I was working away at my receiving blanket project when Toby walked into my office to see what all the buzzing and whirring was about. He’s usually oblivious in his office but I guess the sound of my sewing machine got his curiosity going. Machine noises can do that with him.

I show him all my nifty blankets with their neat mitered corners and he asks, “Where’s the stuff that goes in the inside? You know, the fluffy stuffing stuff? Aren’t you going to sew the other side on?”

“What?” I ask screwing up my eyes. “Don’t you know what a receiving blanket is? Are you thinking of a quilt? Because a quilt and a receiving blanket are two entirely different things.”

He looks at me like I’m speaking Greek so I go on to explain that a receiving blanket is a thin flannel blanket that doesn’t have two sides. It only has a rolled hem at the edges and it’s used for all sorts of things like wrapping the baby up or you can use it as a spit up rag or even a shield from the sun if you drape it over the top of your stroller. You wouldn’t want to use a quilt for all these things because they are a mother to launder and well, they are just plain too heavy. By the time I get to the stroller shade part, I can tell everything I’m saying is going right over his head but he has that glazed-over googly-eyed look and he says, “I’m so glad I married you. Please carry on with your Holly Hobbie party.”

My Holly Hobbie party!!! Is that what he sees when he looks at me?

Speaking of looking at me… (hardly a segway but I don’t feel like saving this illustration for another blog) I’ve been feeling very thick lately. I know it’s all in my head and probably prompted by the extra dose of hormones racing around in my body, but I seriously feel like my legs are tree trunks. I’m confused because I haven’t gained that much weight. Hardly the five pounds you are supposed to gain but when I look in the mirror I feel like I’ve gained 20. Toby must be secretly rigging my scale in the night because he’s sick of me complaining about being fat all the time. I know the pregnant body is “beautiful” and all… but I’m just not feeling the beauty.

I’m used to being able turn sideways in a mirror to get my best view (because I’m a hippy sort of pear shape and before this new development, I used to have somewhat of a flat stomach) but now even my side angle makes me look like a barge. I’m having issues with what is baby and what is my stomach, chubbiness and intestines being stuffed up towards my rib cage. When people touch my stomach and say things like, “Hello Baby” I feel like I should correct them and say, no that’s my fat you’re touching, the baby is down there… but that hardly seems appropriate. I guess it’s all just part of the growing pains. But don’t worry, I’m not all doom and gloom and fat. I think my new boobs look awesome.

I have officially started showing. But I’m not showing enough to look pregnant. I call it the frump stage. And my clothes are “frump suits”. When you look at me, you just don’t know. I appear to be putting on some weight but it’s not all right there where the basketball shape should be. I think my face is getting fatter too. Which I’m very unhappy about. But Toby says I’m cute so I’m trying not to look in the mirror too much.

Some of my old clothes still fit. But a lot of them don’t. Getting dressed every morning has taken on some of the anxiety I used to experience back in high school when I had some kind of body dismorphic disorder. Outfits litter the floor. Every morning you can hear me doing my throaty grunt snarl at the mirror.

When I was out in Hemet, my mom and I decided it was time to go maternity clothes shopping.

What do you do when it’s 102 outside? Go to the desert to the outlets in Cabazon, of course! Yeah! What’s another 18 degrees of burning heat?! Nothing! My mom and I thought that maybe since it was such a squelcher of a day, nobody would be shopping at the outlets that are usually quite crowded. It isn’t an indoor mall and the dry winds can get whipping pretty fast out there by Palm Springs. But no, we were wrong. Everybody was out braving the 120 degree heat.

I felt faint just walking from the car (because of course we didn’t get a close parking spot) to the first air conditioned store. Probably not a good idea when I’m supposed to be keeping my body temperature within 2 degrees of 98.6. When we got back in the car to go home, the steering wheel was so hot I had to use my old too small bra (that I discarded as soon as I purchased a new one that fit) as protection so I wouldn’t burn my hands on the steering wheel. It was that hot!

Thankfully there weren’t any other foolish pregnant women out shopping and I had the Motherhood store all to myself. I hate trying on clothes but I was in rare form and loaded up both arms with outfits in every size. I even tried on the fake belly pillow. What a hoot. As you can see from the pictures I’m quite scary looking. Which is another reason I’m posting pictures of me now even though I think I look like the frumpiest bump ever. Someday, I will look back on these pictures and think, “wow, was I thin”.