Today is Patrick’s birthday! I let him sleep in (meaning I kept Lola occupied for as long as I could), made him some coffee and gave him a Vampire Weekend CD (he really enjoyed them on SNL a couple of weeks back).
Eventually, Lola would not be ignored any longer. She woke him up with kisses and allowed him to rub her belly for a while. Then, bless Patrick’s heart, he went out in yucky weather to get me a Sunday paper. What a guy!
Earlier this week he got a special gift in the mail from my folks — a framed “slick” of the Fayetteville Observer page where his photo appeared last month. We’re trying to figure out where to hang it — in the meantime, here it is:
With some of the birthday money his folks sent, we took a birthday trip yesterday to Virginia Beach. We went to the Virginia Aquarium and saw otters, seals, all manner of strange-looking fish, and enormous, old sea turtles.
Here we are with an otter (not real, but hey):
After the aquarium, we went to Harpoon Larry’s for an early dinner near the beach. It was too rainy and cool to go down to the water — maybe next time.
To complete our aquatic theme, we stopped at Carvel on our way back home and picked up a Fudgie the Whale cake! I had told Patrick a million years ago how the old Carvel ads used to come on at my Grandma’s house on Long Island, and those cakes seemed like the most amazing thing a person could get. Here’s one ad I remember:
Fudgie didn’t quite live up to 25 years of hype, but we didn’t hate it. Here he is before getting hacked to pieces:
I took a couple of snapshots of Joe’s room as it looks now. We still have to find new sheets for the bed (which looks like it will fit in there!), plus shelves and artwork for the walls, but here’s what we’ve got so far:
The changing station/dresser: This is chock-full of clothes, all washed and ready for him. I need to get some shelves and a basket or two to organize all the doo-dads, but you get the idea.
The nursing corner. We’re going to get a rug to go under here — the floor boards are uneven and it makes for a bumpy ride when you rock.
The crib! I wanted to dress it up in all the sheets and bumpers right away, but Patrick made a very good point that we should wait until Joe’s almost here so it’s fresh. In the meantime, it’s holding all the stuff we haven’t hung up or put away yet.
We had an exhausting day. Just getting through Ikea is a feat unto itself (although I never get tired of looking around there). We found a dresser that will serve as Joe’s changing table and an armoire to hold all his hanging clothes.
The traffic on the way home was madness, and we ended up taking not-so-shortcuts through Fredericksburg to get home. Patrick put together the crib and the dresser, but we’ve got some rearranging to do before the armoire gets put together — there’s no room left! We may have to get rid of either a bookshelf or the bed to accommodate everything. The room has four doors (yes, four!) and two windows, which makes it really hard to place furniture.
We got a package in the mail from Natalie, a friend who lives in Tennessee. I have known Natalie since we passed notes in Mr. Eldridge’s 8th grade N.C. History class. (Our other partner in crime from that class, Lisa, is now a comedy writer with “Arrested Development” among her credits. Crazy!) Anyway, in the package was a sweet little outfit for Joe — and Pee Pee Tee Pees! Those will be going right next to the changing table …
I swear, every day this week there has been a package waiting for us on the porch. First came the Britax marathon baby seat from Patrick’s folks:
It’s nice and roomy, which is great because now you have to keep your kids in safety seats right up through, oh, 11th grade or so. We almost put Lola in it for a test drive — that’s how big it is!
Next came a crib mattress and bedding from my folks — we were eager to get these so that when we put Patrick puts the crib together, we can get the whole thing all dressed up and ready to go.
Today we got another package from Patrick’s parents. In it was a snuggly baby carrier and a mirror we can put in the car to keep an eye on Joe while he snoozes in his little throne.
Last night was our last Confident Childbirth class. We almost made it through without laughing, but at the end we did this exercise where you have to clutch ice in your hand (ow!) and breathe through the pain. I was leaning against Patrick and hee-hee-hooing when he chastised me for not looking at my focal point. It won’t be as funny during the real event!
We might sign up for infant CPR or one of the basic baby care classes next. If I can get a photo of Patrick changing some doll’s diaper, you will see it here!
