Best Baby Shower Ever!

Huge props and thanks to my big sis who is a total rockstar party planner! 

My baby shower was a couple days ago, and it was so lovely and everything was perfect.  I mean, look at that amazing cake! 

We filled the Church Lounge at the Tribeca Grand Hotel with 25 chit chatting ladies, cooing and ahhing over all the adorable baby clothes, socks, shoes for little feet. 

The food was amazing - I only wish I had less mingling to do so I could concentrate on my french toast, perfectly butter-crisped on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside, with a side of bacon, of course.

And I felt so incredibly blessed to have such an awesome group of women who will surround my baby with all the love in the world, teaching him how to be a good man as he gets older.  Yes indeed!

Now to the fun stuff:  PICS!

Basement - Before and After

These pics kinda suck, but here they are!  Basement before and after shots.  The new room is nothing to write home about (even though I'm kinda writing home about it), but the important part is that all of V's STUFF is in the basement and not taking up precious living space.  If I had the choice, there would be a little couch down there for guests and clients, and a big ass monitor for when he's color correcting images with a director looking on from behind.  But it turns out, he's just got way too much crap and there's just no space for aesthetics.

BEFORE                          AFTER

BEFORE                          AFTER  

Here are my boys writing me an email.

And finally, the furbaby Monty resting his head on the bump.  But don't be fooled, he's only doing this because I was eating an apple and he wanted some.  He's a master manipulator!

It's a miracle...

V's basement office is finished!

I gotta hand it to him.  He works well under pressure, that's for sure. 

For the past three weeks, my father-in-law would come over in the afternoon with his huge German Shepherd, Sheeba.  And while Monty and Sheeba played (annoyed each other), V and his father would toil away: painting, spackling, tiling, drilling.  In the meantime, I'd get home from work around 7pm, put on my dutiful housewife hat (steps: remove bra, rings, throw on extra large t-shirt stolen from hubs, gigantic pajama pants, put hair in ponytail), feed the dogs and cook the men awesome dinners consisting of giant slabs of meat, a potato of some sort, a veggie and salad if I was feeling ambitious.  They'd eat around 8:30pm and then head right back down to keep working. 

It was like Little House on the Prairie, Jersey City for a few weeks there.  I really sorta felt like they were raising a barn down there, with all the drilling and hammering, and animals running back and forth, with me in my womanly place in the kitchen.  God, I'm glad that's over!

So now every day he goes down there to set up his workspace, organize gear, jerk off...  I honestly have no idea what he does down there actually.  I will assume at any time, it's one of those three things.  And now that he's got his man cave all set up, I've got the whole first floor to myself!  Which is roughly about the amount of space I personally take up these days, so that's good.

Today, I finally ordered the crib and changing table/dresser.  And this weekend hopefully we'll start getting Tyrone's room all set up!  So exciting!

In exactly one month, I will be full term.  WOWZA!

Naming the bump

Tyrone's got the hiccups. 

I know this because my vagina is pulsing at regular intervals, and it's not the good kind -- if ya nah mean!

This is not going to be a post about vaginas, although I know that's what you were hoping for.  Get your mind out of the gutter!  It's not even going to be a post about what we're naming the baby.  That's a SECRET so don't ask me.

In fact, I don't even know.  I've left that part up to V.  So there's a 99% chance it'll be one of these three names:  Data, Jobs, or Lebowski.

Just kidding!  I would never leave the naming up to him with no input!  Why?  Because then my son would be named Lebowski Bokser, that's why!  Hullloooo!

So for the time being, we refer to the bump as Tyrone Jr.  I've been calling him "Bubs" on this blog, but I'll let you in on the real secret:  Come March, we might find out that his real father, Tyrone -- who is obviously a well-dressed African American man with a grabbable and scrumptiously bubbly ass -- got there before V.

Only time will tell...

In the meantime, can someone tell lil' Tyrone to stop waking up at 5:30 am to start dance practice?  While I appreciate he'll take after his father in the rhythm department with all this clowning and krumping, it's getting to be a bit much.

Owning it.

I caught a glimpse of my unmade up, paradoxically greasy/dry face, reflected in the outside of my car window today while putting away groceries and was frightened by the person staring back at me.  I actually stepped back a foot and cowered in horror.  My mother would be ashamed.

I grew up in a smallish town.  And when we went grocery shopping, my mom would make sure we had lipstick on and didn't look like dirty grunge hos just in case we ran into someone we knew.  Going to the grocery store was kind of like going to church.  A reason to dress up.  Or at least dress nice.  Not that I ever need an excuse to shop, but yeah, running errands actually made our clothes spending habits ok because I mean, how could we possibly go to Kessel in sweatpants?  I think I must have peaked around 1996, looking put together all the time, fresh outfits and my hair all did.  A message to the guys from high school:  you really missed out on a hot POA back in the day.

