Thankful (19 Weeks)

             Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today marks 19 weeks, along with the day that we Americans traditionally gather and give thanks for our family, friends, good food, a roof over our heads, and jobs we either love or hate, but still provide us with the all important bread and butter.  This year, the motions were not much different than in the recent past.  I got up this morning, had my coffee (Ok, only one small little cup this year...fine) looked through some Black Friday sales ads, and then got to work on my contribution to the Smith family feast. This year it was sweet potatoes, and I threw in an impromptu cranberry curd meringue tart for good measure.
             However, as I worked my way through the ingredients and made piles of dishes (yet to be washed) in the sink and kept looking at the clock realizing I'd waited just a little too late to start, I had in the back of my mind the notion that there was someone else along for the ride this year.  Someone who is currently causing me to tie my apron strings a little looser.  I'm nearly to the halfway marker of this pregnancy, and while it feels every bit of 19 weeks some days, there are moments when I realize it's flying by, and before I know it I will be the mother a baby in my own arms.  People ask how I'm feeling, people ask if they can touch the belly, people want to know if I can feel the baby moving or if we know the sex yet (well...most of the time people ask if we know the "gender", which bugs me the grammarian in me, because gender is really a set of characteristics that are socially constructed to distinguish male from female, and sex is the biological distinction of genetic traits which makes one physiologically male or female...but I digress).  And all of those things are fun, outward markers of the idea that I am in fact, gestating a future human being that will join the world in give or take another 20 weeks, but they don't really come close to the thoughts or feelings I have about this process or about becoming a mother.  I don't need to write those all out here, good lord there's still 4.5 months for that, but I do want to express that Thanksgiving just feels different this year. Better. Because while I've always been thankful for the things mentioned above, it's also really easy to take them for granted at times. But this year, I am truly in awe of the amazing thing happening in my own body, and knowing that in a few short months I will be the mother of my very first child.  Matt will be my baby's father.  That blows every other Thanksgiving out of the water. I'm thankful for a healthy first half of my pregnancy. I'm thankful for a job with flexible and understanding coworkers who have picked up a little slack when I just haven't been able to some days.  I'm thankful for a husband who cares deeply for me and the child we are going to bring into the world in April.  I'm thankful for my mother offering space in her home to us so that we can truly get started on the right foot after baby is here.  I'm just thankful for the opportunity to fulfill the most prominent goal in my life - becoming a mother.  I feel full of promise this Thanksgiving, like the feelings I have now will only continue to grow and multiply and expand along with my belly.

I hope you all have something special on your mind this year, however big or small.  Happy Thanksgiving, my friends and family.