Tomorrow, I'm fourteen weeks. I keep meaning to take a picture of me with my stomach on display but can't seem to bring myself to do it. Some days, I feel like I look slim as ever, maybe just a little bloated, and other days I look down and feel like I've got a basketball belly. I did buy one of those stretchy bands to wear around my jeans so that I can delay maternity pants. Have you ever looked at maternity pants? Maybe I was shopping at the wrong place, but, man, were they hideous. Why are they all so tapered? And what's with the lack of pockets? Just because I'm packing a baby doesn't mean I don't need a place to store my gum. Jeez.

Anyway, with the slow and steady increase of my tummy, Chris and I are also pleased to report that my breasts are getting bigger. Man, if only I had realized that pregnancy was the solution to my flat-chested problem, I'd have gotten knocked up when I was sixteen! Of course, I wasn't exactly getting a lot of, or any, action when I was sixteen, but maybe knowing the secret to my full and perky success would have enticed me to, say, try and earn a reputation. Of course, teenage pregnancy is no joking matter, but I didn't exactly say I was joking.

Heather sent me a text today to let me know she felt her baby kick! She's about three-ish weeks ahead of me, and so her tales from the front line are way better than reading one of the eighteen bajillion pregnancy books I have- none of which I actually bought, but all of which were bestowed as gifts. Note to people buying a gift for a pregnant person- don't buy them a book about being pregnant. It's not a good gift. First of all, no one needs more than one book about pregnancy, and, second of all, it's much too painful to actually read about pregnancy while being pregnant. It's next to impossible to do everything correct while pregnant, and these books just end up making you feeling guilty because you ate a whole bunch of walnuts and now your baby is destined to become a severe asthmatic. Also, they're boring. I know I'm writing about pregnancy right now (and it's somehow NOT boring, right?), but pregnancy books are sooooo dull. Here's a better gift for a pregnant woman- a Harlequin romance. For real. And that's all I have to say on that.

Except, yes, Heather's baby kicked, and now I am anxiously awaiting my first flutterings. I wonder if I'll even have presence of mind to recognize them. Heather has had such a textbook pregnancy, with all of the right symptoms at all of the right times, and mine so far has been... different. Not all of the symptoms and not nearly as severe. We're having different pregnancies in other ways, too. Her husband insists on peeling apples for her because he doesn't want her eating the pesicidal skin and because he doesn't want her using a peeler since she might cut herself and bleed to death. On the other side of the coin, my husband has, on several occasions, suggested that it's okay if I do a little light shoveling. Actually, I threw in the word "light" just to make him look better. Did it work?