is this what they mean when they say "we want a pitcher, not a belly itcher"?

Oh the things a belly can do. Mrs nice guy is not only impressively grand in size and scope, but her stomach does tricks now! As her belly grows and grows (and grows) (and also it grows), it moves! It changes color! It itches! It turns its navel inside out!

I am honestly considering renting her out for parties. Seriously, we need the cash. First, the itching: like a drum, her skin is expanding to enfold the baby burrito in its custom-fit epidermis tortilla. Yum. As it expands, the skin stretches--not unlike dead goat skin stretched over a snare drum--and as a result, it apparently itches. A lot. Alas, there is no benefit here because, unlike a snare drum, I am not supposed to pound on the skin with wooden sticks. Believe me, I've tried. and worse: poor mrs nice guy walks around digging her nails into her gut at every surreptitious moment she gets.

BUT! the baby is allowed to bang the hell out of the skin all it wants, apparently. Sure, it lives inside my wife and all, but here's the thing: I don't like this preferential treatment. The baby kicks so hard that you can LITERALLY SEE MY WIFE'S SHIRT MOVE. So awesome to visualize her in meetings with clients while her chemise is doing the cabbage patch. But the problem here is that I'm not allowed to pound on her itchy drum-tight tummy, but the kid (who, I will add, is MUCH younger and has a MUCH less developed sense of rhythm than me) is. Not. Fair.

That's ok, though, because not having a television that actually picks up anything as useful as television signals, I have nothing else to watch. So I watch her belly move. And change colors. Mrs nice guy now has a racing stripe running down the middle of her gut. it is a 'linea nigra,' which sounds like a tasty cerveza to order along with your babyskin burrito. But it's not. It's a dark line. That runs right down her stomach. Like a racing stripe or a vertical equator. It's the happiest of happy trails, is what it is. Apparently women with darker pigmentation get this a lot. However. a little research on the internets turned up this not-terrifying-at-all-enigmatic-factoid about the linea nigra: "Cancerous change of gestational trophoblastic disease. See gestational trophoblastic disease." Ah yes, trophoblastic disease. Obviously nothing to worry about at all. After all, who hasn't had their trophos blasted from time to time?

Jesus, I am not cut out for this.