I visited MCV today. The midwives were lovely, but I don’t think that’s the place for Joe to be born. So St. Francis it is. My doctor has gotten a lot less nervous about the natural plan, so I’m feeling better about that.
This weekend, we’re off to Ikea to find some baby furniture. Joe’s room is looking a little bit like a warehouse now, with boxes and boxes of stuff but nowhere to put it all when we unpack it. If we can come home with a little armoire and a dresser/changing table, we’ll be almost finished!
Here are some things I forgot to mention in that last post:
We ordered Joe’s crib! It was marked down to 1/2 off, AND we got free shipping. Plus it was getting rave reviews from other people who had purchased it. (And yes, Amy, it has the hidden hardware to protect his little fingers.)
I have to tell you about my new favorite cereal. Fiber One (also known as “Colon Blow”) has been my cereal of choice for a while now. They make a raisin bran that is tasty and filling but not something you spend your work hours daydreaming about. However, they just came out with a caramel-flavored cereal that is SO YUMMY! It still has something like 35% of the RDA for fiber, but it tastes like cookies. Go get a free sample!
We got a DVR! My sister and several of our friends swore that it would change our lives. I wouldn’t go that far, but I will say that we haven’t missed a single episode of our favorite shows and we don’t have to rush home to see them anymore. Plus we can zip right through commercials! I am now all caught up on “Project Runway,” and Patrick has filled up about 1/2 the memory with old movies that he may someday get around to watching.
Tonight is our third “Confident Childbirth” class. We’ll see if we can get through this one without laughing!
To look at me, you’d think I was due any day now. I can’t imagine how much bigger I’m going to get!
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Last week we hired a doula to attend the birth. Her name is Cynthia and she put us right at ease. (Her hobby is going to estate sales and junk shops, and then re-selling what she finds — so right away, we had lots to talk about!) She had her own six children naturally, and helped her daughters bring four of their kids into the world naturally, so she knows what she’s talking about.
But she’s not a stickler for the natural way. If you need pain relief, she’ll help make sure you get it. And if you need a C-section, she can come into the OR with you and tell you everything that’s happening. The key word there is need — if someone comes after me with a needle or a scalpel, I want to know that I did everything I could to avoid it.
When my sister gave birth three years ago, we thought that having a doula was one of those self-indulgent things only my sister would do. But when her very level-headed, no-frills husband said it was great to have one, we thought there might be something to it. In my reading, I found that having a doula at the birth dramatically decreases your chances of having a C-section, so that’s when we started the search. I think it will be nice for both of us “newbies” to have someone on hand who can reassure us that everything is normal.
The next order of business may be to switch practitioners, and possibly even hospitals. My doctor seems resistant to the natural childbirth idea, and if she doesn’t ease up soon then we’re thinking a midwife might be the better option. The only midwives our insurance will cover are at MCV, which is a perfectly good hospital but not as posh as the lovely St. Francis. (One cool thing about MCV: You can see it from I-95 as you pass the big clock tower in Richmond, so it could be an important landmark on family trips. “Look, Joe … that’s where you were born!”)
More on that as it unfolds!
The Van Halen concert we had tickets for was canceled on Friday night, so we stayed home instead. On Saturday, our friend Mike came into town. We went shopping and Mike picked up a sweet new outfit for Joe. On Sunday, Patrick did some chores around the house while Mike and I met Lisa for a lovely brunch at Lulu’s.
Oh, we got a lovely movie on NetFlix a few weeks ago: Once is about a Dublin street musician and a Czech girl he meets and begins to perform with. The music was so pretty and catchy. I think one of the songs won an Oscar last night?
We had a full day of really high winds last weekend, and came home from the grocery store to find that the privacy fence on one side of our yard had blown down! We never did figure out whether the fence belonged to us or the rental property next door but it came down to this: If it was theirs, the landlord wasn’t going to fix or replace it, and if it was ours, we’d have to pay a $1,000 deductible to repair it under our homeowners policy. Patrick figured he could do it himself for less than half that, so that was his weekend project.
As you can see, the whole thing was pretty gross and rotted, so he kicked it all into the neighbors’ yard and started from scratch. Look at the finished product, a day and a half later!
(Please excuse the messy yard. Between water restrictions and pregnancy, it’s been pretty neglected for the past few months!)
