Quick entry. Yeah right.

Finally, the lying can stop. After months of planning, we successfully conspired to surprise my sister (as far as she says) with her bridal shower on Saturday. It was a Hawaiian theme, as they're going to the island of Kauai for their honeymoon - tres exciting. It was a lovely time, complete with Bridal Bingo, Mai Tai punch, and a cake decorated by the mother-of-the-groom to be the islands of Hawaii. With edible blue glitter sprinkles to indicate the ocean, which turned all of our lips and teeth temporarily blue.

It was while visiting at the shower that one of our friends informed me of the association she has with the name Chester, after working for several years the child protective field. And that is, "Chester the Molester"!!! I guess there's not a particular person called Chester the Molester, but there are a number of "Chesters" on the sex offender registry list. Yeah. So what do I do with that information?!? It had never occurred to me. After months of thinking it's such a cute, harmless nickname... I'm not sure I can shake this new association. And if I try to ignore it, and continue to use the name, then this friend, and now all of you, are going to think I'm an awful mother-to-be by knowingly using such an unfortunate nickname. So, maybe we'll use "Tot" as Nate uses from time to time.

I would say he's just as fixated as I am on trying to determine, EVERY DAY, how much bigger I've gotten. We both stare at the belly, at different times of day, at different angles, feel the belly, comment on the belly, etc. Particular outfits make a huge difference, too. He's especially intrigued by how... these are his words: "deep" my belly button is these days. I still don't really know what he's talking about. "Look!" he'll say while I'm laying down. "You could put a whole swimming pool in there!" Whatever. I just think it's cute that he's so fascinated.

I'd say that the stage where I'm at right now, in terms of how I feel physically, can best be described by one sentence in The Girlfiend's Guide to Pregnancy, that says something to the effect of, "You begin your day feeling like your body is just like your normal, pre-pregnancy body; and by the end of the day, you're feeling unmistakably pregnant." There's just such a big range of size in each 24 hour period. That's why the inventor of the elastic waist is my hero these days. Well, that person is in a tie for my hero with the Front Desk Scheduling Lady from my midwife/doctor's office, as noted in the last blog entry.

Exhausting dream night last night:

A nor'easter had hit New England, and it was being compared to the Ice Storm of '98.
It was the first night of it, and people were starting to lose their power. There was the sense that because our pantry was so well-stocked, we wouldn't have to run to the grocery store like everyone else. So we decided to celebrate knowing we'd being locked in our house for several days by going out to eat, and the only place open was a Chinese restaurant. Like on Christmas day in the movie A Christmas Story. Anyway - we were going to walk there, as we do all restaurants here in Hallowell, and I was searching for a pair of mittens for the walk. But I was only seeing single, mismatched mittens in this big basket. The only pair of mittens I could find were old and shabby - not the warmest ones. I forget what I decided on. Side note - a dream last week in which I had to get to work on short notice, and literally got out of bed and grabbed random pieces of clothes, and a handful of shoes. When I got to work, I noticed that out of the 6 shoes I brought with me, I only had ONE matched pair of shoes, and they were not the best fit for the outfit I was wearing. So I begged my supervisor to make a quick trip home to get suitable shoes. Although I ended up determining that they were, in fact, in the SALOON that was in a different part of the building. So I had to go through all these dark hallways, up stairs, past games of billiards being played, etc. Not sure if I found the shoes. ANYWAY.

During the nor'easter, we suddenly discovered there was a separate part of our basement that was totally new (not built in the 1880s like the rest of our house) with high ceilings, well lit, great for storing tons of stuff. And it had a wood stove, so we would make it okay through the ice storm. Another side note: I have this whole category of dreams in which I discover parts of a house that no one else knows about. Sometimes the dimensions are irregular - like having to squeeze through a tiny doorway but then entering a really cool, oversized room. Very Alice in Wonderland. Love it.

So moving on from the nor'easter and houses, I had a fictional friend/aquaintance - we weren't that close- who was threatening to jump off a building to kill herself, and for some reason, like because she had done this before, I didn't believe her, called her bluff, and she actually jumped. And during that time, the perspective of my dream suddenly shifted to her thoughts as she was falling the 100 stories or something - not just 2 or 3 stories. And she was thinking, "Man, maybe this was a mistake - life really isn't THAT bad. I was kind of kidding anyway. Well, at least my friend Nicky is probably running down 100 flights of stairs to try to catch me at the end of my fall, and maybe she'll actually make it, and I'll be okay. Just like in the movies." And I did run down the 100 flights of stairs, but didn't quite make it. The most disturbing part was that she didn't quite die, but her face looked rather cartoon-ish, so it kind of made it better that I let this person die, because she wasn't a real person. So I walked away, figuring someone else would find her and help fix her cartoon body and face.

And THEN I had a dream, probably in between the snoozes of my alarm clock this morning, that I had the wherewithall to write down all of these dreams. I reached over to my nightstand and took out the yellow, lined pad of paper that I've been using lately for to-do lists, and was writing down: "Ice Storm, New Basement, Mittens, Friend Jumping off Building". I was writing with my eyes half-closed, because I knew that if I opened them too much, meaning, woke up too much, I would forget them. I was so proud of myself for thinking to write them down. I thought, "These will be good to share on the blog." Then I woke up, and the pad of paper wasn't next to me at all. And I thought, that is a new kind of dream for me.

Okay - that's all for now.
Sweet dreams,
Nicky and Nate
and "Tot"
17 weeks 3 days
for some reason the odd number weeks seem more like "legitimate pregnancy" to me.
Like, the 13, 15, 17....
Don't ask.