Hey Santa...

Note to maternity clothes makers:
I'M GETTING FATTER, NOT SHORTER!

The normal inseam for jeans is 32", no? Why does it seem as if the normal inseam for maternity clothes is 31", then? Are only short people supposed to get pregnant?
It's hard enough being me, as my "perfect" inseam would be a 33"--but that only comes on designer (read: expensive) jeans nowadays. Too long or too short are my options.

If you're ever looking to gift me down the road...which you definitely are...you should certainly think about purchasing me a cute pair of Seven for All Mankind, Paige, Citizens of Humanity, etc. etc. etc. maternity jeans.
Sevens are great. Everybody loves 'em. I mean everybody. I'm not giving mine up for the world. Any you know what? They're worth every stinkin' penny. These suckers go with every outfit, are as comfy as jeans could possibly get, and are in great condition after regular wear for 3-4ish years.
There are approximately 189 reasons (days) left according to my most recent BabyCenter thing to get me 'em. Get going.

Elsewhere on my wishlist this Xmas:

• Popcorn popper
• New digital camera
• A vacation--somewhere warm
• Lush--but that is always.

First half blob

The second half of pregnancy gets all the glitz, glamor, and glory. For now, I just feel like a worthless, fat blob. I haven't gained any real weight, but I feel "chunkier" and slobbier for sure.
When you think of pregnancy, a big belly comes to mind. But what about the first half--when you're not showing at all? What's so special about that? You feel like crap, you're tired all the time, and you're ugly as hell to boot. Seriously. The frumpiness, tendency to wear only the most comfortable of clothes, and oh-so-very-frustrating ACNE is really pushing my boundaries of acceptable ugliness. This isn't at all the pregnancy I envisioned: that mystical glow, protruding tummy, adorable maternity clothes, people telling you how cute you look...
Not at all. Nothing like it. Nadda.
People aren't even telling me I look cute to make me feel better. It's that bad. I guess it really doesn't help that 97% of the people I see on a daily basis have no clue I'm pregnant. I would be offended if they told me I looked pregnant.
Time for your growth spurt, kid. Mommy feels ugly.

I'm toasted.

I had a feeling this blog would get increasingly un-baby-related over time. Perfectly fine with me, but in all honesty--what can't be related to/traced back to blame on pregnancy hormones? Exactly. It's all about the baby.

So I'm a little young (20) to be complaining about "they just don't make things like they used to..."--but seriously.
What the hell did they do to toasters nowadays?
As of a few years ago, we had a dingy old toaster. It was once silver, but through the years had been taken over by some darkened "character spots." It had four slots (surely a technological marvel in its day), but in one slot, one of the magical glowing wires had come loose and poked out through the protective wires. Not that I ever held this flaw against it. I mean really, who doesn't have a few wires loose?
Anyway, it was the only toaster I had ever known. For 18, maybe 19 years. I think my mom told me it was a wedding gift. It was a trusty old toaster. Whenever I wanted something perfectly toasted, I knew where to go and how to do it.
Then Christmastime rolled around and I had to think up an affordable present to get the 'rents. In previous years I had gotten them quite the assortment of gifts I never saw past Dec. 25 ever again. I needed something functional. Something they had no excuse not to use.
Yep, I got 'em a toaster. And an electric can opener. Neither of which were broken, by the way, they just needed a good updating. The can opener they had was avocado green for crying out loud! I chose some sleek, retro-looking black appliances from the Target website and had them shipped home.
Eventually, they got out of the boxes and slowly made their way to their respective spots on the counter.

Long story short (kind of) the new toaster suuuccckks. It takes forever and a day just to do what the old one did. It takes that thing nearly an eternity to perfectly golden a slice of bread.
"But it was just one toaster," you say. "You could have just gotten a dud."
Well, you're right. That's highly plausible as this toaster was on the cheap side of the Target options. BUT, this rant is not simply based on the performance of one, sleek-looking money-sucker. It is based on two--making me quite the expert in this subject matter. Thankyouverymuch.
Like all good gifts that I give my parents, this one ended up back with me at college. It is quite spiffy-looking, so I'm not ashamed. Naturally, my parents went out and bought another toaster to replace the one I replaced then took the replacement.
You guessed it. That one suuuccckks too.
I'm just positive that it's those new-fangled buttons that are sucking the lives out of these poor toasters. You have to push a button for bagels, frozen foods (can't say I've ever tried to toast anything frozen before...), and cancel. HOW did we EVER live without these?!
By golly, our oldie but goodie didn't need any of those crazy buttons. Want your toast out now? Lift the lever. Want to toast something frozen? Toaster Strudels are hella disgusting anyway. Sicko. Want to toast a bagel? Good luck getting it in the ("thin" by today's standards) slot. If you succeed, just be happy you got it in, in the first place.

I WANT THE OLD TOASTER BACK. In fact, I think we still have it. But the fact is, I'm just too self-conscious to bring it here with me. Granted, they do have "toaster covers" (wtf?)--but for real, I can't even re-cover my bed in the morning, let alone cover a hot appliance that sits in my extra closet.

I just had a genius idea for a toaster cover. Ask me about it. This blog is fully toasted.

Heartless B!+CH, Just Like Mommy...