Lola is so happy to have her fence back. She was on the leash for a while there, and not happy about it.
We did get down to Fayetteville for a day to celebrate Dixon’s 3rd birthday. He had a party at Jumping Time, which is a big warehouse full of those inflatable bouncy house things. Patrick had as much fun as anyone — we might have to do his birthday there as well …
In other news, Joe has been a little kickin’ chicken for the past few days! He may be developing into a morning person (God help us) — yesterday morning he did a whole dance routine in there, complete with high kicks. It never ceases to amaze me. Some days I sit on the couch with my shirt pulled up, just watching these little pokes pop up all over my belly.
We started our confident childbirth class last week. We learned about stages of labor and various positions for dealing with the pain. At the end of the class, we all had to lie on the floor and do this guided imagery thing where we were supposed to imagine ourselves on a beach with the waves crashing and just relaaaaax … It didn’t work. We got the giggles so bad that I thought we might be asked to leave! We have three classes to go, including a tour of the birthing center. Fun!
Patrick has started a blog on Joe’s behalf. (http://www.joetremblay.com) He’s only got a few posts up, but you may want to bookmark it for future reference. Enjoy!
My sister, Amy, came to visit last weekend. We had a whirlwind tour of children’s consignment stores and then Patrick met up with us to see Ira Glass at the Modlin Center.
Ira Glass is the host of This American Life, a great NPR show that we’ve all been listening to for as long as we can remember. It was very strange to hear his voice and see him at the same time, but the show was great! He explained a bit about how each show is put together and gave the background on some of the more memorable stories. Here he is on Letterman, to help you put the face with the voice:
He even showed a clip from the new This American Life TV show, which I’d never seen. It was a story about Haider Hamza, an Iraqi who was traveling around the U.S. to talk to Americans about how they felt about the war in Iraq. He sets up a sort of lemonade stand that says “Talk to an Iraqi” and waits for people to come up and say hello.
In some places he was pointedly ignored, in others he was met with instant anger and in some he had some really thoughtful conversations with people. I remembered that Hamza had been to our hometown of Fayetteville and I worried that the clips from that stop would be among the most contentious. Instead, he said that of all the people he spoke with, the military families (whose loved ones were there or had been there) were the most understanding of his worries and the most pleasant to talk with. Whew!
After the show, Amy and I went to a few more shops and then had dinner at Panera before coming home to collapse. The next day we got up early and went to do the baby registries at Target and Babies R’ Us. It was great having her along because she gave me the scoop on what we’ll really need vs. what will just take up space, and she knows what we’ll inherit as hand-me-downs from her. (Speaking of hand-me-downs, did I mention she arrived with five huge tubs of baby-boy clothes for us? Sweet!) Anyway, even with her guidance it turns out there is a lot of stuff that one tiny person needs. And that doesn’t even include furniture, which we’re starting to learn our way around now …
Once the registries were all set, we went to see “The Business of Being Born,” a documentary about how childbirth has been medicalized over the past century in the United States. The C-section rate here is up to 40-something percent, about four times the rate recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO?) In Europe and the rest of the world, most births are attended by a midwife and result in healthy moms and babies. Here, with all our shiny equipment and through-the-roof medical costs, it’s handled by doctors — but our newborn death rate is the second worst on the planet. So, more money + more intervention = more deaths. Super!
I went into the movie knowing that I wanted to avoid a C-section (I’ve never had major surgery, and the day that I become a mother hardly seems like the time to start), but I walked out with the realization that so many other things (the beloved epidural, for example) can lead me right into one.
Long story short (too late!) … I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m going to try to have Joe as naturally as possible. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll go to a hospital (I’m not brave enough for a home birth!), but I’m going to be much more wary of all the “standard procedure.” If a medically necessary (i.e., not because the doctor is impatient) C-section happens, it won’t be the end of the world — I will be glad to know I didn’t just get hustled into it.
Wow, that was a long update! Some other small things, just to wrap up:
Patrick finally felt Joe move! He had his hand against my belly as we went to bed one night, and just when I started to think Joe had called it a day, Patrick got a big THUMP! against his palm. Yay!
