October 20, 2010 – newfound addiction: shopping for knit baby clothing

We are at 33 weeks and 3 days today and baby is as big as a pineapple at about 5lbs (shoutout to the WhatToExpect iphone app: thanks!).

Like they say, acceptance is the first step, so this morning I am admitting that I am addicted to shopping.  That sounds a bit common, and quite dangerous ( as far as $$$), so let me be specific:  I am addicted to shopping for anything knitted and for a baby 🙂 – knit baby booties, hats, sweaters – you name it.

Three weeks ago, it was the knit hats that kept catching my fancy in baby stores, so the hubby said I could get one for our little boy.  I spent hours on Etsy.com and finally settled on the really adorable Almost Acorn hat from the Knits ‘n Giggles store on Etsy.  You can choose the color combo that you like and we requested a chocolate brown hat body with mustardseed yellow and rusty orange knitted leaves.  The hat arrived this weekend so I was able to take the photo above (that’s BB the bear modeling the hat).

Today, I ordered our first knit baby bootie from the KnitsDuNord shop, again on Etsy.com.  I figured since I love the color gray so much, and the little buba will have to get used to it, that I should get him a gray piece of his own.  Cannot wait for those gray booties above to arrive 🙂  Other bootie photos are contenders, since I am allowed to buy two more booties.  Such a pleasurable dilemma 🙂

September 30, 2010 – maternity fashion

One of my recently discovered and now favorite online retailers, ASOS , just announced the US version of the website on their Facebook page!  So happy to see that they offer basically the same inventory as they do on the original site, and just hopeful that standard shipping will now get my orders to me faster.  Truth is, I have been living on mostly their stuff for the past six months (since Y and I found out we were expecting), and have now graduated to falling in love with their regular line as well.  I have no doubt that even after the little guy comes, I will still be buying their clothes, especially their new line ASOS White – I have earmarked a few pieces already.  Above pics are two of the dresses I received from them, the gray one being worn to death, the blue one I am reserving for the baby shower.  I love them both!  Makes having a round belly really fab and cute 🙂

I was standing at the bus stop wearing the black version of the gray dress above yesterday, along with a camel sweater from their regular line, when a woman asked me where I shopped for my maternity clothes – she was also expecting at seven weeks – and I was quite flattered.  These days, I am grateful for any small compliment. 🙂 So for full disclosure, I have included a photo of the J.Crew Britten tall flat boots I was wearing to complete the outfit.  Not as intimidating as the heeled boots in my closet, but very, very comfortable for walking around Manhattan with an extra 22 pounds. 🙂

September 21, 2010

I have never been one to watch my steps. My entire life I have counted on pretty strong leg and thigh muscles to quickly regain my balance when I occasionally tripped or stumbled. And when I do fall, a few years of judo classes in my teens have taught me to “fall right.” Add to that my high tolerance for pain and it amounts to my never ever having to be careful, movement-wise.

Last week I learned my lesson. Y has told me repeatedly in the last few months to not walk/bend/get up so fast because I am pregnant. I should have listened. When it comes to what my body can handle I have never listened. To anyone. Not my dad, not Y, and apparently not even to triage nurses. Talk about stubborn.

And here is what happened. I was heading out of the apartment and did my usual rummaging through my bag while walking down steps. My left foot missed the second to the last step entirely (because as most expectant women know, your eyesight gets a little bit bad at some point during the pregnancy). Split second of sheer panic and I remember to push my right foot against the step to twist clockwise so that I land on my side instead of my belly. Fortunately, I manage to not hit my belly or butt at all, with my left ankle and right wrist taking the brunt of impact and I slide against the wall on my left to a sitting position. I had never been as frightened as I was in that moment. I sit for a little while, feeling my left ankle, right wrist and knee start to get numb, knowing sharp pain would follow shortly. All I could think about was that I was not bleeding. And that if it turned out that our little baby would need to be delivered, he was already 28 weeks, and at 26 weeks there is an 80% survival rate. And my little boy was surely a fighter. A few moments more I try to get up. And once up, start wondering if I should go back to the apartment, or head out to the hospital or the office. I decide that I am calling my doctor, and that if she said I should go to the hospital, then the office would be closer to Cornell. So I walk to the bus stop benches and call Y. I tell him not panic, but that we fell. I told him I was worried about germs at the ER, so I would call the doctor first. I eventually arrive at the office before the nurse calls back to say that the Labor and Delivery Center at Weill Cornell would be expecting me, so I should go as early as I can to get checked out. I call Y and say that I am going immediately and he should not bother leaving the office to go with me, since it will take him an hour and a half to get there and I will probably be done.

