Lunch

Today a colleague of mine took me out to lunch to wish me good luck on maternity leave. He works for the CDC, so we don't see each other too often, but meet on a weekly (disastrous) teleconference with a team of about twenty million people.

We had an incredibly pleasant meal, sitting outside and soaking up the first rays of spring.


The remarkable element of the whole lunch was the lack of one topic of conversation: the baby. For the first time in about two months, I made it through an entire event without someone asking if I'm ready for the baby, or what I've done to prepare, or how I'm feeling about motherhood. As I walked back to the office, I thought about how much I appreciated this little reprieve. Obviously all I can think about these days is this little one about to make her debut. But it felt good to talk about work and other elements of life for just a little bit this afternoon.

Sunshine Returns!

It's a promising start!

38-Week Baby Bump!

Okay, this is a little gross since it is from my work bathroom, but with no full-length mirror at home and no gym this week, my options were limited!

The Opposite of Blerg

Just one more day...

Weekend Developments

This weekend, my dad and brother joined Michael and I to face the floods of New York City. They came up to visit on Thursday, just in time to witness the craziest, rainiest, windiest, wettest weather we've had in quite some time. Simultaneously, on Saturday, we lost heat and warm water and gained a couple of leaks in our roof. Despite these major handicaps, my dad and brother - ever the relaxed gentlemen, kept a positive attitude, laughed as umbrellas flipped and pants got soaked.

We had a very nice visit - one we had hoped would be marked by the arrival of our little girl, but wasn't. We spent a lot of time sitting in warm restaurants, eating delicious food, and in a theater, enjoying some mindless entertainment. It was thrilling to see my dad so excited for his first grandbaby, sharing his enthusiasm with folks at the movie theater, at Home Depot, and a restaurant or two. Witnessing this kind of love we already share for our little lady makes Michael and I so thrilled for her birth.

Henry is getting ready to graduate from college, and every time he visits, I press him to move up to New York. I love spending time with him, with his relaxed, easy-going manner and nerdy enthusiasm for biology and (occasionally) history. My dream is to have him in the City, somewhere close by where we can meet for tea or coffee, where we can host him for a weekly dinner, where he can get to know his niece and she can know him. There is the slightest possibility that he will make his way up here after graduation. I'm holding out hope...

In the meantime, Dad and I compared stomachs this weekend - Dad is in red, I'm in white. Who's winning??:

Weight Gain

My effort this morning to plump up our little one:

Blerg

The 37-Week Melt Down

Well, it finally happened. I had my hormone-induced (please, Lord, let that have been hormone-induced) pregnancy melt down. Yesterday, while walking around and making my way through our typical Sunday routine, I heard from many a stranger about what I can and can't do because I'm pregnant, about how pregnant I really look, about how much labor is going to hurt, about how my life will change when the baby arrives. At the farmers market, when the seven millionth woman looked at me, asked me when I'm due, pointed to her loud, obnoxious kids and said, "Good luck. It's crazy," my flip switched. I came home, laid down on our bed, and started crying. Hysterically crying. Ugly, gasping-for-air crying.

Michael immediately came to my side to start comforting me, and in about three minutes we were both laughing at how ridiculous these tears were (okay, maybe closer to five minutes...). Our lives are certainly about to be upended, but as Michael keeps reminding me, it will be fun! And we'll have a little one to share the insanity with!

I feel insanely big now, and pretty uncomfortable. I'm ready for this little girl to come on out and meet the world. She's officially full-term, which is thrilling. Of course, our doctors office doesn't induce until you are 42-weeks along, which is still FIVE weeks away. That is utterly terrifying. But I'm hoping she decides to join us sooner, rather than later, now that she's done baking and is focused on getting big.

So here's me at 37-weeks:

And, when I finally dried my eyes and calmed down yesterday, I realized Michael was making headway on the baby's room! He washed all our baby supplies, so they are ready to cloth and comfort our girl. And he got our crib all set up to look like this:


It doesn't get much cuter!

Dreaming

Can we go back here????

Preparations

Well, this baby's arrival is within sight! We have less than one month to go - at least, that's what we're hoping (26 days until her due date). Michael and I spent this weekend preparing, just in case she arrives early. We now have a mattress for the crib, diaper wipes, onesies, an adorable dress from BabyGap, an infant car seat and all the trimmings that we can anticipate. I'm still on the lookout for a good sling (any suggestions?), and the hospital bag needs to be packed, but we're doing pretty darn well, overall.

