early warning signs.

Before I knew I was pregnant, I started having these inadequate parenting dreams. The situation I remember most vividly involved my rushing through a crowded open-air market. I was carrying twins under several layers of drapy clothing, trying to breastfeed both at the same time without being noticed.

the cooper cooler.

What I love most about my discovery that the Cooper Cooler has its own website is that I learned of the website through an entirely non-Cooper related weblog.

Kudos to the Cooper crew, who have been toiling furiously (and "test-cooling" a whole lot of beer cans) on the rapid beverage chiller since way back in 1992, for actually bringing a product to market. I went to a demonstration in 1996 and enjoyed a perfectly chilled can of Sprite. It really works! At least, it did back then.

There's a joke in there somewhere about how many engineering students... but I'll let it lie.

i have never liked raisins.

Yet here I sit, eating a bowl of Total Raisin Bran. We were out of Cheerios. And now we are out of milk.

You can try to avoid the raisins, but the more you miss, the greater the concentraisin becomes.

And the flakes get soggy.

shameless.

I have a crush on Anderson Cooper.

It feels so two-years-ago to say so, but Anderson Cooper is much funnier than Colin Quinn.

I just can't believe that CNN decided to put Anderson Cooper's new show, Anderson Cooper 360°, opposite Jeopardy!. At least I don't feel bad about giving up Tough Crowd reruns so I can watch Anderson Cooper's second half.

details, details.

Everybody wants to know about morning sickness. Well, I spent the first three weeks of my pregnancy with no obvious symptoms other than hot hands and feet. As someone with chronically frozen toes, this was a notable change. Around the time we started telling our parents about the pregnancy, I started feeling sicker and sicker. Then I quit my job, because I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. Or the afternoon. There were (and still are) a lot of days when I didn't shower or put on any clothes, let alone wash my hair, apply deodorant, or throw used tissues into a proper receptacle. At the worst times, I would spend several hours at a time contemplating the way the trees waved in the breeze outside of our bedroom window. In the evening, we would watch Jeopardy!, but I was too sick to guess answers. I lost a lot of weight. The exact amount is unknown, because the doctor's office claims my prepregnancy weight must be a mistake, since I couldn't possibly have lost as much weight as the difference indicates.

A couple of weeks ago I learned that pregnancy officially begins on the first day of your last period, not at the time the egg was technically fertilized. That two week jump in timing was the greatest cause for joy that I have known in years (it was in fact a bigger cause for joy than the actual discovery that I was pregnant; I admit this knowing that it may belittle the miracle of life and make me sound like a big pregnant wuss, but I'm living in a small bubble these days, and I take what I can get) as it meant moving two weeks closer to the end of my first trimester, when I'm supposed to feel much better. Well, achy and miserable still, but human, at least.

And here I sit on the precipice of 11 weeks, and although I power puked when I got out of bed this morning, I later managed to bathe (including washing my hair!), dress in almost completely clean clothes (I'm in one of only three pairs of pants that don't make me look like a ragdoll or Ed Grimley and I have technically worn them before, though never out of the house), and eat.

Eating is another endeavor altogether these days. I'm sick when I get up, and if I'm lucky enough to throw up, I'm left peckishly hungry until about 6 PM, when I start to crash back into a bloated, gassy, sour mound of discomfort. So I eat little snacky things all day long, trying to pick up whatever nutritious bits I can, and then greet my husband when he returns home from work hoping for dinner with the same news most every day: you're on your own, honey.

keepers of the magic kingdom.

When reading this article on Disneyland fanatics, I couldn't help but wonder, as each new visitor was introduced, how far in I'd have to get for Arthur to show up.

Then it occurred to me, as I remembered how Marc didn't really seem to be having quite as much fun as us that day in the park, that it's a good thing I've never lived in Florida or Southern California.

But really, judging from my favorite part of the article:

Benji says he was once a Trekkie. “There’s no difference,” he says, then adds, “Disney fans are crankier.”

...I could never really compete with Arthur.

who knew?

Turns out Marc's not just full o' weed, and there is such a thing as a pregnancy beard.

Here's a picture of a pregnancy beard.

Here's an article on the questionable Couvade syndrome, including a short mention of men who grow facial hair or suddenly purchase new cars during their wives' pregnancies.

But we still haven't been able to find any exact guidelines (should he shave at all? Should he shave before the birth so that he doesn't scare the baby or confuse the baby when he has shaved? Is he allowed to shave for an interview?).