Baby Talk, Part Duex

Dear Baby Girl,

In a matter of days, you and I will finally end this uncomfortable and miserable final stretch of pregnancy and finally meet face to face. Can you believe it?

38 1/2 weeks

Yeah. Neither can I.

I have heard these rumors of taking advantage of pregnancy, as if the last nine months were meant to be filled with unlimited backrubs, long naps, and indulging in cravings of pizza, milkshakes and other sweets. However, our past nine months have been filled with none of the above. Okay, so maybe I did partake in my fair share of backrubs and down a strawberry milkshake or two, but we also included bouts of insomnia, endless miles of marathon training, packing, unpacking and nausea lasting far longer than the first trimester.  

The truth is, kiddo, that while many of these last nine months have bordered on the brink of miserable, I wouldn’t change it for the world. So, I am trying to take pleasure in these last few days, and enjoy the little perks pregnancy does offer me. Like, when I slathered peanut butter onto my chicken wrap, so I could make it “Thai.” No one said a word (well, except your dad who laughed). The bottles of OJ that I drink while doing the grocery shopping. Or not feeling guilty when the lady at the farmer’s market offered me an entire slice “sample” of her boysenberry pie and then her blueberry pie, of course, she explained, I’m eating for two (although, I did have to share with your older sister. I guess this is something we both have to learn to deal with.) So, when the little irks of pregnancy appear, irks like waking up every 30 minutes for another bathroom run, or the realization that some of your kicks and squirms are quite painful, I remember that growing a tiny human is tough work, but the rewards are oh, so worth it. I can’t wait to inhale your perfect, sweet newborn scent. I can’t wait to snuggle you against my chest. I can’t wait to introduce you to your amazing older sister. And, as importantly, I can’t wait for someone else to hold all 6-8 pounds of you.

In other news your father and I (and sister, naturally) helped finish your room this weekend. We cleaned, and built furniture, washed the tiny baby clothes, folded cloth diapers. We pulled out the infant car seat, washed the baby bathtub, and filled your bookcase with board books, burp cloths and handmade quilts.

So, little Rossini, you are welcome to come at any point and meet the rest of the family: your daddy, older sister and puppy (along with all four of your adoring grandparents) are incredibly anxious to meet you.

Love,

Momma

A suburban weekend

I think it should be a requirement that all happy families pay a visit to IKEA – extra credit for a weekend outing, and double extra credit if it’s because you are frantically furnishing a room for a baby arriving in less than three weeks. Really, there’s nothing quite like it to guarantee an abrupt end to that sickening lovey-dove behavior you’ve been exhibiting up until now. Besides, forget those wedding vows you made to each other, if you can handle a visit to IKEA, you’ve proven you can handle anything. Pulling out of the parking lot without intentionally leaving your spouse on the curb or trading your toddler for a plate of day-old Swedish meatballs equals success in my book!! With a formula of eight digit numbers and products you can’t pronounce, organized in aisles and bins stashed in a warehouse the size of the Grand Canyon, I ask you: What could go wrong? You know it’s a bad sign when, in order to survive, IKEA staff is handing you pads of paper and tiny pencils like you are about to take the SATs on a mini-golf course.

I bet you can’t guess where we went this past weekend? After a lovely relaxing Friday night consisting of homemade pepperoni pizza and finally watching our latest Netflix movie mailed to us in October, we spent Saturday AND Sunday morning tooling around IKEA like a bad middle-class cliché, buying a two EXPEDIATs, a HEMMNES and several KASSETs, or bookcases, a baby dresser and trash cans to the uninitiated. We also spent a bit of time at Buy Buy Baby, which we saw while passing a freeway exit. Nothing like shouting to your partner while cruising at 70 mph in the fast lane on an unfamiliar freeway: “Exit here, Exit here! A baby store, I bet they have cribs!” While I efficiently sought out a place for the impending new family member, J chased Daisy around the store as she wildly tore items off the shelves. When exiting the store (listening to the cheering and clapping of the team members charged with Hurricane Daisy clean-up), several hundred dollars poorer, J looked at me and innocently asked: IS this what they mean by Terrible Twos?

