No! It's not a beer belly

      As your growing uterus starts shifting your center of gravity (belly forward, bottom out), hormones are causing your ligaments to relax and joints to loosen. The result? Back pain and soreness. On the bright side, if you want to know baby's gender, this might be your first week for a sneak peek.

     Baby's become amazingly mobile (compared to you, at least), passing the hours yawning, hiccupping, rolling, twisting, kicking, punching, sucking, and swallowing. And baby is finally big enough that you'll soon be able to feel her movements.

How far along? 18 weeks and several days

Total weight gain/loss: Ummm.... haven't stepped on the scale lately, thank you very much.

Maternity clothes? No, however, my pants have met the end of being buttoned, I think.
Stretch marks? New lotion is working great so far. We'll see in a few more weeks....
Sleep: Still good so far as long as I don't drink too much water late in the evening.
Best moment this week: Towards the end of last week I started feeling real movement.  It's AMAZING, and slightly freaky, I might add.
Movement: Yes.  More and more every day.
Food cravings: Nothing too strange.  I don't understand the people that want weird things like pickles and ice cream.  It's really not that much different to me.
Gender: 1.5 weeks left until we HOPEFULLY find out!
Labor Signs: NO!
Belly Button in or out? In still.  I was just wondering about this the other day.  If it's going to pop out.  That may just freak me out!
What I miss: A good glass of red wine!
What I am looking forward to: Finding out what BH is!
Milestones: Ryan MAY have felt the baby last week.  It was either that or me breathing....(-:

I cannot believe the month of December is FLYING by!  I'm almost halfway done with pregnancy, and I must admit, it has not been too bad so far.  I guess I was just expecting a whole lot worse.  Either that or I'm just tough :).  Maybe we'll go with the latter since I want to do the whole natural child birth thing.....

It truly is amazing to feel something moving inside of you that you have no control over.  I've been srtuggling with the whole letting go thing.  I cannot control what happens now during pregnancy any more than I will be able to control what happens to BH once born.  I've decided that the sooner I realize that God really is in control and whatever happens is part of His plan, the less stress my life is going to have.  Easier said than done.  Now seeing why my dad always worried about me, even when I was away at school, or even still now that I'm married.  It's just part of being a parent.  Oh my.  I'm going to be a parent!!! 

Well, enough for the deep stuff... I'm really looking forward to Christmas next year with a little baby!  Ryan and I cannot wait.  And, he's told me that there will be even more lights on the house....  As for now, I am settling for the alien-like pokes and jabs I feel.  The weirdest one is when BH pokes my bladder.  OK, enough of the details! 

Oh, one last thing.  Last Friday, when we had our extremely strange snow day, Ryan and I started our registry at Babies R Us.  Ummm.... slightly overwhelming and if you don't know what you're having, VERY hard to register for just about everything as it is either blue or pink.  Not alot of neutrals out there.  Really hoping we'll be able to find out!

And the belly pictures.....

Week 16

Week 18 - Yes, MUCH bigger! 

Week 17 is still in another camera...