Well, this has been a pretty quiet week. No appointments, no drama, not much happening. Did a lot of not-pregnant stuff: read 4 books over the weekend, made a Super Bowl feast, stocked the basement freezer with some casseroles for us to eat over the next month, took Amy for a long stroll in the snow. I’m even wearing a pre-pregnancy size S jersey pencil skirt, although this may be the very last week that I can. There’s hip pain and the occasional twinge in the lower back, restriction on how much weight I can lift or carry, and the occasional bump from the Frog Princess, but other than that, I feel supremely not-pregnant. I suppose I should count my lucky stars and thank my guardian angels, because I know that this feeling of “normalness” won’t last forever.
This week, baby is the size (length) of a carrot. I don’t see it. I feel like if  were to hold a carrot up to my belly, the carrot would be larger than my belly…then again, I know she’s all folded up in there like little baby origami, or, at best, sitting cross-legged. Another online source compares baby at 21 weeks to a pomegranate — I feel like that’s a more accurate visual. Yesterday (Thursday) she was pretty active toward the end of the day, especially after I had some ravioli for lunch and at-home Indian food for dinner. Warm foods — oatmeal, soup, hot saucy Indian food with warm spices, warm Pillsbury toaster pastries — tend to get her moving. You’d move too if someone poured oatmeal on your head!
This week, instead of sugar and spice and everything nice, little girls are made of peanut brittle, buffalo wing sauce, and mattar paneer. Months and months before I got pregnant, I read a few articles about people’s favorite foods being based, maybe, on the cravings their mothers had during pregnancy. I decided then to try and eat “adventurously” during pregnancy to possibly introduce a wide range of flavors on a really primeval level — and this week is right about the time she can start tasting the foods I have eaten via the amniotic fluid nourishing her (she’s swallowing, the digestive system is working, and taste buds are developing). Maybe she’ll be a sour puss like me, a spice fiend, or have a broad international palate — I’m doing my best.
I’m also making sure she gets heaping helpings of my favorites: Saltines, baked beans, dark chocolate, toast, chicken fingers with mayo and mustard, dill pickles.
Stormzilla/Snowpocalypse/”Nemo” is barreling toward us this weekend. My storm prep included going to the library, stocking up on fresh fruits, thawing a casserole, and asking Jim to pick up a new block of suet for the birds. We’re getting prepared to burrow down and hibernate as necessary, with all our blankets, subzero sleeping bags, and one hot little corgi. Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel is in Boston currently, on an overpass near the Zakim Bridge, brandishing a yard stick — and where Jim Cantore goes, there goes the brunt of the wild weather. Schools are already closed for tomorrow and the roads might as well be shut down tonight, for all the urging state officials have done to get people to stay at home and out of the way. We’ve survived storms like this before and will survive them again — at least the snow from the last storm has had the good grace to melt away, and we won’t be piling Pelion upon Ossa with this storm.
See, The Weather Channel? I can make obscure classical references too. Nemo. Pfft.
Jim and Rachel 