Sayounara, First Trimester!

Yay for second trimester! It's here! I must say, I had a very easy first trimester with no morning sickness (other than on the plane ride descent). No weird cravings, though I do notice I want salty, bitter foods more than sweets. Sometimes I feel like I have superhero-strength olfactory senses. When I went to McMenamin's with the Linfield ladies, I could smell the vinaigrette on my salad before the waitress even got to our table.

Here's a snippet on how peanut is growing, courtesy of babycenter.com:

Fingerprints have formed on your baby's tiny fingertips, veins and organs are clearly visible through still-thin skin, and the body is starting to catch up with the head — which makes up just a third of baby's body size now. If you're having a girl, she now has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 inches long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce.

So even though I am carrying a shrimp-sized fetus, inside of a grapefruit-sized uterus, I feel like I'm carrying a gourd. People at work can now tell just by looking at my expanded tummy, and I'm glad I ordered two more belly bands to keep my pants up. I wore my maternity jeans for the first time last weekend, and although still a little too loose, SO much more comfortable! I don't think it helped that Aaron and I went to an Escoffier dinner at the New Sanno last Saturday. It was awesome, and totally a bargain for the price we paid for EIGHT courses!  There was even live music, with a 5-piece orchestra. I told Aaron that the only thing missing was a track running around the ballroom so people could "walk it off" between courses, sort of like a 7th-inning stretch. I was ready to hang up my fork after the 4th course. Here's what my belly looks like after my 8-course weekend:

Looking a little rounder, definitely feeling a lot rounder! My newest obsession is looking up other people's belly pictures (google: "belly gallery") and comparing mine to theirs. I know that everybody develops at their own rate, and in their own ways...but geez, I wish I looked more the part like most of the pictures I see online! Oh well. At least I know I'm carrying precious cargo. In a couple months, I know I'll be wishing that I weren't so big, especially when uninvited strangers start to touch my tummy.