18 weeks

Eighteen weeks yesterday and I'm starting to feel little baby flutters. I'm surprised it is happening exactly on schedule, but it is certainly fun to feel movement again. Last night we went to a masquerade ball put on by Our Little Helper's school. I rarely dress up these days, but I finally feel like I look pregnant, not just bloated so we took a picture.
 
I didn't sleep very well the night before last and as I lay in bed awake contemplating upcoming Lent I had an epiphany on what I ought to give up this year. The internet!  Usually I make a dietary change for Lent, after giving up alcohol routinely during my early twenties, but Mr. W doesn't like me restricting my diet while I'm pregnant.  In years past he has volunteered to take one for the team buy giving up meat or something, but ha made no offers yet this year. I thought it was sweet when he suggested it in the past, but I don't feel like I ought to rely upon it. Besides, I need to make some sort of sacrifice. It occurred to me that I spend far too much time online, mostly social media forums, and I neglect my chores and projects. It is a real easy trap to fall into when one is pregnant and not feeling in normal working order anyway. Now that I've made this decision I'm starting to get scared. like maybe I really am addicted to the internet and it will be too hard to give up? So I'm going on an internet binge this weekend, reading all my forums and message boards to get my fill before I purge myself for 6 weeks. Yikes, that seems like a really long time!
The only drawback to this plan is that we are down at the beach for the weekend, so I feel a little guilty camped out on the computer in a hotel room, seems like a bad idea in front of the children.

Originally we were hoping to go to Spain without the boys this summer to attend our friends' wedding. I was having flashbacks to trying to conceive our second child, when we knew we were invited to a destination wedding and weren't sure if we would be traveling with an infant, having to miss the wedding entirely, or going while pregnant. That time it ended up being the latter for us since it took 18 cycles to get pregnant. This time we'll have to miss it entirely since we're due about 3 weeks after the wedding.  Our priority was of course growing our family, but as a consolation prize we decided to plan a mid winter Hawaiian vacation.  And then we realized that after buying two furnaces last fall we didn't really have the budget for Hawai'i. So we are contenting ourselves with a long weekend at the Oregon Coast... almost as tropical as Hawai'i!  I was giggling today on the beach at my sons wearing winter coats and galoshes pitching rocks into tide pools.  Definitely not an escape from dreary winter weather, but we ARE Oregonians and this is what life on the beach is for us.

I'm also feeling a little bittersweet about this beach trip since today would have been my Dad's 63rd birthday. It was totally not Mr. W's intention to plan the beach trip around this day, it just ended up working in with his work schedule. It has been 5 1/2 years since he has been gone, and I still don't feel like I am over it yet. Pregnancy always takes me back to all those raw emotions too since he died right before my first child was born. I miss him so much.