26 weeks!

So I'm 26 weeks preggers now, which means I look like this:

Very white, and very round.

And the baby is now the size of and English hothouse cucumber. They're getting very specific these comparisons. And very weird. An envelope two weeks ago, and now a cucumber? But no ordinary cucumber, an English hothouse cucumber. Because that's what you want, a sort of British-whore-house-sounding-garden-vegetable growing in your womb.

Hothouse is the right word though because this little girl loooooooves her some action. I went home last week:

(Mmmmm, home.) (Can you tell it's rainy and cold again in Montana?)('Cause it is.)

And then from there I went to Las Vegas. Because you know what everyone wants? A pregnant girl in Vegas! Whoooooooooo! PArtY TiMe! (Where 'party' means I'm in bed by 10:30, and while everyone else is ordering mojitos I'm kindly asking for some hot water with lemon.)(Because being pregnant also means I order things like hot water with lemon. Like a grandma. I also have taken to wearing knee high stockings that roll down to mid-calf, and always vaguely smell of butterscotch candies.)

Vegas was a lot of fun, and I'll have a whole special separate post for it later, but the short story is we all went because one of my best friends is getting married!

Awww isn't she pretty? Who wouldn't want to marry that? And I can't really talk about it here because I'll just break out into hysterical sobs like I usually do when I think too hard about it, but I HAD to go to Vegas because I'm not (oh no) going to (see now I'm tearing up big time) be able (can't. see. keyboard.) to go (boooooooooo) to her wedding (*sob*) in July because I'll be too pregnant to fly. (deep breath)

Honestly, it just devastates every part of me. She's like family. Not only is she one of my best friends but she also spent decades of holidays with my family, came on almost all of our family vacations, and had embarrassing informational talks about safe sex with my mom in High School. (Embarrassing only to me. To them it was perfectly normal. To me it was mortifying.) So missing her wedding is sort of like cutting off my arm and telling me I can't ever see it again.

Sort of.

That's not the best analogy, but you know what I mean. It sucks!

Anyway, moving on.

Hothouse. So, we pretty much spent the entire weekend parked by the lazy river at the MGM Grand hotel which was so amazingly relaxing and fun. And because it's Vegas they pump dance music out through the palm tree speakers from about 9am on, and little Jack Bauer just LOVED it. She was kicking and dancing around and moving to the beat pretty much anytime I was sitting still. I didn't even have to point it out to some of the other girls before they were like, "Whoa! Your stomach just jumped out at me!" It's so crazy that not only can I feel it, but now other people can actually SEE her moving around in there. If I wasn't so in love with it all (or if I didn't know I was pregnant) it would probably be very crazy and alien-like and I'd start crying and locking myself in an isolation chamber because I'd be sure my food had somehow been laced with LSD, because bodies just don't do the things that pregnant ones do. (How do those women on that show NOT know they're pregnant? If little elbow and knee-like things coming out of their belly at all times of the day is normal when they're not pregnant, I don't want to know what's going on inside there.)

I kept making my sister feel my belly when she was kicking really hard but she would get freaked out and pull her hand away really fast every time she felt it, screaming, "Ahhhhh! What if her little hand reaches out and grabs me!?!?!" Which is totally crazy. That's not going to happen. IS IT?

Just kidding. But it is understandable, her caution. I mean, there's a human in there. Moving around. Kicking and yawning and punching and practicing her breathing with amniotic fluid. It does sound like something from a Stephen King novel. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop forcing her to feel my stomach. Because she's my sister and I want her to feel the joy I'm feeling - even if it creeps her out.