Eighteen.

How Far Along: 18 weeks

Total Weight Gain: 11 pounds. I think the nightly ice cream binge is going to need to stop unless I want to have gained 75 pounds by the time this baby gets here.  Contrary to popular belief, being pregnant is not an excuse to eat everything I see at all times.  You are not actually eating for two, get it under control, Jessica.

Maternity Clothes: I think it's time to start stocking up on some shirts now too.  My mom made the point that just because I can still put my regular shirts on doesn't mean I should still be wearing them.  At some point in my life I will hopefully be back to my pre-prego weight and I don't want to be walking around in all of these stretched out t-shirts because I tried to squeeze these gigantic boobs and this growing belly into an XS or S.  Here's hoping my seester wants to go shopping sometime this week and buy me some shirts that can handle these jugs.

Sleep: Same as last week.  My sleep problems are two-fold.  #1 My back hurts - so if I'm on one side for too long then I have to roll over to the other.  #2 Because my back hurts and I'm unconsciously trying to make it not hurt, I end up on my back all the time when I wake up.  Well all these doctors or whoever the hell comes up with these STUPID EFFING RULES about things pregos can and can't do have successfully freaked me the hell out about laying on my back.  Supposedly by laying on my back my uterus is going to squish all of my veins and stop blood flow to my heart and other semi-important areas of my body.  (*if you can't tell I am annoyed by these rules.  I'm pretty sure cavewomen slept on their back when they were knocked up and 2000 years later we are here...if that tells you anything).  Anyway - the point of this rant is that these rules give me anxiety and add to my inability to sleep through the night!

Best Moment(s) This Week: Finishing our paint project this weekend.  More on this later.

Gender: 2 weeks.  Anybody wanna throw out a female guess before we get to the reveal date so that you can be the only person that was right when this baby turns out to be a pretty little girl??

Movement: Monkey is the size of a sweet potato or a large tomato depending on what you read. Everything I read says that the first movements or "flutters" might feel the same as how it feels when you have gas.  I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem like a really stupid thing to tell a pregnant person?  Aren't those of us "with child" supposed to be gassier than your average bear?  That might be the dumbest thing I have read yet.  I guess from now on when people ask me if I've felt any movement I'll say "well I felt gassy today so maybe?"  Come on people.

Food Cravings: I never had sushi and the sushi craving passed so maybe I will move on to something else now.  See my earlier comment about dessert, I guess if the truth be told I've probably been craving sweets more than anything else.  I'm not sure this is any different than my pre-prego self, I could pretty much eat ice cream anytime anywhere.

Symptoms: I have been feeling a little crampy lately, which is new since weeks 5-7ish.  Since I don't really have other symptoms to report, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the things I thought would be some awesome about being pregnant that haven't turned out to be quite that awesome. 
#1 - No periods.  That's great and all - but the cramps and painful/large boobs that come with pregnancy are way worse than any menstrual symptoms I've ever had.
#2 - Eating whatever you want because you're going to get fat anyway.  Again - that's great and all but let's remember that the weight needs to come off at some point so keeping the weight gain in check is probably a good idea.  Also, see my previous post about how horrible the bloating is.
#3 - Pulling the pregnancy card when you don't want to do stuff.  First of all, I have to go to work every day and I don't really think my boss would appreciate that excuse.  Secondly, this might work for people who aren't anal retentive OCD control freakshows.  For those of us who are anal retentive OCD control freakshows, having other people do stuff for you doesn't really work very well because duh, they aren't going to do it right.
#4 - Getting a lot of attention.  I'm not going to sit here and act like I don't like to be the center of attention (I'm not as bad as my husband but I don't mind the spotlight every once in a while).  However, when all of the attention is focused on your regularly expanding waistline, it's not a great deal of fun.  And I don't even have random people touching my belly yet.  God help me when that starts to happen.
#5 - Um, YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO HAVE BOOZE.  Enough said. 

What I Miss: I'm tempted to just keep this section the same every week because I still miss everything that I have been complaining about for the last 3 weeks.  I don't see any of that changing any time soon.  What I miss the most right now is probably my flat stomach.  And booze.

What I am Looking Forward to: Seeing some of my friends this weekend for a boating adventure on the *ahem* beautiful Ohio river.  And I'm off work on Friday which makes this week 100 times better than it would be otherwise.

Noteworthy Items:

-Update on The Hunger Games: Still haven't opened the book again.  Maybe I'll never find out what happens to Katniss Everdeen.

-Wahoo USA women's gymnastics!  Gold medal!  Wahoo Gabby Douglas!  Gold medal! They are all so cute I could just squeeze them!

-We spent our entire weekend painting our house.  If we ever move again I will be sure to paint before we take occupancy.  We have lived in our house for 4 years with this nasty yellow/green puke color on the walls and I'm not sure why it took us so long to make the decision to put an actual real color on the walls, but we finally did and I'm so glad we did.  The only problem is, now the kitchen needs to be painted too because it just looks blah next to the pretty "brownstone walk up" color we put in the adjoining hallway.  Needless to say I am exhausted but glad that project is over with.  Now we just have to complete the other 25 projects I have in store for us before Monkey comes.

-I'm sick of getting up and getting dressed for work in the morning.  I think I'll start playing the lottery on the outside chance that we win so I can quit my job and stay in my pajamas all day.  This sounds like a fantastic plan...

-Callie has been limping around and we can't figure out what happened or what's wrong with her.  She's headed to her favorite place, the vet, on Wednesday.  Any prayers that can be offered for our sweet doggy girl would be much appreciated!