And now it's nearly impossible to think about anything else. We have baby things throughout the apartment - books on sleep training and making our little one the happiest of them all, strollers in the hallways, diapers in the living room, and her bedroom littered with supplies. Because of my size, it's now impossible to do any task without being reminded how very pregnant I am, as getting up and down, walking after being stationary, even being stationary, induces some discomfort somewhere.

I have an insane amount to get done at work before this baby arrives. This type of transition is such a difficult one. I need to stay committed and focused to get things done, but I also need to start letting go, should I have to leave work tomorrow. I am so grateful to my job and my colleagues - they are all so excited and supportive.

Oh, baby girl, we can't wait to meet you!

36-Week Baby Bump!

Gettin' lovely before dinner at Blue Hill with John & Anna.

For Example

Love on All Sides

We're in the midst of a week when Michael and I bask in love from all sides.

I won't do justice to the emotions of the week, but the events have included two baby showers, a night of poker, a communal birthday gift, and a lot of good will. I can't quite wrap my head around all the love that has been poured over us - from my colleagues, my friends, Michael's friends, our New York family. I just know how overwhelmingly grateful I am for it.

More details soon, but I just had to share the love!

35-Week Baby Bump!

Just So Sad

Really?????? We can't be bothered to eat fruit?! This just makes me so sad.

Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day!

This morning, Michael and I woke early to enjoy our usual Sunday morning routine. He has already begun the trip downtown to attend our favorite gym classes of the week. Michael will take 2 classes, and I'll stick with one. While the first hour of a Sunday always leaves us wondering why we are wasting weekend mornings to wake so early, by 10:45 am, when we're both good and sweaty, we're grateful for the routine. After the gym, we'll pick up a Subway sandwich for my lunch and then park ourselves at Chipotle to read the Sunday paper and eat. Then we'll walk to our favorite bookstore, visit with our friends and head back uptown for a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

And today is Valentine's day! I already feel like I have 2 valentines to celebrate - Michael & our little lady. We're now officially in count-down mode. Sleep has become more difficult, and my body aches almost constantly now. The baby is 34-weeks now, and in just 3 more, she'll be full-term! I'm still trying to convince myself that she'll be born in early April (her due date is March 27th), but it's hard to not dream that she'll be a little early. Yesterday, as Michael and I talked about plans for visitors after she's born, we both started getting anxious, realizing how soon our lives will be turned upside down.

It's a pretty thrilling enterprise, this having-a-child business. I'm tired of worrying about how our lives will change, how our marriage will shift, how my professional life will upend. I'm really tired of people telling me how I'll never be prepared for these realities, how I'm going to be "SO TIRED," how hard the first few months are. I'm ready to go for it now! I guess this is the beauty of a 40-week growth process - we're given time to anticipate, to mentally prepare, before getting thrown in.

Because this baby girl is getting bigger, her movements are much more visible. My stomach is right out of Alien when she's active and awake. Last night, while reading, she was jumping and running so powerfully that I had to just put down my book and watch. She's already amusing me! Our lovely little girl, how excited we are to see you!

Does it get much better than this? Surrounded by love on all sides. Sharing my life - and soon another's - with a wonderful husband. Building a family together.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Topics I've Been Thinking About

I've wanted to write posts lately about the following things:

• Commuting;
• My addiction to technology;
• How nice people can be to pregnant ladies;
• Obama's State of the Union;
• Obama's exchange with the Republicans;
  
• Priorities.

But time didn't allow. Perhaps sometime soon! In the meantime, here are some great articles that I enjoyed recently:

• The State of the Union is Comatose by Frank Rich;
• Camus Fired Up by Maureen Dowd;
• Adults Only, Please by Thomas Friedman;
  

Heart

I know the picture is cheesy, but here's 10 seconds of our baby's heart beating from my last doctor's appointment!

33-Week Baby Bulge!

Zen

Do you want to know one of the most relaxing sounds Michael and I enjoy in our new apartment?

The cries of seagulls.

We are only 2 blocks from the Hudson River, and we often hear seagulls crying out as we eat breakfast in the morning. It's such a shock, living in the City, to hear birds, let alone ones you associate with warm summer days at the beach. Lovely.

32 Week Baby Bulge!

View from Above

It's COLD but beautiful out there!

Should vs. Will

Right now, I should be baking some cookies. Or making some dinner. Or cleaning a counter top or two. Or writing some emails I owe. Or calling some friends whom I miss. Or walking on a treadmill to get that heart rate up.

