My 24 week midwife appointment was on Thursday. My belly is measuring normal (shocking because it looks gigantic to me), weight gain is fine, heartbeat was good and strong. I also received a prize for attending the appointment: a scary looking glass bottle of "cola-flavored" (yum) sugary stuff. In 2 weeks I have my glucose test---which from my understanding means I have to drink this bottle of soda-flavored liquid sugar, sit in the lab for an hour, and then have blood drawn to see if I'm metabolizing sugar normally or if I might ahve gestational diabetes (everyone has to have the screening done). I'm really looking forward to it.

Waterset is more interactive now, and his/her attitude is definitely apparent. (S)he moves around all the time, especially if anything is pressing on my belly---if there is tight elastic on my pants (which there is, since I seem to grow out of a new pair everyday) the baby will kick right at the elastic (I picture it saying "Hey! Move over! Get out of here!").

Layla spent an hour curled around my stomach the other night while I was watching tv. When she started purring I guess the baby could hear it, because it woke up and started wiggling around. Here's a picture:

Last night Dave was talking to my stomach before bed and the baby was kicking back at him, and then rolling or wiggling or something (I don't know what it was doing, but it felt strange). That was the first time that I really felt like it was interactive.

The baby registry is a big project---we started it a few weeks ago and I keep slowly adding things online. We're just registering for everything under the sun---at least then all of the research is already done and things are selected. It's like having a giant shopping list of stuff we need to get---who knew babies end up needing so much stuff. Well, I guess they don't really need any of it--we just need it to make dealing with the baby more manageable :)

Oh, and our car is nearly dead. It needs a new transmission, which turns out not to be worth it if you're car is: 11 years old with over 120,000 miles, missing pieces (like hubcaps and the like), dented up and otherwise abused. Who knew? So now in addition to recently buying the apartment and getting all of the baby stuff, it's time to buy a car! Hooray! We're hoping to get it done over February break, and hoping that the car lasts until them without dying.

Baby Update

The baby is now a little over a pound and somewhere around 1 foot long. The big development this week is that now it's lungs are making surfactant, which helps the lungs inflate with air once it's born. So it's getting a lot closer to being able to being able to survive on the outside.