Baby Shower

A few weeks ago, my good friends Lacy and Annabell were nice enough to host a baby shower for me!  Since we don't know Baby R's gender, the theme colors were pink and green.  Coincidentally, pink and green were our wedding colors 6 1/2 years ago so very fitting indeed!    L & A did an all-star job with the decorations, food, games, and prizes.

Nothing cuter than a clothes line of onesies!

This is only a portion of the amazing food.  Noticeably absent from this picture is some really delicious chili by Lacy.  And I could eat those mini cupcakes all day long.

And the adorable and tasty party favors...Those are chocolate chip cookies in mason jars in case you can't tell from the pictures!

I could've taken some pics of the girls and the loot, but I was too busy enjoying myself!  We got some really great stuff for Baby R (including many wardrobe additions) and I'm so thankful for good friends and their generosity.

 Randy is looking really excited about baby's new play mat!

And My First Act of Paranoia As An (Almost) New Mom...

A few weeks ago we ordered a crib and mattress from Ikea.  Not long after placing the order, I saw this article about flame retardants in crib mattresses from a Facebook post.  The U.S. requires flame retardants in all mattresses.  I'm sure this has good intentions but the chemicals used as flame retardants can be toxic and off-gas into the air and right into tiny unsuspecting baby lungs.  Further investigation turned up that Ikea was caught using chlorinated tris - a toxic compound linked to cancer risk and banned from kids pajamas in the '70s - in their crib mattresses in 2010.  Note:  Ikea stopped using chlorinated tris in crib mattresses shortly after.

I don't normally obsess about these kinds of things but it seems if I were to pick one thing to obsess about, it should be the crib mattress since baby will spend 8-14 hours a day sleeping on it for the next few years.

As a concerned consumer, I emailed Ikea to ask them which chemical compounds are used in the specific mattress we bought.  I never ended up Googling the chemicals listed in their response because while I was waiting I went all crazy and bought a babesafe mattress cover.  For the chemistry inclined crowd, the cover is made from polythene, which they say neither generates gas itself nor allows gases to pass through.

The best part is the cover was only $41 including shipping from New Zealand.  So $50 Ikea mattress + $41 mattress cover = way less than the $259 Naturepedic Organic crib mattress which is supposedly free of harmful chemicals.

For now our Ikea mattress if off-gassing near a window while it waits for its new cover.

And yes, I do realize I've probably been huffing dangerous chemicals myself from the mattresses I've been sleeping on my whole life.

Another Christmas in New York

This year, we were lucky enough to enjoy our second annual holiday visit from my parents. The visit included less sightseeing than usual, due to a mix bad weather and being completely based in Queens for the first time.  I'm sure me waddling around had nothing to do with the less ambitious schedule.

Mom and Dad still made certain they didn't leave out the important stuff - making an appropriate number of visits to the local bagel shop and Russian bakery and a very cold and early trek to the Today Show.  And they got to do what every tourist hopes for: a doctor's visit to see the cutest baby in NYC squirming around on an ultrasound machine.

On Christmas night we went to see the Rockefeller Christmas Tree and amazingly showed up at the same time as every other tourist in the city.  I saw enough strollers to realize that would be a bad plan for next year.  We followed this up with a traditional meal of what all Americans eat on Christmas - Mexican food!

Pretty but far away.

One day we met some friends in Greenwich Village for brunch.  Unfortunately New York City showed it's ugly winter face with rain, wet snow, wind, and cold (sometimes all at once and at least two at all times).

The scene inside the restaurant was much better.  Warm, inviting, not drafty, and delicious food.

Randy's "Eggie Breakfast"

The Grandparents-To-Be indulged us and Baby R by purchasing a crib and bedding.  It hasn't been delivered yet but the next two challenges will be putting it together and deciding on a good place for it.  Thanks, IKEA, for your simple small-apartment-appropriate designs and affordable selection.

And I thought this tree was enormous before positioning my every growing bump in front of it. That's almost five pounds of baby right there, folks!

32 Weeks on Christmas Day!

My Favorite Things

(Pregnancy Edition)

 

Dessert

Dessert generally and ice cream specifically.  I only found this fabulous pumpkin flavor once but pretty much any ice cream will do.  And although ice cream has become a nightly staple, it should be noted that I have nothing against cake, cookies, or brownies.  This is actually true pregnant or not.

