Okay, I fixed the link to the movie below. Enjoy!

I'm taking a break from packing (speaking of which, why do we have so many books? WHY?!?) to post a couple things. I've been pretty sporadic with posting lately, what with all the traveling and scrambling to find a place to live and moving and being pregnant and tired and needing to make a sandwich and maybe eat this whole bag of Doritos, etc. But so much has been happening that I really need to bring this blog up to date. I'll start by posting a video with a few highlights of our trip to Michigan this past week:

Charlotte's Week in Michigan

Here are a few posts I'll try to write in the next few days before we move: The Long History of (Giving Charlotte) the Finger, The Amusing Anecdote of Charlotte the Flower-Girl, The Tale of Feeling the Baby Move and Realizing I'm Actually Pregnant, and The Jeff Tig Story, or Why Do We Have So Many Stinking Books: An Autobiography of a Bibliophile and a Pack-Rat.

Just a sneak peek:

This is just to say: We got a place to live in Lawrence.

I guess my dream of a beautiful hobo palace built of moving boxes is over. Not that I'm sad. No, no, no.

WE GOT A PLACE!!!

I'm fourteen weeks into this pregnancy, and the dreams are back.

I've always been a vivid dreamer. At night, I'm whisked away to a magical land where I take part in elaborate, complex plots that unfold with just a dash of my real life in them to make them weirdly familiar. I almost always remember my dreams, often down to details of setting, time of day, colors in my surroundings, differences in the people I know (you were there, but you had a moustache! A long, Yosemite-Sam stache.). In the morning, I often have to lay in bed for a few minutes...not to fully wake up, but to process the drama of last night's dreamland offering.

Pregnancy seems to turn this feature of my non-waking life up a notch. My memories of my dreams are even more vivid. Often the real turns surreal (And then your moustache started singing to us!). I'm frequently traveling to places I've been, and everything is different. Last night, I dreamed I was back in Oxford, and all the streets had been renamed and repaved in rainbow-colored bricks. I only had one day to navigate the city, and by the time I figured out which street was which (oh, okay...Walton is now called St. Cunningham's, and all the bricks are pink) it was time to catch my bus back to London. I didn't have time to visit any of my old favorite spots.

I like my crazy dreams. I love waking up in the morning with what seems like a novel's-worth of strange new material in my brain. I even love boring people with the details of my weird dreams (sorry!). I know no one cares what I dreamed about, but I can't resist sharing.

Strangely, I haven't had any delivery-room dreams yet. They were pretty common when I was pregnant with Charlotte. Perhaps this reflects my lower level of anxiety about the delivery of baby #2.

I hope to put together a video of Charlotte sometime this week. Watch for it here!

In brief:

Today, according to my pregnancy calendar, I have reached the 14th week of pregnancy. This is the first day I've gone without my anti-nausea meds, and...I feel good. Almost normal. Hooray!

And this from Jeff:

Charlotte: I LOVE SANDWICHES!
Jeff: You like sandwiches. You love me. And mama and Baby Jesus and the baby in mama’s tummy and –
C: and baseball games!
J: Well…right. And baseball games.
C: And the sky! And strollers.

So, I haven't written here in some time. Several times I've opened up the new post screen in blogger, typed that exact sentence, and then sat, waiting for the muse to descend. Usually, instead, Charlotte came to me begging for another reading from one of her new "monkey George" books, or for some chocolate (whispered in hushed, reverent tones), or just to demonstrate inarguably that she is, indeed, two now by crying and collapsing into a heap.

Seriously, that last one happens all the time. Is this common two-year-old behavior? I can understand the collapsing weepies in response to someone cruelly thwarting her demands, but often she turns into a quivering heap of snot and tears over absolutely nothing. I remember feeling that way as a teenager. Is two the new teen?

I've begun coming up with creative ways to deal with her little "spells." A couple days ago I took a picture of her every time she started crying. This would either cause her to cry harder ("No, don't take a picture, mama!") or stop her ("I see the picture, mama?"). I got some good shots. I might make these her new wallet photos, as they seem like the most accurate representation of Charlotte as a two-year-old.

It's becoming more real to me that we'll be adding another kid into the mix here sometime mid-January. I mean, I've had several weeks to come to grips with this news, but it was the ultrasound last week that finally flipped the "a-ha" switch. I don't know what I was expecting when I went into the ultrasound. "Oh, looks like you're not pregnant after all...it's just sea monkeys!" You'd think the crippling nausea for the last two months would have been indication enough. But seeing the little alien-headed sprog pop up there on the screen, kicking away and grabbing the umbilical cord, was apparently all I needed to really, truly realize I'm going to be a mother of two.

So I've started thinking less of Charlotte as the center-of-the-universe, one-and-only-child that she's been around here, and started imagining how she'll be with a sibling to deflect some of her glory. One big thing I wonder is how Kid 2.0 will differ from Charlotte. Will he/she be a big baby like Charlotte was? Will this one sleep (please, God)? Will the second child be as bizarrely verbal as Charlotte is?

See, we tend to think of Charlotte as just the way kids are, since she's our only model at this point. Then we get together with other parents of kids of similar age and realize: Oh, Charlotte's not quite as adventurous as some other kids. Whoa, none of these other kids speak in complex, full sentences. Wait, your two-year-old falls asleep ON HIS OWN? (Cue tears [mine]).

Speaking of complex sentences: I continue to struggle with insomnia. I'm trying to get to bed, lights out, earlier, but most nights find me tossing and turning, cursing my crazy-legs, until the wee hours of the morning. Last night I was in bed incredibly early for me, but right as I was drifting off, Miss C woke up. After I got her back to sleep, it took me a couple hours to get there myself.

So then this morning Jeff got up with Charlotte when she woke up so I could get a little more sleep. She wasn't terribly happy about this arrangement, but she snuck into my room to wish me well, anyway. "Hello, mama! Have a good morning! Have some nice dreams!" Jeff and I looked at each other like, what did she say? Belatedly, I called after her, "Thanks, honey!"

I'll try to be better about posting here, but we've got some crazy weeks coming up soon, so it might still be sporadic. No promises!