Here's The Syd, hanging out with the 29-week belly. According to Babycenter, our little bug is about the size of a butternut squash right now. I love butternut squash. In fact, I had plans to make this Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Croutons a few days ago (with leftover gruyere from the pie crust... how thrifty am I?). However, while I may have six pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate chips, eight Scharffen Berger chocolate bars, seven Dagoba chocolate bars, twelve cups of Valrhona cocoa, five pounds of sugar, and a box of exquisite raw chocolate cacao nibs in my pantry right now, I have no chicken broth. So no soup.
Trimesters one and two were pretty easy and uneventful - the occasional teensy bout of nausea, a strange and distressing aversion to pizza, a previously-unheard-of dependence on Tums. Now that I am firmly ensconced in the Third Trimester, various new and sneaky pregnancy ailments are creeping up on me. It seems that a full eight+ hours of endless project meetings and sundry lab experiments/mini-science-disasters leaves me a bit ouchy at the end of the work day - lower back pains, achiness around the hip areas, assorted muscle soreness. Waddling to and from the kitchen for ice cream feels like a marathon endeavor (though worth it... definitely worth it). Oh yes, and the feet swell to (even more) gargantuan proportions. This last development is truly appalling. Truly. But despite creaking around like a large, roly-poly wimp for most of the day, I'm feeling healthy and peaceful and centered and excited to meet our little baby girl in eleven-ish weeks.
Here is Sydney giving belly kisses, completely unaware of how much worrying she will face once the baby arrives... she thinks worrying about us and the kitties is an exhausting job...