Weekend in Philly

This past weekend I went to Philadelphia for my friend Bridget's Bachelorette extravaganza. I'm not going to make it to her wedding (it's about 2 weeks after my due date) so I wanted to make sure to make it to as many events that I can. I go to Philadelphia quite a bit to visit Jami and Jessica and stay in their amazing apartment/house. Since I am now 7 1/2 months pregnant, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be the life of the party but I knew no matter what I would have a lot of fun with all of my best friends from high school. Jessica let me borrow a shirt that was too big for her that had ruffles down the front so that I wouldn't look entirely too ridiculous out at the bars.

We started the evening at Jami and Jessica's with a lingerie clothesline for the bride-to-be and lots of cheese and cake. We moved on in a limo bus (LB for short) to a delicious Mexican restaurant and left with a Luchador mask that everyone took turns wearing throughout the night at the various bars and dance clubs we went to. I made it for most of the night but decided to depart at the last club where it was crowded and hot and I was beginning to get bumped into a little too much. I was sad to say goodbye since I think it was the last time a) that I'll be in Philly before the baby is born and b) out for a big girls' night for a long time. Congrats to Bridget and Conor!

The blushing bride-to-be:

Baby Gear for Small Spaces

I have a new article up at Better Parenting on baby gear options for small apartments.

Baby Gear for Small Spaces

Cowboy boots for our half-Texan

Cash's boots arrived in the mail from BabyGap today. As you can see, a bit smaller in scale compared to his dad's.

Thankfully, St. Vincents is a short distance away...

Well if this isn't the ultimate NYC pregnant lady nightmare then I don't know what is:

Woman gives birth in NYC cab

New Daily Mantra: I will not give birth in a cab, I will not give birth in a cab, if I have to give birth in a cab it better be one of those nice small SUV ones.

www.betterparenting.com

Just wanted to let everyone know out there that I've started writing for a new website:

www.betterparenting.com

A high school friend of mine recently started this website and it's a great resource for questions and advice on pregnancy, childhood, family finances, etc. My first article is on exercise during pregnancy and it's up on the homepage now so check it out!

Mission Accomplished!

The Ikea mission that is. Last night Ross and I ventured out to Red Hook again (this time using the complimentary shuttle) and we came back with bellies full of swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce and a changing table! In black and white like we wanted! Sometimes it's the small things that make a person very very excited...

Pregnancy Dreams

I've never been one to sit and analyze my dreams. Maybe that is because I don't have many. Ross wakes up most mornings and tells me about some crazy dream he had (usually involving me trying to kill him or something equally pleasant) and then asks me what I dreamed about and I say "nothing, I think." Either I can't remember them or I go functionally brain dead at night. So when I got pregnant, I figured I would skip the whole crazy pregnancy dreams symptom and for the most part I have. Of the dreams I can remember in the past few months, most of them involve me falling from the sky, usually from a hot air balloon. However last night, I had a pretty crazy dream, directly related to the pregnancy, and I hope it's not a sign of things to come.

Basically the dream involved me being 7 months pregnant, like I am now, and my doctor telling me that they were going to have to do a C-Section the next morning because my abdominal muscles were so tight that Cash didn't have enough room to grow and it was making Cash "nervous". Then the doctor tells me that it is important not to have a nervous baby because they will then come out with high anxiety and that would make my life hell. So it was best to get him out now and not make him more nervous then he already was. Obviously I was very upset about this but ultimately agreed that I did not want a nervous baby. I woke up before the C-Section actually happened.

Since I don't really know much about dream analysis I really have no idea what this could mean, but here are my general thoughts:
1) I am currently reading the book The Happiest Baby on the Block which details a method for preventing/reducing colic in infants. Perhaps my constant reading about nightmare children is making me fear that I will have one of my own and that no amount of swaddling or vigorous swaying will help.
2) Instead of my baby being nervous, I am more nervous about this whole motherhood thing then I am aware.
3) I subconciously hold my ab muscles in the highest regard and believe I have a six pack.

