What's new, what's new....

Cravings have turned from the sour to the sweet. I think that pretty much blows any attempts at gender prediction by old wives' tales. And I made lemon meringue pie to please both cravings.

The last time I made lemon meringue pie I was 11 and the lemon didn't set. But this time, with an extra lemon's worth of juice and a lot of whisking, the filling was perfect and smooth and tart. So go me. The meringue was kind of pulling away from the filling on the edges though, so I have to figure out how to remedy that.

I'm kind of surprised to find my nausea has gotten worse, rather then better, as we enter the 2nd trimester. I was really looking forward to not being grossed out by every smell that comes my way, especially any leftovers Ryan is eating, the amazing chicken and wild rice soup I made (which was incredible the first night, but putrd-to me-the next), and random, untraceable odors that nobody else smells. I have become a bloodhound.

We've officially booked our trip to Paris, we'll leave KC Aug. 21, arrive in Paris the 22 and head home the 29th. I'm going to plan out most of our days, but leave two for random exploring and wandering about. I've made a list of what we want to see, which district it is in, and how many euros it costs, so I should be able to organize our days pretty well. A family friend lived in Paris for a few years, and she's giving me more suggestions than I can keep up with. But it should be a blast.

We are probably not going to the top of Eiffel tower, because online info says it takes a half a day of waiting in line, and Ryan (who loves to climb tall buildings and stare off them), thought that sounded tedious and awful. I wanted to take a short cooking class at Cordon Bleu (a recommendation from said friend), but the only one during our stay is the morning we arrive. Ryan is relieved, as cooking on his vacation, regardless of where it is, sounds miserable to him. Whereas I would be perfectly thrilled to take a two hour class on sauces.

We are going to spend the day at Versailles, which will include a big fat tour (in English), lunch, and transportation there and back (it's outside Paris). And, the best part of all, a friend of mine has an excellent camera (which I used to shoot my brother-in-laws wedding), and, for the price of gifts of booze and (in his dreams) Cuban cigars, he is letting me take it out of the country. So there will be more pictures than you can imagine. I'll probably be posting an album of 200 on google every night.

I'll be 18 weeks when we go, so there will probably be some tummy in the pictures. It's unlikely we'll know the gender by then, but I'm hoping to find a cute souvenir for the baby. And another pendant for my necklace (which so far has an ionic column with my name in Greek, and a cartouche with my name in Mayan). I'd like to find an Eiffel tower with my name in...essentially English.

If you can't tell, I'm a little excited. It's been about a year since we went to Mexico and my travel bug is getting pretty itchy.