Eleven weeks.

I wonder if any harm can come from eating too many parsnips. Not raw ones, but cooked ones. If I could have a whole bowl of soup broth with parsnips right now, I'd be perfectly happy.

This has been a pregnancy of strange cravings. Carrot cake one day, tom yum the next. Super spicy, super fresh, I flip-flop back and forth. I'm heading out of the first trimester, and I'm thankful for it. I love the second trimester because it's the one where you start to actually feel pregnant, rather than only queasy and crazy. You begin to feel the baby move, and ever after, you have a small friend who accompanies you wherever you go, whether you am are lost in a new neighborhood, or buying a bag of ice from the ice seller.

And yet there is something special about the wild first trimester, from that first heady stripe on the pregnancy test to the dangerous look you get in your eye when your Superstar husband crosses the invisible line from joking around to provoking the wrath of a pregnant woman.

Here are a couple of pregnancy related lists, simply to commemorate this undeniably special time:

Things that make me feel as though I'm going to throw up:

1. Morning

2. An empty stomach

3. Fish in the market, especially the chopping block where all the scales are.

4. Dead frogs in little bags in the market.

5. Meat in the market, especially the piles I can't identify.

6. Loud noises.

7. The moment after my stomach is full but there is still food on the table.

8. My fridge, no matter how clean it is.

9. The dead gecko that was under my sink a few weeks ago.

10. Vegetables, but not always.

11. Anything slightly wilted.

12. Fake flowers and ruffled curtains.

13. Dried fish in the market, including the smoked fish.

You could say that the whole market experience has been very interesting, these last few weeks. I walk through quickly, trying to only look at the tables where I know there are no unidentified piles of meat or fish, but Solo insists on looking for frogs and bugs and staring at the fish eyes staring at him, so sometimes it's unavoidable.

Life, especially life in the kitchen, feels like an exercise of extreme willpower. I will cook this food, and then I will eat it, and I will not run from the thai basil because it's slightly wilted.

And then there are the emotions.

Things that have made me cry, TODAY.

1. A picture of my dear friend Leaf, singing at her own small concert far away, in Australia. The tears were not of sadness. They came to my eyes because she is the loveliest person I've ever seen or known, and she was singing.

2. I listened to this podcast and I must have cried for twenty minutes afterwards. I think it was the combination of talk about creativity and the drive to create, talk about difficulties in the brain and illness, the sad but beautiful story, and the husband of the woman spoken of in the podcast, who was from Vancouver and had an older man's Canadian accent. I know! A lot can set me off, these days.

3. This video, which made me cry like a baby, it struck me as that beautiful. Why? I really don't know.

4. A man talking to his little girl, who was riding on the front of his scooter.

5. Sunshine and all the white flowers under our tree.

I'm thankful that every tear today was over something that was lovely or emotive. I don't mind being emotional if it means that I love beautiful things more.