the late great libido

17 weeks

Please realize that I'm not jaundiced, it's simply the bathroom lighting. So there I am, belly sticking out more every day. Plus I just ate a bowl of pasta before these pictures, so it might be a tad bit exaggerated.

I talked to the birth center today, they don't do ultrasounds (b/c they're all hippie/natural/etc), but they set up an appointment for me with their preferred radiologist. I'll go at 22 weeks, so that's a month and a week from now. Damn. Well in the meantime, I'll just try to feel for the baby's movement. 

It's weird - when I lay down at night, and lay on my back very still, and press my lower abdomen with my hands, I can feel my uterus. It feels different than the rest of whatever else is down there. I still haven't felt the baby move, but I've been reading that at 17 weeks the baby begins to hear, which is pretty cool. And it's neat to feel where the baby is, though right now it doesn't feel like much more than a different-feeling place in my body. 

So all of my titles of journals are song lyrics, this is something I started back in high school when I had open diary, then live journal, etc. and now it's something I can't not do. I cannot NOT put lyrics for my journal titles, I just can't. I have to. It's the one compulsion/obsession that I'm aware that I have. The song lyrics don't have to apply to how I'm feeling, I usually just think of a song I have stuck in my head, and pick out a line from it, but today my title applies. What they say about the second trimester - the upped libido - is true for me. It's just a little different than I imagined. I pictured me not being able to stop jumping my husband, and if he were around a little more, that might be what it would look like. But more than anything, my dreams have become so steamy! They are so real and so arousing. It's weird to wake up from a nap feeling like I've been fooling around instead of sleeping. 

In other news, I spend my free time these days reading magazines called Gourmet and Bon Appetit, and devouring blogs such as (my current favorite) Orangette. What this means is that my passion for food keeps growing, and my desire to bake is overwhelming. I love, love, love baking. I love everything about it, except maybe yeast, but Orangette (Molly) has a cinnamon roll recipe that might help cure me of that - it uses rapid rise yeast, which sounds much more manageable. And, thanks to the inspiration of all these good reads about good eats, I whipped up some sauteed brussels sprouts with ground coriander, slivered garlic, and mustard seed, and they were fabulous. Scott said they were the best brussels sprouts I've made yet, though he usually says that. It's one vegetable he can't get enough of. 

Tonight I spent a relaxing evening grocery shopping, then making a great pasta dish with lots of vegetables and a creamy sauce, topped with fresh basil and parmesan cheese. Not my own recipe, but I followed it exactly and it turned out really delicious. 

Now, regrettably, the dishes await me.