For the past week or so, I’ve spent great amounts of time sitting quietly, waiting to see if I can feel something.  I do in my car, in bed as I’m falling asleep, or waking up, while sitting on the couch.  . . anywhere, really.  I spend most of my time at home with at least one hand tucked under the waistband of my pants, palm to my abdomen, just under my navel.  I can feel my pulse, and my own breathing, and I try to slow everything down to feel . . . .something.

Today, I might have. I’m not sure, but apparently, no one is the first few times.  I know I felt something, on the inside,  more than once in the same spot.  Almost like a little raspberry being blown from the inside out. A tiny little vibration of . . . something. So, that’s cool, I guess?  I imagine it will become more pronounced over time, and eventually I will post the mandatory "I wish the baby would stop kicking my bladder" post, but for now, I’m just waiting for more raspberries.

With the arrival of The Belly this week, I realized I needed to order some more mat jeans, stat.  I whipped out the ol’ debit card and hit oldnavy.com, which is great, but today when I found myself in our new Old Navy, I was very excited to see that they have added a maternity section. I mean, I think it’s been added — I stopped in just after in opened in October, and was bummed that I didn’t see any mat clothes, but today, there it was, complete with the unpregnant boobied mannequins.  I bought one shirt, that I brought home and tried on and found to be REALLY tight, and REALLY lowcut, and was going to take it back until Dave rolled his tongue back into his mouth and insisted it stayed in my wardrobe.  It’s probably not something I’d wear in public, but damn, I don’t think any clothing has received that kind of response in ages. Or ever. I’m also just glad to know that I have a resource locally, non-internet, for any future clothing emergencies.

Tonight, after I got back from grocery shopping, I was curled up on the couch, and under the throw, and Dave peeled it back and was suddenly amazed by the belly. It was really cool. He was rubbing it, and talking to it, and to me, about how weird it was that I had a 7-8 inch (full length, 5ish crown to rump) creature swimming around inside, that I still couldn’t definitively recognize.  It was cool, like, all of a sudden he looked down and realized his wife was pregnant. And that he was going to have a baby. It’s definitely going in the best-memory archives.

Of course, tonight when watching Grey’s Anatomy in bed, I will have to have my finger plugging his non-burrowed into pillow ear, since the whole ep is following the preemie quints that were born last week, each with some scary complication, and since it’s GA, probably at least one won’t survive. He has a hard time with sick kids, always has, is just totally moved and terrified by them, and it’s probably his biggest fear. (Longtimers have heard me go on about having to re-normalize him after doing either of the two telethons he has for work; 12+ hours of MDA or CMN kids does crazy things to his soul.)

Anyway, things are good here.  It had started to snow when I left Shaw’s, big fat flakes that I instinctively stuck my tongue out to catch.  I drove the long way home, circling downtown to see the lights, the tree lit up in West Market Square, the candles in the windows of city hall.  I was the first person to make tracks on our street, and I almost felt guilty going so. Things are good.