Nearly 1/2-way and the length of a bell pepper

Today is the day that we check off 18 weeks of pregnancy in the Francl household, and I have to say that I'm glad for it! I don't really remember much of weeks 5 through 13 (because I pretty much slept through them), but I'm enjoying this 2nd trimester business.

It's nice to finally be "showing" a little - at least the people at work are starting to notice. Some coworkers (who shall go unnamed, but are lobbying to have the baby named "Josh"...) are even saying things "off hand" like, "Hey, are you putting on weight?" And I can honestly answer that, as a matter of fact I am - though I hope not too much!

If you're just here for the latest belly shot, here it is:

I'm definitely thicker when viewed from the side. I figure most people in the grocery store or the mall probably think I'm just a little chunkier than I should be. But then, who cares what they think, right? I can still wear many of my normal spring clothes, but I didn't even get out a good bunch of my non-pregnant summer clothes this year. Here's the view from the front:

Again, just a little thicker (though not much from this angle) than I used to be. (And yes, Mother, those are my 10-year-old favorite blue sweatpants - they WILL make it through this pregnancy. I'm determined they will!) This time around, the dogs wanted to get in on the belly shot fun, so here are their bellies:

Frazier (the blonde one) seemed excited about the picture until it came time to take it - in the picture he just looks like he wants to get out of it. And Brook didn't show her face because she didn't want it to detract from the beauty of her belly. :) And then, of course, there's Chase, our ever-patient and oh-so-tired-today daddy.

We read about our Little Bit that at 18 weeks, he or she (we'll find out which gender on May 9!) is about the length of a bell pepper at this point - that's measuring from top of the head to bottom of the rump - a total of about 5 1/2 inches. It sure doesn't seem like it took that long to go from a grain of rice at a few weeks along to the size of a bell pepper now at 18 weeks. I imagine there's an appropriate fruit or vegetable equivalent for just about every stage of gestational development - from mustard seed to watermellon. It's hard for me to imagine what I'll look like at the watermellon stage, but I guess we'll all know in about 22 weeks...