IKEA and Buy Buy Baby are funny places. Nothing will make you feel more like a suburban grown-up than a weekend visit with your significant other and toddler. There you will find five hundred other families, all identical to you, arguing over sofa beds, or shelving units or changing tables and chasing their whining children around the store. While pulling out of the IKEA parking lot, congratulating ourselves on a job well done, I looked at J and said that I hoped I didn’t step in an IKEA for a long time. He reminded me that we never did find the BJURSTA.

Here’s to a New Year

Another year, come and gone. I always take time to reflect on the past year, all the wonderful things I’ve experienced and learned, and my goals for the bright, shining upcoming year. This year I kicked a movie star, experience a loss of a truly amazing friend and cousin, and celebrated keeping my daughter alive for one full year. I took more plane rides than my budget allowed, travelling from San Luis Obispo to the coast of Maine.  I watched Daisy take her first independent steps. I raised money for Lung Cancer, got pregnant, battled several bouts of gastroenteritis, and walked a marathon while 28 weeks pregnant. And, oh yeah, put my house on the market and moved to San Francisco’s East Bay. Indeed, it’s been quite a year. A hard year, but one full of adventures and many, many lessons learned.

And as I’m writing this, three days post 2011 and still trying to articulate any goals for 2012, well except to find a place for the new baby to sleep (coming in four short weeks!), sort and wash newborn baby clothes, finally pay off my graduate student loan debt, and adapt to a family of four in a brand-new part of the state. I keep wondering what 2012 will bring. My 2012 horoscope promises a glorious year, a year of new beginnings and more time for self-expression (and romance! I’m not sure where that will fit in with a toddler and newborn though!) 

Ernest Hemingway had once said that his best work was a story he wrote in only six words. I recently stumbled upon an old contest the UK’s Guardian ran back in 2007 in which challenged contemporary authors to do the same, and the one six-word story that grabbed my heart the hardest was this one by Ali Smith: “In the end, everything simply began.”

And, I can’t think of a better way to describe my 2011 or the beginning of 2012, how things just do happen, no matter how long I lie awake worrying about them. Sure, I can obsess about what I’ll do when I get there. Where I’ll look for a new teaching position, how I’ll go about the complicated process of putting down roots, setting up camp, and jumping over any hurdles. But in the end, time keeps ticking, things have to be done, and I’ll do them. You make a list, and slowly cross everything off. You wash the baby clothes, buy a crib. You find a job, you go to the DMV, you make some friends to share a bottle of wine at playgroup to learn the tips and tricks of mommyhood. There’s no choir of angels, no thunderbolt from above, no round of applause as you segue from scared to settled. Everything simply begins. And then you just keep going.

What I will miss about LA: A photo essay

When I first got the idea to post pictures of things I’d miss when I left Los Angeles – I thought I would struggle coming up with something substantial, and instead be limited to posting photos of the traffic:

The fact that it took me two hours to drive 20 miles over “the hill” on Sepulveda Blvd in order to get to work on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Or, the fact that it can often take over an hour to go to Trader Joe’s if you go anytime other than 10am on Wednesday morning. But, when I started actually compiling a list in my head I found that there was so many things that I will actually, really truly, genuinely miss about the last seven years in The San Fernando Valley.

First of all, I will miss Sweet Butter Cafe:

Actually, I will miss Sweet Butter’s Chai Tea Latte. The best part of this place that it was a mere two miles from my house, AND since it was brand new, the place was never actually crowded (although, this has recently changed). (I guess the word got out).

Then, I will miss Maggie’s playgroup. Actually, I call them my playgroup, but that’s beside the point. More specifically I will miss the fact that we have wine on Thursday evenings while the toddlers play. It really is a perfect way to have playgroup.

Sadly, this is the only picture I have of all of them…taken when they were still babies (around April).

More recent, but missing two.

