18 weeks

I could definitely feel the baby move around more this week. Obviously nothing too distinctive, but there was more "bubbling" happening in my abdomen. And although I don't look too different this week from last, I feel quite a bit different - this week I had a couple of days where it felt like my stomach was stretched tight (although I guess I could blame that on eating too much too!), or it felt like it was tingling. One day it even felt like I had put Icy Hot on the sides of my belly, which was a little weird, but I imagine it's just from things continuing to stretch out. My difficulties talking have unfortunately come back again. That was one of the earliest symptoms I had, which luckily had gone away pretty quickly, but now I'm having troubles finishing words/sentences again, which is both frustrating and slightly amusing at the same time.

I'm continuing to have some fairly mild cravings, in that certain foods almost always sound appealing but only rarely become something that I'm fixated on. I'm still eating more bacon and fruit than usual, and even expanding from my "normal" fruits (bananas, pears, strawberries, blueberries). So now I'm eating oranges, which I've never been too much of a fan of, but since I'm still craving fruit juice (and yet not drinking the juices I finally caved in and bought), that hits the spot better than, say, a banana would. I also have a newfound appreciation for cherries, which was fine when they were on sale the last couple of weeks, but harder to justify paying full price for them normally (i.e., $10 for 2 lbs, which wouldn't take me that long to go through). The other new craving is one that disturbs me a bit: chocolate. I normally tolerate to strongly dislike chocolate, so I was a little shocked at myself earlier in the week when I actually bought a Hershey bar at work - which I ate all of and then didn't feel so great. So in an attempt to manage this craving a bit better, I bought a couple bags of Hershey's Kisses and dole a few out to myself each day to take to work. That seems to be working out better, since I know if I just bought bars of chocolate I would probably eat too much at once again, which wouldn't be that helpful in keeping my sugar levels stable. So chocolate cake and ice cream are still out for me (based on the "did my stomach turn when thinking about eating it?" test), but it looks like I'm able to at least derive some enjoyment from chocolate bars, which is just bizarre to me given how long I haven't cared for chocolate. But hey, at least it's not pickles yet! :)

In non-baby-related news, our house is pretty much trashed right now. We had recessed lighting put in our living room a few weeks ago (we finally have light in there! I can read and actually see my book!), which prompted a few other smaller projects involving spackle and paint. Then we decided to finally move most of my remaining stuff from my mom's and Ryan's stuff from the other house - some of which ended up in the attic or sold on craigslist/ebay, but the rest went to live (for the near future, at least) in our dining room. Since we finally got the recessed lighting put in, which was a project we had talked about for probably two years, I think it helped motivate us to take care of another long-discussed project of replacing our bedroom set. While the old bedroom set is still in great shape and looks nice, it didn't give us as much storage room as we wanted and the style didn't really fit in with the rest of our furniture (i.e., minimalist and Swedish). So we embarked on an epic journey last weekend to pick up bits and pieces of our new (to us) bedroom furniture from Ikea, Rosslyn, and Centreville (thanks to craigslist). The new bed is put together now, which is really nice but unfortunately hasn't instantly fixed my sleeping issues like I was kind of hoping it would :( But now we have two dressers in the bedroom, and the old bed hanging out in the main floor storage area - that is, the dining room - until we can sell the old set. Maybe this is our weird version of nesting? Or maybe we just enjoy the added challenges of having an obstacle course as our main floor...