I am officially huge. Belly photos coming, as soon as I get up the nerve.
Patrick has been busy transferring some of our old VHS tapes to digital so that we can throw the tapes away. There are some old home-movie gems in there — we’ll be posting clips soon!
More than a week since my last post! Sorry about that.
We spent the weekend in chore mode, running to Lowe’s and Home Depot for various little projects. Patrick has started painting the nursery (a lovely apple green, to go with the green dots in the bedding) and can be heard in there at night with the doors closed, singing at the top of his lungs as the brush goes back and forth.
As for me, I’ve been getting organized by starting our taxes, laying out the year’s budget and getting rid of old files. Sort of a beginner’s nesting phase.
Ooh, I’ve also found a new favorite Web site. Paperback Swap lets you list any old books you have lying around (they don’t have to be paperbacks, despite the name) and other users can request them from you. When someone requests yours, you drop it in the mail (at the super-cheap media mail rate) and get a credit to request one from someone else. I listed 20 books or so on Friday night and this morning I’m headed to the post office with 10 of them. So that’s 10 books I get to order in return. I’ll never pay for a book again, at this rate!
Speaking of books, last week I finished Water for Elephants, which was set in a 1930s traveling circus. What a lovely book — I highly recommend it.
Now, I’m the last person on Earth to finally read The Kite Runner, a story of two boys who grow up together in Afghanistan in the 1970s. On Saturday morning I came to an incredibly heartbreaking scene and had to put the book down and have a good cry. It’s supposed to get happier toward the end. It better!
On Saturday night, I was on the couch reading next to Patrick when Joe suddenly gave me some fierce kicks in the belly. I pushed my waistband down to see if I could see it from the outside, and I did! I grabbed Patrick’s hand and put it there so he could feel. Of course, Joe immediately stopped. Then as soon as Patrick took his hand away, BOOM BOOM, Joe kicked me again. It’s happened every day since and while I love staring at my belly and seeing the little lumps pop up, I wish Patrick could see and feel it too. Soon!
This morning I have an ultrasound, a follow-up to the one we had two weeks ago (was that just two weeks ago?) so that they can get a better look at Joe’s heart. I hope I’ll come away with more photos to share (of the cute profile variety, not the scary Skeletor kind).
You ever have one of those moments where you think, “Man, it just doesn’t get better than this,” even though nothing out of the ordinary is going on? Last night was like that for me. The house was clean, Patrick and I were in bed reading, the dryer was humming away in the background, Lola was snoring at our feet, and Joe was doing a little bedtime water ballet. Everything was perfect.
That’s the sort of quiet moment I know we won’t have many of for a while after May, so I made extra sure to savor it!
Earlier, we had cleaned out a bookshelf in the guest room, getting it just a little closer to being Joe’s room. I’ve been looking at crib bedding, and while a lot of it is cheesy or downright scary (would YOU want to wake up with a Care Bear staring you in the face every morning?), I think we’ve found something that’s cute and a little more understated. What do you think:
It’s also gender-neutral, which is great in case Joe gets a little sister in a couple of years. We don’t want to buy all-blue now and then have to buy all-pink later on.
Ooh, we saw a really good movie yesterday: The Orphanage (El Orfanato — it was in Spanish with English subtitles). It was all kinds of scary, but there was a very touching backstory behind it and I thought the two were very well balanced. Plus, the whole thing was filmed in Catalunya, the region of Spain where I spent a high-school summer as an exchange student.
Still, with a guy down the row not only leaving his cell phone on but answering it mid-movie, and the family behind us not only bringing a 4-year-old to a terrifying movie but letting her talk through half of it, I’m even more convinced that they should just start releasing movies directly to home viewers. If that bad behavior is going on in the matinee foreign film, imagine the shenanigans in the Saturday-night showing of some blockbuster. It used to be fun to do the whole moviegoing experience, but now I prefer to watch movies in the quiet of my own house, thank you very much. And not miss anything if I have to pee. So God bless you, Netflix.
My sister is coming to visit on Feb. 2-3. The three of us are going to see Ira Glass at the Modlin Center (on the campus where I work) and then the next day she and I will go see this:
That should scare the bejeebies out of me, don’t you think?
Joe Tremblay 