1000 days

That is how long Justin and I have been married. No, I haven't been counting, I found that out from my profile on a newlywed chat site I hang out on. (Are we even newlyweds anymore? I don't know. It's been three years in July.)

This is also what I'm going to count as the beginning of my second trimester. Maybe this means I will start being hungry today! Well, one can always hope.

I hate food

I don't have morning sickness, for which I thank God, my mother and grandmother, and/or whoever else is responsible.

However, the effect raging pregnant hormones have on me is that I don't want to eat. At all. At any other time in my life, some kind of (moderate) appetite suppressant would have been most welcome. But now I'm supposed to be gaining weight, and instead I've lost something like eight pounds in the first trimester. This would be rational if I did in fact have morning sickness, but I don't, and a little person is growing inside me, so it's just weird, and a little freaky.

Granted, this may also be the result of stress, a frantic midweek schedule, and a husband who has been out of town a lot and therefore not inspiring me to cook for him. But I need to reverse this trend by the end of my first trimester, which is next week.

So today I went to Kroger without a list to restrain my impulses and bought everything that looked like I could persuade myself to eat or drink it: produce (strawberries always look kind of edible), meat, lemonade and limeade, Newman-Os...okay, the baby probably does not need Newman-Os, but I don't even like chocolate as much as I used to (weird!), so I won't eat a whole pack in two days, as I've been known to do. Also they have a little bit of protein and fiber. Protein and fiber are good! The baby likes one and my digestive tract likes the other, especially when I'm taking prenatal vitamins with probably more iron than I really need this early in my pregnancy.

I had three full meals today, including a nice pasta with shrimp and peas, and I even ate dessert, so I am feeling pretty good. Baby With Flat Hat should be dancing around my uterus on a bit of a sugar high.

Proof

At the lake house, the kids bring up "proof" from the bottom of the lake to prove they made it all the way down.



I was reminded of this when I remembered that I have better (and cuter) proof than a positive ept that I'm pregnant. It was attained by diving into my nether regions with an ultrasound wand, which sounds uncomfortable but isn't that bad when it comes right after a pap smear.



This ultrasound is about three weeks old. I've had another since then, but I didn't get a copy that time. The only reason I needed a second ultrasound was that my doctor couldn't find the heartbeat on the Doppler. It turned out Baby With Flat Hat is so wiggly that she was chasing him/her all over my uterus without nailing down a heartbeat. Baby With Flat Hat actually looked more like a baby on the second ultrasound and less like a smudge. However, I like how my smudge is looking straight at the ultrasound thingy and clenching its fists in smudge-rage.

Announcement

Or should I say annunciation? Wait, that's not till next week. I don't want to wait that long.

Now that I've told all my blog readers that I've seen in person since I found out, I can tell everyone else: I'm pregnant! Here is proof:



My mom wanted me to send it to her. Not a picture, the actual test. Justin pointed out that it is illegal to send human waste through the mail.

Now we know why I felt like this (more than a week before I tested).

Baby With Flat Hat is due October 3, according to my calculations. (My doctor says September 29, but I was present at the conception, so I'm going by what I know.) So I am twelve weeks along today, which seemed like a good time to go public, in the blogospheric sense.

This means, in case you were wondering, that this will absolutely become a mommy blog. Sorry if you're not into that. It's hard for me to think about much else, which is one reason I haven't been blogging much. Now I can talk about babies all the time!

Dear UPS

You know, once in a while, it would be really nice if I could order something online like a pair of pants or an iPod shuffle or an engagement ring and have it delivered in the amount of time I paid for it to be delivered without you losing the package or failing to read the apartment number that is right there on the packing label or pretending you attempted to deliver the package when I know you didn't even bother trying because I was home all day. I mean, since you job is to deliver packages and keep track of them until they get delivered, it would be super cool if you did that. Otherwise I have no idea why you should exist. I'm really not into guys in brown shorts.

New blog

My friend Ben, who I've wanted for a long time to have a blog, now has a blog, Arrow Through the Sun. It's about science and theology, mostly. You should read it.

Great moments in pedagogy

Today in the class I'm TAing we discussed an essay by Stanley Hauerwas. As always, my sections went better than I expected considering I'm always preparing for them the day I teach them. Two moments stand out:

1. When I asked them what was significant about Constantine, in two of my sections students started talking about how he decided what books would be in the Bible. The first time I had no idea where they were getting this; the second one of them mentioned The Da Vinci Code, and I burst out, "Oh, don't read The Da Vinci Code!", which the class found amusing. I never know how much of the general Christian freakout about TDVC is hype and how much of it is legit, but apparently it does influence what my very intelligent students think about the history of Christianity. But it gave me an opportunity to riff on New Testament criticism for a couple of minutes, and that's something I really know about even though it's not relevant to the class. So that was fun.
   
2. One of my students referred to Hauerwas as a "shock rocker," which I thought was great. Stanley Hauerwas, the shock rocker of theologians.

Grandma's birthday

Justin and I are in Seattle this week. We didn't plan it this way (for now my vacation time is limited to spring break), but our visit coincided with my grandmother's 85th birthday. So everyone on my dad's side of the family, with the exception of one of my cousins and his wife, who live in California, celebrated with a birthday dinner.



My grandmother is an awesome woman. I want to be like her. Her memory is fading now, but for most of my life she's been on top of everything, anticipating her children's and grandchildren's needs before we even think of them. She's educated and made sure we all were too, and continued educating herself as an adult; she has always been an avid reader and taught herself Spanish when she was in her fifties. She is a quiet person, but strong and kind.

This has been a really good visit, with very little family stress, and a lot of time with friends, some of whom I haven't seen in a long time. The week has flown by.