Who knows? I'll keep updating any other dreams I have and maybe they will form a pattern. For now, I will continue to be zen about this motherhood thing and keep my stress level low to try to prevent the dreaded nervous baby.

28 week belly shot - Hello Third Trimester!

And now I am huge. Here I am, right before Ross's birthday dinner at Hill Country Texas BBQ, and I look like I've already eaten an entire cow. While I'm excited to be at 7 months, I'm also starting to get pretty uncomfortable. Sleeping is not the same, walking is not the same, and Ross actually asked me if I needed to take a break the other day after we came up the stairs from the subway. Cash must be getting big and strong because he is kicking up a storm on most days. I'm getting to the point where I can see my belly actively move around when he gets his groove on and I'm hoping to catch it on video someday soon. Ross also decided that he wanted to get in on the belly shots this month so here is the birthday boy is all his glory:



Ross is actually actively losing weight as part of a bet with our friend Chad so...whatever. He looks good though.

Weight Gain: +20...ugh.

Belly Size: We are moving into basketball territory and it feels about as heavy.

Cravings: I'm back to eating sliced mango along with yogurt covered peanuts, wasabi peas, Smart Start cereal and ice cream. Basically if I could forgo meals in favor of most of these things, I would be very happy.

Beaba Babycook!

Ross's coworker and friend Chris surprised us with an early baby gift the other day and I was ecstatic. It's the Beaba Babycook and while I continually lusted after it with each new Williams-Sonoma catalog that came in the mail, I didn't really expect to get one. I had thought that I would do my best to make my own baby food when the time came, using our stove top and the tiny food processor we own, but in reality I knew it was probably a lost cause. Now though, I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to do more cooking on my own. The Beaba lets you cook, mash up, and eventually defrost all the food you make in one apparatus. Minimal clean up is key in a small apartment and the Beaba always seemed like the way to go.

The Beaba also came with a tiny recipe book divided up by the age of the baby. While most of the recipes look great, there are a few obscenely European recipes in there that look beyond foul. Whiting puree?! Really Beaba? I'm sure it is extremely nutritious but I will not be mashing up fish for my four month old to eat. Besides the fact that it just sounds unappetizing, it would smell up the entire apartment and that's just not going to happen. I'm going to have enough to contend with living with a boy and a baby.

We went all the way to the Red Hook Ikea and all we got was this stuffed bulldog

This past Sunday, Ross and I decided that it was time to check out the Ikea in Brooklyn. Specifically, Red Hook, Brooklyn. Now Red Hook is not exactly an easy place to get to. There are actually no subways in that area of the city at all. But since our friends Eoin and Erica live in Brooklyn Heights and near the Ikea bus route, we decided to venture out to the ends of the Earth and go to a proper, suburban-type store.

The reason we were going to Ikea in the first place was that we decided, after much deliberation, that we did in fact need a changing table. I wrote in an earlier post about the Ikea changing table options and we decided to go with the one that looks like a fancy luggage rack. The other one, a fold down wall bolted option, looked good as well but since we haven't had much luck in the past drilling so much as a curtain rod into our old, broke down walls, we felt safer treating the baby like a tiny suitcase. So we took the subway, and then the bus, out to the behemoth that is Ikea. Our friends had their own stuff to buy, so Ross and I were off to the Children's section, thinking that in such a large store it would be no problem to find our changing table and check out. Of course, we were wrong. We found the model of the changing table that we wanted but since it looked like it had been used as a jungle gym by the actual children in the store and was lacking a tag, we asked a friendly Ikea salesman to help us figure out the model number. So he looks up the model and.....out of stock. Ok fine, we don't care about color, we'll just take the beige option, right? Nope. Out of stock. So we spent a good hour and a half traveling out to Ikea only to be told that both options were out of stock and that they couldn't tell us when the next shipment would be coming in. We just have to keep looking it up online and then trek out there again, hoping that we get one of the available models before they are out of stock again.

