17 Weeks

This week I am 17 weeks pregnant. It has been a tumultuous time to say the least. Since we moved here, every second has been busy and I feel like I haven't been able to breathe. It also seems that many of my biggest "life moments" are all happening at once.

For instance, we bought AND remodeled our first house. The day I got here, I got pregnant. Then we were busy fixing up our house (painting, tearing down wall paper, buying furniture etc...not even close to done with that...). A week after we moved here, my sister had her 4th baby, and we were scrambling around to help out with that. Then I was tackled with morning sickness, which kicked-off with an exhausting 10-day trip to DC. Then Erik lost his job (and got another one). And then the holidays hit. Trying to earn a little extra money and to help my sister out, I did most of her shopping and all of her wrapping in addition to our own. Then we hosted almost 20 people at our house for X-mas dinner.

Then my mom died.

With all of the sorrow, grief and mourning that comes with such a loss, we have also been traveling a lot back and forth to Hico and Houston, and it hasn't even been four weeks. Between renting cars, crying all day and bringing back belongings from my dead mother's house, I feel like I have been hit by a train but am expected to keep going.

I also feel like I haven't had any time at all to pay attention to this pregnancy. It has been a marathon of just getting through every day one day at a time, most of those days filled to the utmost brim with other things. And I have to say that I've been fortunate that our little Firecracker seems to be doing OK through all of it, not giving its mama any problems - I am so grateful for an uncomplicated pregnancy, thus far. Now that my morning sickness seems to have vanished, and I'm starting to resurface from the holidays and from tragedy, I am trying to focus more on preparing for this baby. I feel like I lost the first 4 months and there's still so much to do.

I wanted to do a better job of tracking all the changes that happened during pregnancy as a sort of scrap-book, but with all of the craziness, I'll just have to try and remember it...

I can report that my food aversions are almost gone. I went through a stage of some serious aversions that included doing the dishes. I hated almost all things green (broccoli and green beans were OK), and I hated chicken (after I went through a phase of wanting nothing but chicken). Everything that I thought I would like, I felt like I had to buy in huge portions. Before my chicken aversion, this included chicken soup. I bought huge amounts of chicken and vegetables with which to make huge pots of chicken soup, but once it was made, I couldn't even look at it. Erik ate chicken soup for weeks, and he ate anything else I bought in huge quantities and then decided that I hated. When I was very newly pregnant, I wanted BBQ every single day, and fries, shakes and hamburgers. Thank goodness for this healthy fast-food hamburger place out here called P. Terry's - they use locally grown produce and local meat for their burgers (they even have veggie burgers, not that you'd catch me eating one of those during those early stages).

Some cravings that have stuck around are chocolate and lemon meringue pie. Luby's Cafeteria (remember that place?) is my favorite place to eat right now. You can get crazy combinations of food and not feel out of place. I can get a salad with iceberg lettuce (don't ask), mac and cheese, broccoli, fish, pie, lemonade and jello, and no one even looks twice. My craving for the ever-stereotypical pickles has started to chill a little. At first, I only wanted to eat things that I could eat with pickles (hence my hamburger craving). But now I can actually pass on the pickles every once in awhile. Cheese sandwiches with mayo were a huge craving that has stuck around. It used to be that I especially liked grilled cheese, but now the smell of toasting bread in a skillet makes me want to wretch. I still crave a good cheeseburger, though they're not as much fun right now because I have to order them well-done, but they're still good...especially with mayo and pickles (and onion rings on the side...and a shake...).

Since we have been on the road and so freakin' busy, I have had my complete fill of fast food. Now that life is hopefully slowing down a bit, I hope that we can get back on track with groceries and cooking (what's that?). After my mother died, my sister and friend were so nice to bring casseroles over that we could freeze and eat for weeks, and these casseroles totally saved us. While Erik was gone for a week in DC and I was completely mourning, I never left the house and ate casserole for every meal. Man, I forgot how convenient frozen casserole can be. Actually, I forgot that casserole existed at all - it's my new fave.

We still have a lot left to do on the house, and we have a lot to do with the pregnancy (including pick a midwife), but I'm hoping for some peace so that we can enjoy the bundle that is quietly growing bigger every day. I meant to include a picture in this post, but when I reached for the camera I discovered it wasn't charged. Next time!