And instead I'm sitting quietly. I am about to turn my brain off in front of the TV and await my husband's return home. I am not going to get to any of these chores tonight.

Lately, I think both Michael & I have been feeling a little Manhattan Malaise. We haven't left the city in quite some time, and have no definite plans to do so in the near future. We just went through one period of serious change and are preparing for yet another. I'm about to celebrate two years at my current job, one I love tremendously but sometimes get tired of. I told Michael yesterday that we need to go do something fun - go away for the weekend, or run off to see a movie on a random weeknight (daring, isn't it?), or just spice up the routine somehow.

And yet much of this malaise is from not having our routines. We still don't have our patterns set for taking walks and enjoying the neighborhood and doing all those fun things that we had settled on in our old neighborhood. We're still in transition, but a quieter form of it.

Questions

Will it ever be warm again?

How lucky am I?

Today We Are Responsible Parents

Today, Michael and I were responsible parents. We purchased life insurance!

For whatever reason, this task seemed beyond obnoxious to me. It's that perfect combination of thinking about your own mortality (and that of your beloved spouse), of spending a lot of money on something you hope to never need, of seeing how little your life is "worth," and of working through brokers who want to sell you more than you need. What made this task a little more... tedious for me was the way in which our MetLife agent treated me. In very small ways, he acted like I was the weaker, less intelligent spouse. While we filled out paperwork this morning, he deferred all financial questions to Michael and assumed I wasn't working. He was kind, but very old fashioned, I guess.

Anyway, this was one of those things I really dreaded doing, but feel proud of us for getting done. We're insured!!

I Love NY

Thoughts on Pregnancy

Well, this little baby is now 30-weeks along! We are three-quarters of the way through this pregnancy, and incredibly grateful for the relative ease of it. Now, as the baby grows bigger and bigger and the physical demands of the pregnancy get harder on me, I've been thinking about all the benefits of it that I will miss once our girl is here. And they are...

1. My belly!

2. Almost always getting a seat on the train.

3. How nice strangers are to me now, telling me how good I look and asking when I'm due. I tell ya, New Yorkers are kind to pregnant women!

4. Play time with my baby. I love that she is always with me now, and that she'll have a kicking fit in the middle of a work day. Her active times feel like play times for me, and I love that I can enjoy those throughout the day. I know how much I miss Michael when I'm at work. I can't imagine how much I'm going to miss my baby.

5. Guilt-free eating! Oh Snickers bars! I think the last time I ate a whole snickers bar before this pregnancy was in high school. I've had too many to count in the last 20 weeks or so. They are so delicious...

6. Always feeling good when I leave the gym, just for having made it there. Even if I've only gone once the whole week, I'm still proud for making it there (rather than feeling bad about how infrequently I'm going, which is how I felt when I wasn't pregnant).

7. All the compliments and smiles I get. Love that!

So that's the start - the parts of pregnancy that I will surely miss. And the elements to hold on to as it gets harder in the home stretch!

Heads Down

For the first time in several weeks, Michael and I were able to enjoy some relaxed time together. We went for a long walk in Riverside Park, exploring new green spaces in our neighborhood. Then we meandered to Kitchenette for a hearty lunch. When we got home, Michael put his feet up and is now enjoying a late afternoon nap.


His work has been very demanding as of late, and having a stress-free afternoon together was just what the doctor ordered.

30-Week Baby Bulge!

An Afternoon Break

Thinking of Brighter Days

29-Week Baby Buldge!

Grown Up

In the six years since I moved to New York, I have lived in two apartments furnished with dining room tables. I lived in these apartments for a combined total of seven months. For the rest of the time, I have had to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in my lap. If you think about it, tables (for all their conveniences) require serious amounts of space. And so most of us living in tiny apartments forgo this luxury.

In our last apartment, once our dear friend Nicky graciously handed down his coffee table to us, we managed to eat hovering somewhere between the couch and the coffee table. This required a hunched posture, and almost inevitably lead to eating quickly and, well, heartburn. Michael and I grew to really hate this about our apartment - that we simply had no room for a place to eat like humans.

Now we do! On Saturday, Ikea delivered our brand new dining room table (and four chairs to boot!). Michael and I enjoyed our first meal around our table tonight, and it was heavenly. This feels like progress...

The Met

The Met highlights a piece of artwork from its permanent collection on its website daily. I've been enjoying these lately. None have been earth-shattering, but they have been quite lovely pieces of artwork. Today's is particularly pretty, so I thought I'd share!