Fast forward almost 20 years to today:  Jersey City, NJ, A&P. The year two thousand and twelve.  Today I wore a pair fleece-lined leggings that make my legs look like tree trunks, very warm tree trunks; a pair of dingy Uggs; THE big down parka (fat guy in a little coat), which I can only button the top two buttons of leaving my 2008 JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge t-shirt peeking out the bottom (yup, sounds about right.  2008 was probably the last time I went running).  But what's worse is that my leggings aren't maternity leggings so I had them rolled down under the belly, and my t-shirt is a size x-small because in 2008 I was extra small.  Today, I am not, so I have about an inch and a half of prego belly peeking out the bottom of the t-shirt.

Ahhh...glorious.  If my mother could see me now! 

Anyway, seeing my reflection in the window today made me think immediately how grateful I am that I live in a huge city outside of an even huger city, and no one I know lives around me.  So frankly, I don't give a fuckity fuuuuck.  :-)

Oh, and the best part!  While I was in the freezer aisle, I sneezed.  And I also peed my pants a little.  So that was fun!  At least it didn't run down these very absorbent leggings.  Did I mention that they're lined with fleece?  If the full trickle had made it to my Uggs I'd be in real trouble.

How do you even wash sheepskin?

A post so boring you may as well not read it.

UGH.  This search for a pediatrician is killing me.  It's not just that, but figuring out insurance for the bubs and then finding a pediatrician who will take that insurance...this is so annoying.

Did you know...

Insurance only covers the newborn for the amount of time they are in the hospital, which is based on whether they've delivered vaginally or via c-sec.  So for vaginal, they're covered for 48 hours, and for c-sec, they're covered for 96 hours.

So basically you're forced to add them to your own insurance, which for me, is a very pretty penny.  For most people this isn't an issue if they have a nice cushy corporate job, but I'm considering state insurance.  So, if I want to switch them to, say, NJ Family Care which is only $144 a month, then I have to cancel one insurance and switch them to the other, which is a huge ordeal because Family Care will likely reject my application if the newborn currently has insurance.  AND coverage doesn't happen immediately.  Depends on whether or not you apply before the 15th or after.  AND you can't apply before the baby is born...they need to have a birth certificate.

OMG.  VENT!

So the other thing is that I really want to use Tribeca Pediatrics because they've just opened a branch in Jersey City, and it's a reputable practice with a bunch of Manhattan locations.  But they don't take NJ Family Care.  Hoboken Pediatrics does take that insurance, BUT...um...here's where I get really silly...the two doctors who run that practice are kind of scary looking.  So, they're Polish, which I honestly don't mind at all, but they look really....um....harsh.  Two burly male doctors. They could totally pass for V's uncles - lol!  I know I shouldn't think this way, but you know how you just get a good feeling from some people and a not-so-good feeling from others just by looking at their faces?  UM...YEAH. 

Hmm... should I delete that last paragraph?

What's he doing in there? And other in utero musings.

They say that a baby in utero sleeps 90% of the time.  I don't think this is true for my little one.  I feel him jabbing me and rolling over all day long and into the night.  I wonder if he's uncomfortable and can't get into a comfy position because I have such a short torso.  I was actually born with one very pigeon toed foot because my legs were squashed and I was born small, 2 months early!  I hope my little guy has enough room to stretch out a little bit!

Sometimes I feel him jabbing my cervix, other times kicking my ribs.  And all the time I feel little tickles on my right side.  Everything is always on the right side.  Very often I see a big rounded hard spot (probably a tooshie) taking over the middle/right part of my bump.

Which makes me wonder, what position is this baby in?  Does he really have enough room to keep switching from breech to head down at this point?  Whenever I press on the hard spot or the ticklish spot, I can feel him push back and then swim away. Maybe he has really long arms...or long fingers like all the Hwang girls.  Hmmm....or active little feet like mine.  At night before I go to bed, or when I'm relaxing on the couch, I am constantly rubbing my feet together, unconsciously.  My mom says I did this as a baby and she always laughs when she sees me doing it now as an adult. 

Also, I've started wondering if all this activity means that he's going to be a really active or fussy infant.  Or a hyperactive toddler/child like I was.

So of course I googled it, and this is what I found.  EEEP!!

In the first formal study of fetal temperament in 1996, DiPietro and her colleagues recorded the heart rate and movements of 31 fetuses six times before birth and compared them to readings taken twice after birth. (They've since extended their study to include 100 more fetuses.) Their findings: fetuses that are very active in the womb tend to be more irritable infants. Those with irregular sleep/wake patterns in the womb sleep more poorly as young infants. 

Awww, hells to the no! Please don't let this be true.  If he takes after his father in terms of his erratic sleep pattern, we are so screwed!  Although the upside is that V never suffers from real insomnia and never has trouble falling asleep.  He goes to sleep when he feels tired no matter what time, and stays asleep like a champ for at least 7 hours.

I wonder if I'll learn to breastfeed while sleeping.  That way V, who will likely already be awake, can just hook him up to my boobie while I catch some zzz's.  Heh.  If only it were that easy...

I've also been thinking a lot about what he's going to look like.  I could spend hours imagining his little face!  The other night, I had a dream that I gave birth and his face was the perfect combination of me and V.  But he was like...20 years old!  With a little infant body but a young man's face.  SO CREEPY!  But it was a relief that he was pretty good looking.  I'm even superficial in my dreams!  Hehe.