Beans, beans, good for your uterus...

(I hope you think my rhyme is humorous!)

As we are now in week 8, I've got the kidney-bean baby! Not only does the baby resemble a kidney bean in size (a little less than .75") but it's got that characteristic bean shape we all know and love in a fetus!

That tail we were talking about has now almost disappeared. Eyelids are forming, limbs are getting longer, and we even have knee joints by now.

Early pregnancy time wasting activity #1:
My lack of symptoms has (of course) caused me to spend endless hours scouring the internet for other people who are NOT barfing their guts up all day, who don't want to ravenously eat everything they see, and who can still fit into their old pants. All this time-wasting has actually proven valuable though, as I've found I'm not at all alone! Many women get NO 'morning sickness' and go on to have happy and healthy babies. And if this is a first time pregnancy, there may be little-to-no outward sign that there's something going on in the lower abdomen. (Women who have already had babies have loosened up those muscles, and may show much sooner.) Weight gain in the first trimester may be as little as one pound, or some women even find they lose weight from eating more healthily.

I do have the unfortunate symptom of being not hungry...not hungry...not hungry...RAVENOUS!!!!! And then when I go to look for something to eat *nothing* seems even remotely appealing. So I've been trying to grab a piece of fruit or a little something with protein when that happens.

The more I read about it, the more I realize I am just having the "normal" amount of anxiety. I feel *less* anxious, but I know I won't feel much better until Thursday.

Early pregnancy time wasting activity #2:
What color will the baby's eyes be?

I found two very nice "calculators" online. (Do I have to say "For Entertainment Purposes Only"?)

The first is a very simple one, and was created by Athro, Ltd:

Inheriting Eye Color
It's fun without getting too "science-y" and lets you see the averages if you just keep clicking "Produce Child." (Careful - before I knew it, I had about 30 children!)

The second one LOOKS to be a really nice tool, but I can't get it to calculate. (It seems to have lost the server to which it's supposed to connect.) I sent an email to the company that created it to let them know its broken so they can either repair or remove it. (It's posted seemingly everywhere on the "mommy-net" and it doesn't really make them look good as a company if the thing they created doesn't work!) Here it is for reference, and I'll post an update if I hear back from them.

What Color Eyes Would Your Children Have? by Ideum

The problem with ALL of these is that we have no idea what color eyes Craig's parents had (have) as he is adopted. And Craig's got a really interesting eye color to begin with as well: not quite hazel, not quite green, or brown... Wikipedia described the color fairly accurately as "amber."

Interesting factoid: (most) Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes. Why?

The color of your irises is determined by melanin. Melanin is the same protein that determines the color of your skin and whether you tan well or not. It's reactive to ultraviolet light, and how much you get is coded in your genes. When you are born, the melanin has not been fully deposited in the irises and has not yet reacted to ultraviolet light, hence the light-colored eyes. Most babies develop their eye color by about 6 months, but eye color can change over the course of one's life.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see like everyone else!

Future time-waster: baby hair color