studying, studying, studying. oh, and baby o too!

shouldn't i be done with studying considering i've been out of school for two years? one would think. but this road to become a licensed clinical social worker involves some fortitude (and time and money and brains). i sit for my licensure exam at the end of the month, which will be the final hurdle in my journey to getting those "LCSW" initials behind my name and becoming a legitimate social worker. 

i just spent the last 2 hours taking a practice exam intended to simulate the real deal. it was brutal and i felt completely incompetent the entire time i was taking the test, all 170 questions. in the end, i passed the practice test by a pretty big buffer. hopefully i can maintain a similar score on my actual exam and put this stage of life behind me and those letters behind my name.

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in other news, baby o is doing well. we heard his/her heartbeat this past week and it is right on target. my nausea has almost entirely subsided, with brief bouts here and there, but nothing horrible like i had in the first trimester. my friend brittany (and others, i'm sure) have documented their pregnancies well with the questions below, so i decided to do the same, mostly for the sake of our families and so i stand a chance of remembering the details of this little one's hatching process.

how far along: 17 weeks

total weight gain/loss: 3 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight, 9 pounds from my first-trimester-sick-all-the-time weight. 

maternity clothes: mostly maternity bottoms and regular skirts, with non-maternity shirts.

stretch marks: none. (yet.)

sleep: dependent on my half-tab of unisom. brandon was trying to get my to wean myself off of it, suggesting i was dependent, but the nurse midwife said unisom was harmless to take throughout the pregnancy, so i shot brandon the "see!" look and continued popping those little blue pills of sleep salvation.

best moment this week: laying in the grass in our backyard and feeling a few little baby movements for the first time.

movement: i think that's what i'm feeling in there. it is strange to think that for the rest of the pregnancy i will feel this baby moving.

food cravings: (gf) bagels and cream cheese and just about every fruit under the sun.

gender: we don't yet know, but are scheduled to find out august 5. most guesses from friends and family have been pro-boy. 

what i miss: feeling comfortable in my clothes without having to perpetually pull, tug, and rearrange.

milestones: i finally feel good about a contender in the girl name arena. we've been settled on the name if this is a bambino since the first few weeks of the pregnancy, but names for a bambina have been trickier.

15 weeks in oregon.
on our 8 year anniversary too.

18 weeks in wyoming.

one thing i noticed coming back from our road trip to lower elevations, is that my belly seemed to stick out a lot more at 3200 feet than it has since we returned to 7200 feet. among the many benefits of living well over a mile above sea level is that the atmospheric pressure here seems to act as free SPANX, which everyone can appreciate.