I just passed the 24 week/6 month mark, and Julian is ramping up fast. Lots of moving around now, every once in a while he gives me a kickbox style jab, but nothing painful or uncomfortable....it's mostly just surprising that a little 1 pound baby can muster up that much force! He gets especially active about 30 minutes after I eat. I don't know if it's much noisier in there with all the digestion going on, or if he's eating what I just ate...but he gets all fired up. Cute.

I totally remember being disgusted by the idea of a little parasite inside your uterus kicking you from the inside out, but now that it's happening to me and it's my own fantastic baby, of course I don't mind at all. It's fascinating to watch my belly moving as he grooves around.

Whew, this is so far happening just as I suspected...I feel the same way about kids that I do about dogs. Other people's dogs are sometimes cute and fun, but mostly they're annoying, or smelly, or slobbery, or barky, or too big. *My* dog, on the other hand, is the light of my life. He can shed on my pillow, lick me right on the mouth...it's all good. Bugs is exceptionally clean-smelling though, very well-behaved, and not slobbery at all. He *did* have dog breath last night (which is extremely rare) when he woke up from a nap on the couch, but I brushed his teeth and he was back to normal. I'm glad that my dog and husband are both similar: handsome, impeccably groomed, sleek, and they always smell good.

So anyways, I always thought that I hated kids and wouldn't be a good mother, but I think it's just that I don't like *other* people's kids all that much. Like dogs, most of them are either bratty or slobbery or bug in some way. And I can't do anything about it. You know, I can't just take over and start disciplining the dog or kid properly, or feeding them a balanced diet, or brushing their teeth, or take away their violent loud toys. It's like people in general...I'm picky about who I like to hang around with. I'm not a total people person. If I can't be around smart, interesting, funny people, then I'd rather just read a book by myself or something. If my own dog or husband or kid does something bad though, I can do something about it, so I tolerate it much better.

I haven't weighed myself lately, but I suspect I'm close to 170. That means that I've put on almost 30 pounds with this baby so far. I was trying to stick to 25-30 overall, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. But I'm not too worried about it. I don't feel *fat* or swollen. I think a lot of it is boobs, honestly! I had none before, and now I have D-cups. It's belly, of course, and baby. But my legs and arms look pretty much the same, maybe a little bigger. I was getting a pretty cellulitic ass, but now that I'm swimming and exercising more, that seems to be looking better as well. So whatever...I'm just trying to keep my diet balanced and healthy, stick to only one dessert a day, and not worry too much.

I am definitely starting to feel the extra weight though. I sat on Dan's back the other day to give him a rub and he was like, "Whoa!", but he enjoyed having me rub around and dig my buttbones into his lower back.

I tried to pull myself out of the pool on Saturday at the edge (insted of using the ladder) and it was like doing a pushup wearing a backpack full of rocks! Normally never a problem, but this time I wasn't sure I would be able to make it! And then I could barely get my leg up over the edge...I felt like I had given myself a hernia afterwards! I'll be using a ladder from now on.

Then we went for a hike up at Kennedy Open Space. You basically climb uphill gradually for several miles until you get to the top ridgeline of the Los Gatos Mountains. You can look out all the way to Santa Cruz from there. I was completely huffing and puffing and sweating my ass off for the first hour or so, even though I was going at a snail's pace. I couldn't really talk to Dan because if I stopped constantly huffing and puffing while climbing, even just to bark out a monosyllabic response, I felt like I wasn't getting nearly enough oxygen. Then it started getting easier. I was able to go faster and not be quite as breathless. Normally it takes me a while to get into my stride anyways...I warm up really slowly but then I can go forever. I must be all slow-twitch endurance muscles.

Anyways, we went farther than I have ever been before. Dan wanted to go all the way to the very top, but when we were almost there I saw a really steep switchback ahead and I called a halt. I was done climbing after a few hours of doing it without a break. Ready for some DOWNhill action. On the way down I practiced my "belly-sucked-in, tailbone-tucked-under" technique so I worked my abs and didn't have an overarch in my spine.

When I got home I was *trashed*. My feet were killing me (another side effect of the extra weight), and my lower back felt like a truck had run over it. I was glad to get the exercise, and it was a beautiful hike, but I was really surprised at how much it took out of me. Geez, I guess I am pregnant after all.

I came home and made some spaghetti with the leftover pizza ingredients from Dan's birthday party, which entailed another 45 minutes of standing up in the kitchen. By the end of that I was ready to collapse. Standing up for long periods of time is not on my list of favorite things to do at any point, but these days it's really HARD. I feel like I'm on some other planet where the force of gravity is twice as strong.

I have this paranoid fear that Julian is not going to turn around and be head-down in time...then I'll end up with a breech baby and have to go in for a C-section. Awful. I have no idea what position he's in right now, or how we will manage to find out what position he's in without doing an ultrasound, but obviously there IS some kind of way to tell. Maybe you can just poke around and feel where his arms and legs are after another month or so. I don't feel anything but soft-hard belly. It all feels the same in there to me. I can feel when he kicks (punches?), but I don't feel any parts or anything.

I saw in some magazine that a good method for turning a breech baby is to lie on your back and lift your pelvis in the air, basically it's "bridge pose" in yoga. So I tried that out the other day and was surprised to find out how freakin' *hard* it is now that I have all this extra belly to lift in the air. I used to do 30 of those lifts at a time without even thinking about it, now I could barely even lift my ass in the air once without struggle. It's that supergravity thing again. I don't know, Julian has probably turned himself around by now, or will turn himself around, I'm just paranoid about it. If I do have to go in for a C-section, who the hell would I see? My own doctor has pretty much ditched me over the home birth thing. So then it would be a complete stranger I guess.

Ugh, can't even think about it. Turn baby, turn. I keep telling him..."head down, Julian, butt to the front".

April told me that she and Ed barely ever had sex when she was pregnant. Ed was totally not interested. I told her that Dan is not interested either. But Ed is apparently *still* not interested. That doesn't bode well. I guess it's a weird thing to have your significant other grow this big belly and enormous breasts and develop a completely different body.

It's not like I look in the mirror and see a sexy body either. It's an interesting body, and even a cute body with all the rounded features, but definitely not a sexy body. When I turn sideways I'm always like "holy CRAP, look at that belly!" So I don't know why I feel hurt that Dan doesn't think about sex when he looks at me.

Actually I don't know what he thinks. I don't know if he's afraid he'll hurt me, or if he's just completely turned off, or what. I should just ask him.

I know that he thinks I am especially beautiful now, and it's true, my skin looks great, my hair looks decent, and I have a pretty glow about me. Everybody comments on it. But I don't think a madonna-esque glowing beauty translates into sexy, necessarily. Which is fine, and I don't know why I'm even worried about it.