This week I’m 20 weeks pregnant. Again.

Compared to the first time around, this pregnancy has been an entirely different ballgame. The first time, I photographed and wrote about nearly every passing week; how I was feeling, how I was expanding, how regular my digestion was (FYI: unfortunately, it wasn’t). I spent countless evenings lying on the couch waiting for the baby to kick, or hiccup, or poke an elbow into my side. I read pregnancy books. I read online pregnancy threads. I lived and breathed pregnancy.

This time around, I haven’t even taken a single shot of my expanding belly.

It’s not that I’m not excited about this pregnancy — I am. It’s just that with a 17 month old running around, I don’t have the same amount of, err, freedoms to appreciate whether kid #2 is the same size as an orange or a cantaloupe at this stage of development (answer: a cantaloupe), every tickle of my colon, every painful twitch in my nipples (FYI: although, I really try to ignore the latter).

It’s that, and basically, after you’ve already seen yourself fat and lethargic the novelty sort of wears off.

My pregnancy symptoms this time around have been pretty much just like the first. The first trimester was really rough. I experienced several weeks of morning sickness where we all essentially lived off baked potatoes because the thought or smell of anything else would make me nauseous. I spent most of those first 12 weeks lying on the couch, wearing SeaBands and sipping ginger ale to help with the nausea. I don’t know if either made me feel any better but I was too afraid to mix things up for fear that I could feel worse. And then just as magically as the nausea appeared, it just one day went away.

Since the first trimester, I’ve been feeling much more like myself. Exhausted. Lazy. Unenergetic. I’ve been going to monthly prenatal appointments and so far everything looks great with the baby. My placenta has grown to about an inch below my belly button, the heartbeat is regular and strong, and the baby is measuring at exactly what it should. Unfortunately, my body on the other hand isn’t fairing as well: all that baby weight I dropped the first go round has begun to rear it’s ugly head at an increasingly alarming rate. At our last appointment, I’d gained a whopping 9 lbs. In 4 weeks. And for those of you keeping track that’s a total of 13 lbs. Asshole.

In the last few weeks, the baby has begun tickling and kicking my insides daily, making it harder to not be reminded that soon, very soon, there will be another kid running around, terrorizing us. I’ve never been so excited or frightened in my entire life.

If only writing was as easy as pushing record on the tape recorder.

Remember tape recorders? …Anybody? Anybody?

I’ve tried to write several times over the last few months only to feel completely overwhelmed. Between the swirl of events that have occurred these last few months and the absence of not keeping this place adequately updated, writing that next post basically requires a full re-introduction. Or at least a nod of acknowledgment.

In the last few months, we have been notified that our condo/apartment has sold, that we have to find a new place and move from said condo/apartment, and that our foreclosure date has been pushed back until August 6th. And if that wasn’t enough, we are also expecting baby #2. (Because obviously the best thing to do when faced with losing your house and moving everything you own again, is to drown your sorrows in hot passionate sex.)

We had anticipated starting to look for a new place a few months earlier than our lease was to expire as the weekend parties at the neighbor’s place, the barking pocket dog in the condo/apartment below us, and the encroaching walls as we outgrow the place were becoming unbearable but we just never thought we would have to do it this soon. It took a few weeks, but we managed to find the perfect place: it’s a house, with a backyard for Boo, 1700 square feet of living space (nearly 800 square feet more than our house!) for all of us, and it is located within driving distance to Bubba’s work so he can drive his work truck home every night. Now, if only we could get the current tenants to move out just a little bit sooner.

The move to the new place couldn’t have come at a better time. The new baby is due in October and it’s still early enough in my pregnancy that I shouldn’t be completely useless during the move. At the very least I’ll still be able to dictate where the boxes go from the comforts of the couch. We’ve been so busy between Boo, looking for a place, and now making arrangements to get moved into a place that this poor kid is already suffering from 2nd child syndrome. If only he knew what was in store for him.

Just write.

Thoughts will follow.

That is what I tell myself every time I sit down to try and write.

Maybe I should just sit here for a while longer.