You gave us a little scare there for a while. The longest two days ever! We went in for our second prenatal appointment Nov. 12. Thanks to BabyCenter and Aunt Missy, I knew they would use the Doppler machine to find the heartbeat since I was guesstimated to be around 11 weeks, almost 12.
After a long waiting room wait, coupled with my frustration with your father (since he didn't remember the appointment,and I decided to test him.. He's lucky I decided to remind him as I sat in the waiting room...), I was ready to get it over with. Susan the midwife lady did her usual poking and prodding on my "uterus" (mostly my bladder, I tell ya!) then squirted me with near-frozen lube jelly. An eternity later: no sounds of the fetal heartbeat--only the slow and swishy sounds of my own blood.
Susan reassured me that it was nothing to worry about (yet), and that it's not terribly uncommon. I could just be not as far along as we previously thought. We scheduled an ultrasound at the radiology lab. For Wednesday. At 3. Only a century from when I would have liked it done: stat.
***

Wednesday finally came, although I was having some serious doubts that it would. Your dad didn't forget this appointment after the last time's ordeal.
Sure enough, as soon as she put the (thankfully warmed) jelly on and pressed the thingamabobber to my tummy, there you were! Clear as day, bouncing around and doing a little fetal macarena with your beautifully-formed arms, legs, fingers, and toes. Such a showoff.
Judging from the sounds your dad was making, I thought he was going to pass out in his chair. "Whoa" "Uh" *deeeep breath* "Wow". I think it suddenly became real for him. A baby.
A gazillion pictures of my spectacular uterus later, and we were out of there--parents of the cutest fetus you ever did see. Trust me, your alien head just adds to your overall charm. Don't be developing a prenatal complex on me.
Oh yeah, and I plan to track/update you on my weight gain (no matter how ugly it gets...). This appointment I lost two pounds from last time, bringing my total to: 122. We'll see how much the Thanksgiving/Holiday season has an impact on next time.
I've been feeling a bit better and my appetite returns on occasion, so it should be lookin' good. My waist is definitely expanding. I'm not as "flat" (tummy-wise) as I used to be. My hands have to spread a lot wider when I put them on my sides. Just beautiful.

Stressss

A lot of stress hormones have been floating around this body in addition to all the other crazy ones that have taken over my body.
I'm thinking about announcing soon. People are seriously starting to wonder why I've been a lazy slob. Keith has come into my room on like three separate occasions where it has been a total disaster and smells like old gravy. Sick. AND three residents have seen it this way as well. Oh dear me.
I'm exhausted from doing ordinary things that were once no big deal. It's bad enough that it's getting cold. I haaate cold weather.
I'm just going to hide under the covers until this all blows over. May, perhaps?

New-trition

The first trimester, as I've gathered from all my scholarly sources, seems to have the "focus on nutrition" theme. Magazines, BabyCenter, and the Preggy Bible (What to Expect...) all have blurbs about your changing nutrition needs. This probably stems from the overreactional mother's overwhelming, overcautious fear that eating something or not eating enough of something will make their precious cargo a flaming retard. No sushi, no swordfish, no alcohol, no drugs, etc. etc. The only populations I see as having a problem with this are Asians and drug addicts. Neither of which should be having children.

Kiddddinnnnggggg! I kid, I kid. There is one little blurb in the "No-nos" about unpasteurized cheeses, which evidently includes feta. Sca-rew that. If I get a craving for Player's Restaurant's Greek salad, you better bet your buns I'm eating it. Call DHS on me. It's all because it may contain a bacteria called Listeria. Listeria may also be in deli meats and hot dogs, but I didn't see anything about those in the no-no section. Hmm...

For the most part, pregnancy nutrition is exaaactly the same as before. American Baby magazine or one of its twins had an information box about what foods to choose over others during pregnancy. It was exactly like every other Self or Fitness magazine table out there. For example, when your craving strikes for ice cream, have fresh fruit instead. Get real people...I'm headed for the double chocolate, chocolate fudge-ribboned, chocolate chocolateness in the freezer. Just try and stop me. But really, I haven't had any crazy cravings or crazy pig-out sessions. Things are surprisingly normal so far, minus the nausea.
Although I did make a bowl of powdered mushroom gravy and eat it like soup...

One nutritional hurdle for me is the protein issue. Who knew? Ho hos have pretty much no protein! Not fair. I'm a vegetarian, how am I supposed to get this mysterious "protein" stuff, anyway? Today I made a conscious effort to reach my recommended 60 whatevers (mgs?) of protein. On the menu of what I could stomach:
Applesauce (0 protein, AND it ended up making me more nauseous this morning)
Boca burger (the kind with the cheese chunks in the mix), slice of cheese, wheat bun
Biig glass of chocolate milk
BagelBites
Yoplait Whips! Chocolate Mousse Style yogurt
---Total: 62!!--- Wooohooo, look at me and all my protein! Grow baby, grow!
I think this pregnancy thing is another idea concocted by the overzealous dairy industry. I mean, look at all the dairy I consume in effort to meet this goal. And I love how my non-cheese sources of protein, with the exception of the Boca burger (which has cheese in it), must be chocolate. I haven't even been craving chocolate, I'm just not a big fan of fruit-flavored things (like yogurt), and plain milk has it's place in cereal and pretty much cereal only.

The chocolate milk I have is whole milk. Whole milk generally grosses me out. Big time. The way it coats the glass and doesn't go away...eew. I can't think about it when I drink it. The only reason I can stand whole chocolate milk is because, well, it's freakin' delicious.
When I was little, I used to daydream that giving third-world sick and starving children a spoonful of melted chocolate ice cream or whole chocolate milk would cure them. Or I could at least trick them into thinking it was the best medicine ever. I think they would like it--the resulting sugar high at the very least. So now, with every sip of chocolate milk I take, I imagine what it would be like to be trying it for the very first time.
I'm sooo weird. I hope you inherit some of it too, baby. It's great being crazy.