And the winner is...

Um, no one, actually. No one guessed lemon? Well, here is the official 14-week update from BabyCenter.com:

Head to bottom, your baby's 3 1/2 inches long — about the length of a lemon — and weighs about 1 1/2 ounces. Her body's growing faster than her head, which now sits upon a more well-defined neck. By the end of this week, her arms will have lengthened and will be in proportion to the rest of her body. (Her legs still have some growing to do, though.) She's starting to develop an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair all over her body (called lanugo). Her liver starts secreting bile this week, a sign that it's already functioning properly, and her spleen starts contributing to the production of red blood cells. She's also producing and discharging urine into the amniotic fluid, a normal process that she'll keep up until birth. You still can't feel your baby's movements, but her hands and feet (which are now half an inch long) are more flexible and active. Thanks to brain impulses, her little facial muscles are getting a workout as she squints, frowns, and grimaces. She can grasp now, too, and she may be able to suck her thumb.

I am officially in the blessed 2nd trimester now. Thank goodness. Not only for the subsiding of the nausea, but also the chances of miscarriage go way down. So big cheer to Figgy for hanging in there! Only 26 more weeks to go!

Vegetable, Animal or Mineral?

OK, a big gold star goes to the person who guesses how big Figgy is this next week. We've gone from Fig to Lime to Jumbo Shrimp. Any guesses? And no fair cheating.

I Love the 80's Strikes Back!

This is no big surprise:





what decade does your personality live in?


quiz brought to you by lady interference, ltd


from Jenny's blog

Busy as a bee. Bee-like.

This weekend was a flurry of activity, and I'll get into it in a moment, but first, an update: Figgy is now the size of a jumbo shrimp. About 3 inches long, from head to butt (they don't start counting leg length until 20 weeks, but given that this is Rich's & my child, the legs probably wouldn't add much length anyway). I have entered my 13th week, just one away from officially being in the 2nd trimester, and hurrah! the worst of the nausea seems to have subsided. It's still definitely there if I go too long between meals, but otherwise, it's good.

My "bump," and my Irish friend Lynn calls it, is actually getting bigger. It still looks like I'm just not holding my stomach in, but I notice that it is definitely bigger than it was 2 weeks ago.

So, back to a weekend update. Friday was a wash. I was so tired that I decided to go lay down around 8 p.m. Big mistake. I woke up at 12 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. I finally went back to bed around 3 a.m., and then the cats kept waking me every other hour. We decided to meet up with our friend Scott at the Bar-B-Q Competition and Festival at the Autry Museum. My judgment: eh. In theory it sounds great, but there was nothing to do. There were only 3 or 4 vendors who were selling to the public. All the other barbeque places were just there for the competition, and not really the public. So we waited in line for an hour for mediocre beef ribs (not my favorite -- pork ribs all the way) and went on to Ikea.

At Ikea, that Swedish land of DIY furniture, we bought a wardrobe for me (one bad thing about this apartment is that the closets are too small) and two bookcases for the living room. We splurged and decided to have them delivered, given that the wardrobe alone weighed about 250 pounds. So $70 to save Richard's back (because you know I wasn't lifting)? Not a bad deal.

Sunday, we had our walk down to Larchmont for the Farmer's Market. I can honestly say now that this walk is my favorite time of the week. It's just me & Richard, on a sunny day, out to buy some fruit and get some exercise. I love it. Came back and Rich went over to a friend's, and I stayed inside as long as I could take it (about 1 1/2 hours), and then I headed out -- where didn't really matter, just not sitting inside on a pretty day. So I went to our local plant nursery. I've been pondering getting some planters for our railing outside and I just wanted to go to see some plants. I didn't buy anything, but it was a nice way to kill an hour or so.

About 5 p.m., the delivery folks from IKEA arrive. I decide to tackle assembling the wardrobe first, since it's in the bedroom and taking up more space in there than the bookcases are in the living room. Almost 3 1/2 hours later, we finally finish. I don't know why I am continually surprised by the poor quality of IKEA craftsmanship. It's IKEA, for gods sake. But packing the wardrobe doors while the wood stain is obviously not yet dry is just wrong! So not only do my doors still have bits of packing paper still stuck to them, two doors were actually STUCK TOGETHER! I had to get a butter knife to pry them apart. Luckily, it didn't hurt them too bad, but it just irks me.

But we finished, and as a treat, Richard picked up Zankou Chicken! I love me some cripsy, roasted chicken with garlic paste and hummus. Apparently though, the sodium content does not love me. My fingers swelled up to little saugsage size, and haven't gone down yet. So no more Zankou for a while. Bummer. Oh well. I have to keep my eyes on the prize. Figgy! (who could now be called Shrimpy, but will not)