Winslow Homer (1836–1910)
"Northeaster"
1895

No, It Isn't Alien...

It's my baby girl kickin'! Most of the activity happens right at the very beginning of the video and then about 18-seconds in on the right side of my stomach. All that bumping isn't gas... it's the baby!

Book It 2009!

So I know I'm behind on this, but Melissa made it okay for me to post this list in 2010 here.

Michael had an amazing year with books, as he described here. But I must say, I didn't. I read a lot of bad books (the worst of the worst: "And Then We Came to the End" and "Him Her Him Again The End of Him"). That said, there were definitely some highlights. Barbara Kingsolver defined my literary year. I read three of her books this year; two of the three made it to my top 5. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" inspired me through the end of winter this past year, encouraging me to eat locally, grow my own food (which I actually did this summer), and to move to a farm in the mountains of Virginia. I think it will be one of the best books I've ever read, simply for the way it inspired me. And I'm currently reading The Lacuna (Kingsolver's most recent) and loving it!

So my top 5 from 2009:
5. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
4. Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
3. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
1. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Bed

Today is the second day I've been stuck at home, trying to get over this monsterous cold. For whatever reason, when I get sick, I get SICK. I'm usually out of work for four days or so and stuck at home. This time is particularly irksome because I feel like time out of the office will translate into time away from my baby girl - these sick days I'm eating up are reducing my maternity leave. That said, I know I need to keep her healthy now, so that she joins us just when and as she should.


As riveting as this must be to read about, it's pretty much all I have to share. I have been enjoying the views from our apartment, Barbara Kingsolver's new book, and lots of episodes of "Law & Order: SVU." Oh and the new sparkling "juice" (ie soda) from Duane Reade!

Karaoke

Just after Christmas, my cousin and her husband came to visit - and it was a blast! We had a great time, traveling around our neighborhood, checking out the Rockefeller Christmas tree, enjoying fancy cheeses & some dumplings and ending the night with some serious karaoke. Of course, alcohol was consumed throughout (by those who could). It was great having such good friends in town - and just made me wish we all lived closer together.

Things I'm Loving

Here are some of the things I'm loving about our new apartment:

Our QUEEN sized bed, complete with a lamp and a nightstand!

Everything about our bathroom! It's bright, clean, and has a tub!

We have a pantry! That has room for my cookbooks!

The freezer actually has a shelf large enough to hold something!
And I can buy Breyers again, because it is $2 cheaper in this neighborhood!

At our wedding, we received four ice cream bowls just like these. But our last apartment was too small, so we kept them in McLean. Now, Michael and I use these almost every night!

There are other things that perhaps I'll blog about at another time. But these are the things I'm really loving today.

Today

Today I woke up with a cold. Going to bed last night, I felt the beginnings of something rough. I tossed and turned a fair amount last night. And now it's official - I'm down with something.

When I called the doctor's office, they told me a few exciting things:

1. I don't have gestational diabetes! And - almost better - I don't have to take the full, 3-hour glucose tolerance test!
2. I don't have anemia! Yay!
3. I can take Sudafed!
4. It's going to take me a lot longer to get healthy now that I'm pregnant! Oh wait...

I'm relieved that I can take something, although now that I am at home with the meds, I'm really torn about whether or not to take it. Silly right?

Hanging Out with Naomi

28-week Baby Bulge!

Yesterday we officially entered the third trimester!

2010

Happy New Year! Michael and I have enjoyed a quiet, relaxing day - waking only to go back to sleep, reading quietly, watching TV, eating home-cooked food. I ventured out for a walk around our new neighborhood around 3, and it just felt nice to stretch my legs for no reason other than to enjoy being outdoors. I didn't have a destination in mind, but just meandered for a bit. I ended up walking home through Riverside Park - beautiful.



2009 was a strange year for our household, dominated largely by work. Of course, the highlight was finding out about our beautiful baby girl. Others included a week at Rehoboth with my mom and brother, visits with family in Virginia, Florida and New York, and weekend getaways with just me and my man.

2010 has so much in store for us! God willing, we'll bring home a baby girl! My brother will graduate college! My mom will move back to the States! Our professional lives will progress! And we'll continue to make this new apartment our home.

One of the life changes I worry about when thinking about becoming a mom is just feeling constantly stressed and never feeling present anywhere. Balancing work and family will be more difficult than I can even imagine yet. But today, during my slow and enjoyable walk around the neighborhood, I saw glimpses of how I hope we can find peace with our little family. It's going to be the challenge of 2010, but well worth it.