I will also miss my hardwood floors and my rockstar kitchen:

I love the quietness of my Bosch dishwasher, and the sheer awesomeness of my Viking stove and prettiness of my Viking oven. I love the unique color of the vintage style of the kitchen tile. And, most importantly, I love that J and I designed it all ourselves. Since my kitchen makeover we have successfully hosted two Thanksgiving dinners for 10 people or more, countless loaves of bread, multiple cakes and a failed cooking experiment or two.

As for my hardwood floors, just look at them. They are a beautiful White Oak, perfect and lovely, and we spent all our wedding money gift to refinish them. (And then later, insurance money, when the mold kicked in!) (And the adorable sleeping baby doesn’t hurt the picture. Cooking with Momma is hard work!)

I will also miss the local park for Casey, and her friends. Most weekdays, we loaded up the stroller, and walked the mile to the nearby park for everyone to run around with a bit of fresh air. The neighbors are wonderful, and I will truly miss all our four-legged furry friends. This is where I caught up on the neighborhood gossip, chased Daisy, and let Casey loose on a squirrel hunt. This being said, I will not miss the tribe of local high schoolers which like to make the park their hotspot spot to smoke weed… 

Finally, I will miss my over-producing lemon tree. The amount of lemons that this tree garnered was amazing: Lemonade, Raspberry Lemonade, Lemon bread, Lemoncello, Strawberry Lemonade, Lemon pasta, salad dressing, the list goes on and on.

I can come up with countless others – Daisy’s Happy Feet dance class, or the local hot dog stand, but I need to cut this off sometime. As it stands, I’ll just keep crossing off the days – only 10 days now! – until we move from Southern California and start a new adventure. Thanks for the memories. 

On sleeping babies

Daisy & I (and our dog, Casey) are staying with my parents for a few weeks while we transition the move up to Northern California. While J needed to move up north immediately to start his new job, I needed to stay back and finish the semester and help finalize the last of the move.

Daisy has always slept in her crib. From night one. In fact, I can only remember a handful of times she slept with us in our bed. Occasionally for an hour or two in the early morning hours when she was still nursing, but never for a whole night. When we traveled to a hotel or grandparents houses, she always slept in a pack n’ play or portable crib. Until recently. Recently, she has decided that pack ‘n plays are a thing of pure evil. So, during this period of transition she has started sleeping with me. Lately, she has been so thoroughly exhausted from the day that when she falls asleep for the night, nothing can rouse her. After she falls asleep, I transfer her from my dad’s arms to the bed in my childhood room, and I spent an hour or two catching up on emails, grading papers, and talking to J before I tiptoe softly into the bedroom.

I use the flashlight to root around for my pajamas, smother my lips in chapstick, and pull out my book before snuggling up next to my girl. And, last night I snapped a picture to remember this time by.

While Daisy will sleep in her own space, and in her own room once we officially move up north, I have developed a new appreciation for co-sleeping. After taking this snapshot, I crawled in bed with her, tousled her hair, kissed her head and whispered sweet nothings.

I love to smell her freshly washed hair in the middle of the night. I love hearing her wake up and say “hi mamma” – even if its before dawn breaks. I love seeing her little hands clenched around the silk lining of her green blanket. There is, of course, a part of me that very much looks forward to reclaiming a full half bed to myself, and sleeping next to my husband again. But there is an even greater part of me that will miss falling asleep without a baby pressed against my back or nestled into my neck.

A Thanksgiving Day post

I have a million posts that I need to write: how today is the last day in the house in which we’ve spent the last seven years. The home we came to after our honeymoon, the house where we brought Daisy home from the hospital, the house where our sweat, blood and a few tears reside in the kitchen title and the backyard flagstone, except that today is Thanksgiving. So, in order to keep my compulsive triple-A organized self sane during a crazy, chaotic period in my life, I thought a list of the ten (plus, a bonus or two) things I’m currently thankful for would be appropriate.

1. My marvelous husband who has almost single-handedly packed up a three-bedroom, two bathroom house with a smile on his face, a pain in his back and the Beatles blaring in the background.

2. My cheerio loving little girl who dances in earnest to elevator music, repetitively shouts the neighborhood dog names upon waking from her afternoon nap, and delights in fake sneezes (both hearing them and making them!)

