Yesterday when Den got home from work I heard the door open, then I heard thunk “Ow!” I asked him what happened, he said he walked into the door. Apparently Kate had carried her violet puppy into that room at some point and dropped it right behind the door… so that it only opened a foot then wedged and stopped suddenly. LOL She is dangerous!

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Her current obsession is climbing onto chairs. And tables. It’s the tables thing that is problematic. Today I found her in her bedroom with two pens. How did she get pens? From where? Not good. We’ve already been pushing things back from edges as her height [slowly] creeps upward, but now we’re really going to have to find other spots for things. Jeez. Well at least I haven’t found her standing on the table or anything. (Yet.)

Super Why is her show of choice, and she has become absolutely fascinated by letters! She’s started recognizing them too. The other day I had her on my lap and she wanted to play on the laptop so I opened up a blank document and typed a few letters. For the hell of it I asked her what letter that was. And she said, “Ayyy!” “Beee!” “Ceeee!” “En!” “Oh!” I just sat here with my jaw dropped and Den and I looked at each other like holy shit!

She’s such a funny toddler. She’s started really hamming it up because she knows it makes us laugh, so she gives us a big goofy toothy grin with her head thrown back. It looks a lot like my too-wide grin, in fact. (Everyone says, “She looks just like you! Except the eyes.” The eyes are clearly not mine.)

She’s not a cuddlebug, but she sits on my lap to watch TV, holding my hand and resting her head on my chest. I stroke her hair and rest my cheek on her head. Sometimes I wish I could just curl up around her and never let her go. This feeling of love and joy is just beyond imagining.

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I figure I’ve gained about 10lbs so far this pregnancy, which isn’t bad. I’m past the nausea-all-the-time stage and now I’m just in a food-doesn’t-usually-look-good phase. Except junkfood. Junkfood often looks good. I discovered that salt and vinegar potato chips are to die for. Really. Chocolate is hit or miss, I want it but then I’m all “eh this isn’t as good as it ought to be.” Carbs definitely make my tastebuds happy. I’m struggling to take in enough protein. And it is a struggle because while I want to do good and eat all healthy I’m mostly just feeling lazy and doing whatever is easiest. (Hint: easiest is cookies that sit in the tub on the counter.)

The baby has gotten a lot more active in the past week, I feel it every day now, multiple times a day. Still usually when I’m sitting still for a length of time, but I’ll just be sitting in class or typing on the computer or eating lunch and I’ll feel thunk thunk thunk down at my belly.

Oh, and the stinker has dropped again. It was up high off my bladder for a few weeks and that was quite glorious, but now I feel everything down really low again and I have to pee all the damn time again. Get off my bladder!

One more week until I can stop calling it “it.” So impersonal! Although, as excited as I am to find out boy or girl, mostly I’m fighting the anxiety about an ultrasound. I try not to think about it much, but I haven’t seen the baby on ultrasound since 6 weeks, so I have very little in terms of reassurance that everything is okay in there, all in the right place and such. I hope it’ll be fine. I certainly feel it moving.