I was pretty determined to not go home empty-handed so that is why we bought Winston, pictured above enjoying some tv with Ross. Ross has a big love of English bulldogs so I figured he couldn't resist this purchase (he initially put up a fight but then started carrying him around the store more than I did so I knew I had him hooked). Winston is really for Cash, but for now he's ours and resides in one of the toy bins on the bookshelf when he's not snuggling with me on the couch.

So we will keep checking the website and will eventually be making another trip out to Red Hook. This time we plan to get the swedish meatballs and hopefully a changing table.

Save St. Vincent's!

http://stvbabies.com/

Please check out this link and sign the online petition. I would like to continue to have a hospital to deliver my baby at in 3 months time and St. Vincent's is currently on the brink of financial collapse.

St. Vincent's has been an institution in New York City for 160 years and was the primary point of care during the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. Without St. Vincent's, the number of hospitals in downtown Manhattan with premiere trauma centers is effectively zero.

I picked St. Vincent's for its long history of supporting birthing centers and minimally invasive OB/Gyn practices and I'm extremely confident that I picked the best hospital at which to deliver my first child.. Hopefully my plans won't have to change...

You have a baby....in a bar?!

Ah the immortal words of Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama. Such a good movie and not just because of the completely unrealistic plotlines including but not limited to having a successful fashion design business based out of a sweet SoHo loft before the age of 30, being engaged to the Mayor's son while being able to keep your secret Southern identity under wraps, and having a gay friend in the deep South who is outed and then completely accepted with no issues or comments whatsoever. The words of her character immediately came to my mind recently when a bunch of articles popped up over a controversy brewing (bad pun) in Brooklyn over the battle of taking your baby to the bar. Apparently it is the thing to do and childless folks are having none of it as they are pushing for bars to effectively ban all things baby.

Is it surprising that New Yorkers attempt to continue on with their pre-baby life and still hang out with friends? Not really. New York is a drinking city and since living space is so small, most people primarily meet up with friends at bars. My book club has consistantly met at a bar in the past 5 years of existence - never once have we gone to anyone's apartment. Happy hour is something that happens every day of the week and brunch is a weekend institution that is rarely dry. Plus, actively encouraging a healthy drinking habit is the fact that you never, ever have to drive home. No one has to be the DD, you can stay as long as you want at a bar (always open til 4 in the morning) and never have to worry about safe travels. So why would people who have lived this way for years completely change their thinking once they have children? The article below on CNN attempts to clarify the attitudes of both the parents, and the single/childless couples cohabitating in the same city:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/03/02/brooklyn.babies.in.bars/index.html?hpt=Sbin

In my opinion, neither side of the argument particularly makes a strong case in the article. With the parents, thinking that you can go to a bar and then ask other patrons to "watch their language" around your kid is stupid at best and completely unAmerican at worst. You have no right to take your child into an adult establishment and think that other patrons will cater to you. On the other hand, if a parent takes a child into a bar to grab a drink and food at a reasonable hour of the day (in my opinion, pre-Happy Hour) and the kid is quiet and well-behaved, then really who is it bothering? And using the term "breeders" is particularly annoying to me and ridiculously prevalent in this city. If your parents hadn't bothered to breed, you wouldn't be here loser. I'm not sure how this debate will end. Perhaps Brooklyn will ban all kids from bars and new bars that cater to the parent set will emerge. Maybe Mayor (King) Bloomberg in his eighth term of office will officially ban babies from bars just like he banned smoking, trans fats, dancing without a permit, term limits....etc. More than likely parents will still feel entitled to take their children wherever and whenever it suits them and people without children will still find it annoying and make snide comments. Such is the human condition.

As for me, do I plan on taking Cash to happy hour...no. He won't be going to the bar. I've already started seeking out the "baby-friendly" restaurants around us, i.e. restaurants with high chairs available and I actually do tend to hang out with friends in their apartments quite a bit so I don't feel I'm going to be missing out on social time too much. Do I think that I'll miss the occasional times when Ross and I would go to happy hour or brunch and end up making a long night of it...sure. I'm officially, according to Carrie Bradshaw's definition of residency qualifications, a New Yorker. But there will be too many other rewards coming our way to care.