18 Weeks and More Fun Ben Stories

What have I been up to? Eh. Same old. Trying to stay cool. Enjoying Ben and my husband. Working. The usual.

This is the week that we get to make our ultrasound appointment. That's right, folks. I'm 18 weeks pregnant already. My OB should give us the go-ahead to schedule the anatomy ultrasound after our appointment on Wednesday afternoon. I'm very excited to learn the gender... but there's quite a large part of me that's very frightened.

Why? We haven't heard the heartbeat yet. When we first didn't hear the heartbeat at 10 weeks, I had a quick ultrasound a couple days later, and I saw the heart beating. But since then? Nothing. My OB can't find it yet. And I haven't really felt a lot of movement, which is kind of weird for a second baby.

My belly seems to be getting bigger. At least that's what my husband says. So how do I know that everything's okay? I don't. My biggest reassurances are that I haven't started miscarrying and I'm still having pregnancy symptoms like nausea, exhaustion and frequent urinating.

So if another OB visit goes by and we can't hear the heartbeat... I may lose it. Go ballistic. That's that. Okay. Onward.

Ben is, of course, a total delight. He's getting funnier every day. Yesterday morning he entertained us by walking into the living room with his green crocodile galoshes on, a diaper, and a sailor hat on inside-out and covering his eyes. Then he started to dance. It was like a very strange Village People performance. This morning, we gave him a rubber thomas train toy to play with in the car on our way to daycare. We've been teaching him "chugga-chugga-choo-choo" for a while, and all he has down is the "choo-choo" part. So it was "tsu-tsu" all the way to Amber's house. High-pitched and emotive.

We went to a birthday party on Saturday, and he went wild playing with all the toys. They even had a swingset/tree house/slide combo in the backyard... which he fell out of and scraped his cheek. Now he has a bruise there as a souvenir. And yesterday, he split his lip open at the hardware store with Daddy. It's tough to be Ben sometimes, but it doesn't seem to wreck his good nature.

Another new thing he's doing... we have one cabinet in our kitchen that doesn't lock on its own. The handles are the old-fashioned kind with a built-in clicky lock. The one that won't click is right under the sink. The undersink area is split by a shelf in the middle. Ben has learned, though, that he has enough head room to sit on that shelf and then use the towel bar on the door to pull it closed. He'll disappear in there for a while and start yelling and banging the door open and shut. Over and over again. It's quite amusing.

In other news, I totally ruined the beef stew I lovingly threw together to feed my family last week. First, the potatoes weren't done by dinner time because I had turned the slow cooker down to low at noon when I put them in. Then, in an effort to had some flavor since it was kind of bland and flavorless, I put in some Kitchen Bouquet beef browning stuff. But I read the directions incorrectly. I thought I read 3 TBS when it was really 1/2 tsp. That's a big difference. So I had a very dark brown, oily sauce that didn't have much flavor at all. I cried. I was really looking forward to it. After serving it for dinner the next night, I dumped the rest out in the trash. Better luck next time. In reality, I should have added some beef broth or boullion cubes or more worchestershire sauce.

My mom makes hers in the microwave in a big ceramic dutch oven. I think I may have to measure out my microwave and invest in one.

This week we're having spaghetti, and tonight I might make a meat loaf and some baked potatoes to have on hand for a couple of days.