TP Tuesday #29

My wish is my command, apparently! Look how much rounder! And not even another half a square; I’m at 11.5 and a smidge. Maybe 11 and 3/5. This bodes well — I can control my body with my thoughts. This week I’ll make my mantra “Thighs’ fat converts to baby’s fat.” See how that goes.

It seems as if fall has come. Or at least summer has passed. We haven’t removed the air conditioner window unit (since that would be a sure method to getting the temperatures to increase again), but I have worn capris on a couple of occasions and even jeans once when I was out in the evening. It’s been such a relief for this little oven. If this trend continues, I might even wear a sweater or two before the Jelly Bean is born!

TP Tuesday #28

It may not look all too different, but I am now at 11.5 squares! Growing! What I really want is for the belly to round out a little bit. You can see it pretty well in this picture where the front of my tummy is fairly flat, as if my pumpkin spent too much time sitting in the vegetable patch. Maybe the next half a square will come in the form of shaping.

In other baby news, Bill and I attended our first Childbirth Preparation class last week. It meets every Wednesday night for a couple hours until the middle of October. There are 11 of us total (6 pregnant ladies), plus the instructor, Wendy. Reflecting the MIT atmosphere, there are three other Americans in the class, and we are the only American-American couple. Everyone seems nice enough; no one makes me want to get up and leave the room at least. And Wendy is appropriately factual, respectful, and humorful. Although her statement that giving birth is “such a high that she’d do it ten times over” makes me question some aspects of her personality, in most other ways she seems a grounded and balanced person. And the homework — stretches and relaxing — is workable in my busy and hectic life schedule.
Onward and roundward!

Good Baby Pie

It’s Sunday, which means it’s egg day. For those in the house with cholesterol issues, and those in the house who live with those with cholesterol issues, this is arguably the most popular day of the week. Normally we quench the craving with scrambled eggs, jazzed up with salsa, or Hatch green chile we miraculously found at Whole Foods, or garlic and mushrooms, or cheddar and spinach.

Today we were inspired by the movie Waitress to make a Good Baby Pie (in the movie it’s not “Good,” it’s “Bad,” but we didn’t want to deal with any copyright issues, plus we knew it would be so tasty we’d have a hard time calling it Bad Baby Pie). It’s a quiche with slices of brie and pieces of ham as the filling. Sounds good, huh? It was the first quiche any of us had made, so we didn’t know exactly what to expect. We averaged together the recipes we found in various cookbooks, and what we ended up with was this:

Maybe we should have called it Oh Baby Pie. Mm mmm.

TP Tuesday #27

Doesn’t really look different does it? Measurement at 11 and a smidge squares still. Well, at least not smaller; so my perception of me is, as expected, skewed.

And we now have one unofficial vote of girl. As all the boy hypotheses have been “because of the way you’re carrying,” this newest girl hypothesis is “because of the way you’re carrying.” So perhaps we’re back to square one. Although Collinses tend to be boys, there’s always the Charlotte factor to take into account. Maybe we’ll continue with the Maggie factor.

Introducing TP Tuesdays

So I have lately felt inexplicably like I’ve been getting smaller, now that I’ve spent all this time getting bigger. Before anyone panics, everything checks out just fine with the baby. I’m gaining the appropriate amount of weight, my blood pressure is good, everybody’s heartbeat is healthy, and there’s definitely a lot of swimming going on in there. But last week, it seems to my impatient eyes like progress has stalled.

So to make myself realize that things continue even when my perception has adjusted to the changes, I’ve implimented toilet paper Tuesdays. This is, apparently, what pregnant women do: they measure their belly size in squares of toilet paper and take a picture of the bump every week.

This is TP Tuesday #26. (Not that I started doing this at the beginning of incubation, but it’s much easier to count the same way for this as for doctor’s appointments and the like.) My count today is a smidge over 11 squares, and belly picture below.

Maybe I’ll also implement Milkshake Mondays. Whatdya think?