18 weeks 1 day

Less than a week until vacation! Actually, tomorrow is my last workday before vacation, but we don't leave until Saturday. I can't wait for Tess to see the ocean. I'm pretty certain she is going to be terrified, but I'm hoping it will be a little fun for her at least. Especially since the week we get back she goes in for her spay. Poor Tessy.

It's pretty amazing how fast Tess is growing. Right now she is 55 pounds. I can remember having to carry her up and down the stairs because she was too small to negotiate them herself. She also used to refuse to come to the door so we could go on her walk - we had to clip the leash to her and practically drag her to the door. Then when we got outside, she would refuse to walk anywhere, terrified of everything she saw. And while she's still pretty much traumatized by anyone on two legs, I can remember a time when I thought she would stay petrified forever. That I would be spending the next ten years trying to drag a 100 pound dog around. But she loves her walks, and even moreso she loves the dogpark. And I can't even begin to gush about how smart she is and how obedient with all the commands she learned in her training class. Every day I tell her I can't believe how much I love her. Because I really can't believe it. She is awesome.

On the pregnancy front, still no baby movement. However my legs have been in overdrive. For three out of the last five nights I haven't been able to fall asleep because of restless legs. I've had this happen to me before in normal times but apparently it's a pretty common pregnancy problem too. And a super annoying one. At 12:45 am last night I was ready to go run around the block a few times to get my legs to quit feeling creepy crawly.

17 weeks 2 days

Still no movement in there. But belly is reaching critical mass, I would say. Any moment now the stretch marks will start to appear.

One of the first things you do when you find out you're pregnant is start googling. I can't get enough information. I read online for hours and hours and hours, sign up for newsletter after newsletter. And I cannot deny, this information is so helpful and sometimes reassuring. It often helps me form my opinions and wishes for this pregnancy, for how I want to eat, how I want to exercise, how I want to deliver, where I want to deliver, etc.

By now, I feel like I've googled my google off and read the whole internet with regards to pregnancy. I keep coming across the same info, phrased in all different ways, but basically the same old stuff I already know.

However sometimes the information that's out there is quite alarmist. Often on message boards what you will find are the happiest moments ("Yay, tomorrow we find out the sex!") or the very worst stories ("we went to find out the sex, and found out the baby has no heartbeat"). And because I still don't feel any movement, it sends my mind through all sorts of dark tunnels of "What if that's happening to me and I have no clue?"

Nothing I can do for now except assume that no news is good news. Hopefully The Insider will start wiggling around a little closer to the walls in there so I can tell what's going on!

16 weeks 5 days

Still nothing eventful. I feel like I'm failing at this science experiment as my results have been fairly lackluster. Sorry it's so boring.

Before preparing the nursery, we decided to pull up our pants on decorating our own bedroom. This hasn't been touched since we moved in. Two years ago we bought a new mattress with the intentions of buying a new bedframe to go with it, but we never got around to it. Well, we've bought a new dresser, ordered our bedframe, and this weekend is the big re-paint project. We did the ceiling yesterday, and Eric and I got a start on the priming this morning. After lunch his friend Bjorn came over and helped him finish the rest as I had gotten a bit sleepy (normal) and also a headache (also normal, but was a bit worried about the paint fumes too).

One month until we find out what kind of baby this is, and until we're halfway done this adventure.