8 Weeks.

Today I am 8 weeks pregnant. It's still kind of surreal, but not as much as it was with Luca. This pregnancy is so vastly different already. With Luca, in the first trimester, I never really felt sick but I just had NO appetite. This time around, I feel nauseous half the day, and I need to eat or it gets worse. But, nothing ever sounds good and the nausea is ever present, it seems. I just keep telling myself SO many women have it much worse...so I should just suck it up and be thankful. I think the hardest part about it is that we haven't told my work yet, so it gets tough sitting at work, feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin, and trying to act normal. And it's not like I can bring Saltines in and have them on my desk to snack on. NOTHING says, "Hey, I'm knocked up in here!" like a pack of Saltines on the desk. So I'm trying to find covert tricks to hide how shitty I feel. So far I've tried the following, to varying degrees of success:

- graham crackers: They only really help WHILE being consumed, and unless I want to gain 80 pounds, I can't very well eat them all day long.
- popsicles: Not exactly condusive to work, but they are good for when I'm home, and you can eat them without taking in too many calories.
- carbonated drinks: The problem here is trying not to drink caffeine. So then I have to be obvious with 'Caffeine Free Diet Coke', or slightly less obvious with root beer or sprite. Sometimes these help.
- cheese crackers with PB filling: So far, so good. But a costly and fatty habit to get into
- Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast: the simple carbiness of them helps, but doesn't fill me up for long.

It's been suggested I get ginger candies and eat them, but I'm not there yet. I may cave if it gets worse, not better.

Aside from the morning sickness, I'm really doing pretty well. I'm not quite as bone tired as I was last time, which is a relief. I'm not sure how I would do first trimester exhaustion AND work AND caring for Luca. And I'm not showing yet, although I'm still carrying some of the weight I gained with Luca, so I'll probably just look fat for quite awhile. I did take a picture of my belly last week, which I'll share here, but please do note I am sucking it in. I cannot tell a lie.



On another note, I totally forgot that we changed memory cards the first day of vacation, and I had some pictures on the old one to download. So, I pulled them down and found these, which I thought I should share. We stopped on the drive up to Yosemite to get some peaches and nectarines, fresh off the trees. Apparenlty, Luca LOVED them, because as we were driving, she waited until I turned my head and stole a juicy one from the bag on the seat.