 

Black and Gray Clothing

I don't know if it's the pregnancy, the time of year, or living in New York City, but dark clothes just seem subtle and right.  So black and gray are the official colors worn by the baby bump.   Don't worry, the real baby will be much more stylish.  I tried on a hot pink sweater at Target and felt like a balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Yep, that's 30 weeks for you.

Pants with Stretchy Waist Bands

I've always had a thing for elastic waistbands (who doesn't!) so it's super fun to have an excuse to wear them every day.  I might hang on to my pregnancy jeans afterward and just call them my Thanksgiving jeans.

Tiny Baby Clothes

To stick with the clothing theme, check out these strawberry and eggplant onesies from my friend Linda.  Gosh, how is everything sooo adorable when it's mini-sized?  Only cute babies can get away with wearing eggplants all over them.

And Randy's Current Favorite Thing...

Our Christmas Tree. 

Yes, it is 8 feet tall and, yes, it is hitting our ceiling.  Randy carried it all the way home (on foot) and is very proud of himself.  We had to buy more lights and stretch out our ornament collection to make it cover the whole tree.

Hello Third Trimester!

Before I go an entire month without a single post, I want to wish myself (and baby) a Happy Third Trimester!  Hard to believe it's already been 28 weeks and we only have 12 left to go.  It's like the last leg of a series of flights to New Zealand, where you're the most excited but also the most tired and uncomfortable.

So far, my favorite thing about being pregnant is having a convenient excuse/rationalization for everything.  Examples:  I'm too tired to go there.  I can't pick up this heavy laundry basket.  Let's have pizza for dinner again.  I want a cupcake.  Any of these will fly if preceded by "I'm pregnant."  Randy has picked up on this and tried to pull an "I'm pregnant, will you rub my feet?" but I didn't fall for it.

I haven't been terribly inconvenienced so far.  The biggest nuisance is that my bladder can't seem to hold it's own in my ever-crowded torso and has been reduced to the size of a field pea.

I'm way behind on progress photos so here's a November recap of bump action:

24 weeks

26 weeks

I may very well be wearing the same outfit in these two pictures, I can't tell for sure.  But I do know that my wardrobe is extremely limited these days so I wouldn't be surprised.  I haven't bought much so far and I've been meaning to run to Target or Kohl's for a few more maternity options but it keeps getting squeezed out of my schedule.  Hopefully this week!

27 1/2 weeks at Rockefeller Center

Apparently I can only face one direction in profile shots.

Chad & Casey in NYC

There's almost nothing we like more than having visitors in our own city (except maybe going to new cities ourselves).  It always gives us a good reason to act like tourists and not feel weird about it.  So we were totally stoked when Randy's brother Chad and his wife Casey came to visit.  Their visit was full of eating and sightseeing as any good visit would be.

Times Square: Mandatory tourist stop

One of the highlights was accompanying the Cs to a fancy pants restaurant, Le Bernardin, that we never in a million years would've thought to go to on our own.  The food was as interesting as it was delicious and the extremely attentive staff helped us push in our chairs, provided us with an unlimited supply of interesting breads, and even gave us "purse stools" for our handbags.  It was by far the best treatment myself or my fake Chloe handbag has ever gotten in a restaurant.

Striped bass entree.

Randy pondering his unusual looking dessert.

The Foodie Couple

Other fun times with C & C included seeing Wicked on Broadway, eating bonofide New York style pizza, walking around Lower Manhattan and Battery Park, and going to the Met.

Baby bump posing with the very distant Statue of Liberty.

The Gender Mystery

Now that we've made it past our anatomy scan without finding out the gender, I'm feeling confident that we might actually make it all the way to the end without knowing.  We successfully turned away at all the right times to keep Little Munchkin's gender a secret and keep ourselves in deep suspense.

21 Weeks with Mystery Baby

So why, in this day of coordinating the crib sheets with the wallpaper and having a whole set of monogrammed clothing before the baby is born, would we decide to deny ourselves such valuable information?