3. My now-famous reality star brother who came over to help move the heavy furniture without complaining with the only promise of food.

4. The three-pound baby girl still growing, kicking and hiccupping that promises an sleep-deprived, but exciting new year. 

5. Clean pajamas, a good book and a roaring fire.

6. My squirrel chasing adorable mutt who makes packing and moving with a toddler seem easy.

7. My father-in-law and all his newly working body parts.

8. My dad who flew 3,000 miles to feed Daisy ice cream and lull her to sleep with the history of World War II while I tortured myself for six hours walking a marathon.

8.5. My mom and mother-in-law who are both excellent examples of devoted wives and loving mothers. 

9. My brother-in-laws who always challenge me to think of my top-five favorite movies; even if they scold me for only seeing one or two movies in each category.

9.5 My brother-in-laws who have stepped up in the responsibility department by becoming full-time gardeners, pool boys, and food delivers for the Rossini’s. 

10. A chance for new beginnings and new adventures for my little family, even if it means closing a previous chapter in our lives.      

All about Washington: A photo essay

It's been a while since we got back from the nation’s capital and I haven't even told you anything about it. Because of the insane week which followed the trip, it seems like an eternity ago that J and I ran a marathon. But, the trip was---as you would imagine a vacation with a toddler while completing a marathon and starting your third trimester to be, ---rather exhausting.

However, I haven’t been to D.C. since I was in high school, and I was anxious to get away from the heat of Southern California in the fall, and have a taste of cooler weather.

We spent the first day doing the typical touristy things. First, a trip through the White House and the Capitol:

 

I took approximately one million pictures of the Washington Monument, apparently I have a love for it as evident from reviewing my camera flashcard. 

We had dinner with an old family friend (hi Jeanne & Eric!) out in Virginia and dined on goat cheese lasagna, salad and a delicious bottle of red wine (or maybe two bottles…) What is not pictured here is my inability to buy a metro pass for the subway system. Between J and I we have five degrees, and it still took us nearly 20 minutes to buy a pass to go six stops on the blue line.

With 26.2 miles looming the next morning, we tried to keep our walking to a bare minimum on Saturday, which was encouraged by the rain/sleet/hail deluge nearly the entire day. We did in fact make it to the marathon expo:

Clearly, this picture illustrates that we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into. After a failed naptime attempt, we hit up the International Spy Museum in true James Bond fashion. That night we carbo-loaded, remembered the loved ones we were running for, and tried to sleep.

Sunday, the dreaded day. This was J’s first marathon, and the first marathon I have run in which I did not throw up. I have an unfortunate habit of losing the contents of my stomach on marathon and half-marathon courses across California, this is unpleasant enough without having to do it after running for multiple hours in front of perfect strangers – so of course this was something of a concern. While the marathon started at 8am, and promised to be a beautiful sunny 60 degrees, the 5:30am wake-up call and two mile walk in 27 degree darkness to the start very nearly killed us.

In fact, the beanies that we are wearing were picked up off the side of the road, that’s how desperately cold we were. The fact that we don’t currently have head lice is something I’m grateful for this upcoming thanksgiving.

Six hours eighteen minutes and twenty-six point two miles later we crossed over the finish line. Well, I finished seven seconds before J – a fact that he reminds me of daily. I think he just let me win, it was good for my pregnant ego.

I’m sure there is much more that I want to tell you about our trip to Washington, including the 14-inches of snow at Shenandoah National Park, and the fact the our little family was one of eighteen staying at the lodge due to the freak fall nor’easter, but I can’t remember much of it now, probably because 90% of what we did was eat, endlessly analyze our marathon performance and discuss which body parts were currently sore.

I didn’t even take too many pictures, well besides the Washington Monument and my little angel, who started experimenting with the “terrible two” stage three months early:

So, instead of boring you with more pictures, I will end with this one, which his kind of the best one anyway:

Running a marathon! A surefire way to look really unattractive!

I know, right? Screw all those adorable baby pictures and wedding photos, this one’s the framer.