor and usually is eaten raw — sometimes with salt, lemon or lime juice and powdered chili.

That’s my girl! Olé!

Why am I comparing our daughter to a Central American vegetable? Every week we get an e-mail from a Web site called BabyCenter that tells us how our baby is growing. For some reason, the site’s writers feel compelled to compare the baby’s size to the size of fruits, vegetables and other food items.

Reaching the milestone of the jicama proves to us that, after 32 weeks of pregnancy, BabyCenter is running out of foods to compare our child to.

If you’d like to chart our little girl’s progress, then please follow us up the food chain as we explore the various things Maggie has been the size of thus far.

Weeks 1-3: Too small to register as food, but there’s a reference in the Week 2 description to pancakes, for some reason.
Week 4: poppy seed
Week 5: sesame seed
Week 6: lentil bean
Week 7: blueberry (We've left seeds and beans and are into fruit!)
Week 8: kidney bean (Whoops! No we're not!)
Week 9: grape
Week 10: kumquat (I thought these were HUGE.)
Week 11: fig
Week 12: lime
Week 13: medium shrimp (We've crossed over into seafood!)
Week 14: lemon (And we're back to sour citrus!)
Week 15: apple
Week 16: avocado
Week 17: turnip
Week 18: bell pepper
Week 19: large heirloom tomato (I suppose this is a tomato that's passed down from generation to generation.)
Week 20: banana (Seems like the kid got smaller, but this fruit is used only as a measure of length.)
Week 21: carrot (Same as above. I thought bananas were the same size as carrots.)
Week 22: spaghetti squash (That's Amore!)
Week 23: large mango
Week 24: ear of corn (We're back to measuring length only.)
Week 25: average rutabaga (We contemplated naming her Average Rutabaga Tryggestad at this point.)
Week 26: English hothouse cucumber (Spot on!)
Week 27: Head of cauliflower
Week 28: Chinese cabbage (We contemplated naming her Bok Choy Tryggestad at this point.)
Week 29: butternut squash
Week 30: head of cabbage
Week 31: four navel oranges (Actually, the entry here just says, "Try carrying four navel oranges." Not sure if that's supposed to approximate the size and weight of the kid or if they just thinks it's a good idea to have citrus on hand at all times.)
Week 32: large jicama (or “jicama grande,” I’m guessing.)

Lord willing, we will enter week 33 on Thursday, at which point we’ll graduate from jicama to pineapple.

Imagine delivering one of those! Ouch!

I really hope we make it to 34 weeks. From there it's pretty much melons until the baby arrives.

Until then, aloha!