1.  More Excitement in the Delivery Room

How often these days does a doctor get to exclaim “It’s a [boy/girl]!” after catching the baby?  Gender reveal seems like a great joy of the profession and it’s been taken away by the ultrasound.  I also had someone tell me she was extra motivated during labor to get the baby out because she was dying to know the gender.  Hard to argue with that!

2.  We're Used to Being Under-Prepared

Living in NYC and Randy working as an airline pilot for the first 5 years of our marriage has resulted in us adopting a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants lifestyle.  One time we decided to go to Budapest and that very evening we were on a plane over the Atlantic.  I’m sure having a little one will settle us down considerably but why rush things?  We are decently organized but long term planning remains outside of our comfort zone.  It’s best to keep things sudden and unexpected for as long as possible.

Ahhh, the carefree days of our twenties.

3.  Yellow is Swell-O

I have already been informed that our baby will be wearing yellow for the first year of his or her life.  That’s okay because thanks to this place we love yellow.  Also, it really keeps gift-givers on their toes.  Have you ever tried looking for gender neutral baby clothes?  It’s hard!  Only people who really love us will go through that, which may keep our inventory to a manageable NYC-friendly size.  Plus, there are some great looking gender-unspecific goodies here. 

And if you think it's impossible to find cute stuff in yellow, clearly you haven't been shopping with my mom or my Aunt Jane...

Thanks for the early gifts, folks!

4.  Down on Decorating

We won’t be decorating a nursery because…we don’t have a nursery!  At the risk of blowing a few suburban minds, I will inform you that we live in a one bedroom apartment.  It’s possible we might be moving but we have no firm (or even loose) plans yet.  So for now baby will either be bunking with us or in the living room.  Those are the only two options.

Note:  Decorating is my life’s weakness so I’m actually happy to skip the curtain hanging, room painting part of this whole baby thing.

And now for the most recent pic of the ever expanding bump...

22 Weeks and the belly's first time dressing up.  

Scrap Metal Collecting

Owning a storefront comes with a never-ending to-do list.  The last store owner left a ton (well at least half a ton) of useless junk in our basement and Randy's been wanting for months to clean it out so we have more room and can better organize our own stuff.

The junk in the basement was primarily wood and metal scraps from who knows what in the past.  Most notably there was an enormous metal air conditioning unit that was bigger than a refrigerator and taking up some serious floor space.  We store most of our inventory downstairs and space is at a serious premium in this city.

On day one of major basement clean-up, Randy hauled all the wood and trash to our dumpster and arranged for a special heavy pickup.  On day two, he rented a U-haul and carted all the metal out of the basement to take it to a scrap metal facility, including the a/c unit he dismantled - motor, turbine, shell, and all.  You'd have to see how narrow the stairway is between floors to truly appreciate the difficulty of this.

Randy scrapping with the best of them!

We went to the 24-hour scrap metal yard around midnight which was originally due to poor planning (and a lets-just-do-this-thing-now attitude) but ended up being good planning because there was hardly anyone else there at that time.  It's pretty cool, they weight your vehicle when you arrive and again before you leave, and pay you by weight.  The only downside is they don't handle money at night so we had to return the next day to get paid.

It's a seriously busy operation during the day.  There were about 10 vans dumping at one time.

Thanks to all my construction site experience, I felt pretty at home among the cranes, loud noises, and male dominated crowd.

The bottom line:

Total metal weight from the basement:  540 lb (Randy has sore arms!)

$45        450 lb #1 Steel
$24        8 lb #2 Copper
$72.50   58 lb Aluminum/Copper Radiator
$4.80     24 lb Electric Motor
$50        Money saved using U-haul truck for lumber delivery (for new shelves)
($110)   U-haul rental

($65)     Ticket for parking the U-haul in a residential area at night.  Doh!
$21.30

Getting this junk out of our basement and a metal scrap yard adventure...Priceless.  And approximately $200 saved by not having it done professionally.

We hoped to come close to breaking even by doing it ourselves, so mission accomplished, but it stings that we would've come out more ahead without the darn parking ticket.

Of course now we see metal ($$$) everywhere we look.  Trash can!  Car bumper!

And just so you know he cleans up well...

Randy's BBQ Birthday Dinner from earlier this week.  Happy 32 years!

This guy deserves some meat!