When I walk into Labor and Delivery, the nurse gets my information and then tags me with a hospital bracelet. I start wondering if I should have let Y hurry to get to us, in case they do decided that the baby should not wait. The nurse attached a few cords to apparently check for contractions and monitor the baby’s heartbeat. After 20 minutes of supposedly healthy heartbeat, they did a sonogram to check the fluid in the amniotic sac and my little guy’s head. At this point I was already about to cry with worry. A doctor walked in to see if I am in pain anywhere else other than my belly, and I mentioned the ankle, wrist, and knee, but that I was fine and I was used to such injuries. She then asks the nurse to keep me on the baby monitor for two hours. I started to hate myself for being so bloody self-sufficient. I really needed Y to be there. But there was no signal in the triage rooms. It took me 15 minutes to send out a text message, so no use trying to ask him to come. I felt bad knowing he was probably worried to death, since his calls would not have gone through.
At the end of the two hours I spent on the baby monitor, baby was given a clean bill of health (thank you guardian angels!) and I was told to stay off my feet for a little while. The following day, Y worked from home to stay with me and help put cold compress on my kneecap and ankle. You would think it was sweet but he lectured me the whole day.
I could have told him it was not necessary. I was mad enough at myself. No more rushing around acting like superwoman for me.

It’s a boy! :)

It may seem a bit odd, but the hubby and I have had the two books above for about a year already (must have been fate, since we are only 20 weeks in, and we had no idea how soon we would need them).  We found them while shopping for a friend’s baby shower.  She was going to have a boy and when we picked up the baby boy book, I really felt like I wanted to get the set for our future kids.  Last Wednesday, we finally put them to use 🙂  We brought both books with us to the hospital for our ultrasound appointment.  I have never seen Y (I have just decided to refer to him as Y from this point on, since our posts are becoming more frequent, due to the baby) so ecstatic when we were told it was going to be a boy.  See the picture he edited below (and posted on his facebook account, no less).

It really is quite amusing to see the difference inY since we found out about our bundle of joy.  His usual policy of not making status updates on facebook/twitter, etc, is put aside for proclamations about his upcoming “buddy.”  Also, his aversion to shopping is now apparently gone, as he has arrived home a couple of times bearing gifts, like the matching baby mat and sleeper below in the photo below.  Aren’t they cute? 🙂

From sweet potato to mango

In true project management fashion (I have started thinking of the whole pregnancy as a project), here is a status update

• We are a mango this week, today at 18 W and 5D (last week we were a sweet potato)

• The hubby has purchased a portable AC (for us to be comfy in NYC’s Heatpocalypse) and track lighting – he has installed the AC, the track lighting is waiting for the weekend.  I am so happy to be married to a guy who knows his way around home repairs/installs – add to that he’s gorgeous too :p  Anyways, buba and I now sleep very well on our sleep number bed with 4ooTC sheets, silk pillowcases (made by my mom, thanks mom!), and perfect 74degree temperature.

• We find out in 5 days what buba will be 🙂 – The hubby has always said that it looks like it will be a girl, because I am getting prettier by the day.  I am not quite sure that’s true, but I am sure that he is the sweetest guy in the world and I am the luckiest woman I know :).  Also, yesterday, one of my colleagues said that she is predicting I am having a girl (she’s had two babies, and got the gender right both times).  So if I am having a girl, buba when you read this someday, I am making a conscious effort to dress her in neutral colors, or blue and whites stripes, or red and white stripes, anything with stripes really, yellows, greens, but NOT bubblegum pink.  Definitely NOT.  If buba turns out to be a boy, then no issues 🙂

• Incidentally, I am wearing bright pink today.  Uncharacteristically colorful for me.  Come to think of it, I have worn a lot of reds this week.  Perhaps its on account of my comfy red flats, or the red coral bracelets that my mom sent me (to wear for good health), or the halfway present that the hubby got me, which is the brooch with a dangling red heart in the photo above.  Also, on the bus this morning, I was looking at the various designer collections on the Style.com app (which, since getting the iPhone 4 has  become my favorite app), and found myself again uncharacteristically drawn to the colorful and quite floral Fall 2010 Couture Collection from Dior (below are some pics).  So now I think, perhaps buba is a girl, with my current odd attraction to feminine styles and colors.  Hmmm, five more days.

Moving art at the NYC Ballet

Last week, the hubby and I watched the world premier of the Martins ballet, one of 7 new ballets that are part of the Architecture of Dance festival at the NYC Ballet this season.  The main draw for us was that Santiago Calatrava, one of my husband’s two favorite living architects (the other being Richard Meier), is a collaborator, having designed the scenic background that will be on stage during the program.

Another reason we wanted to see this ballet is because our buba (it is what we are calling our baby while we are waiting to find out whether it is a boy or a girl) is already on its 17th week, and according to our What to Expect app, buba can now hear from inside my belly, hooray (but now I need to lay off even accidental profanity)!  We’ve always heard that exposing the baby to classical music during pregnancy begets a smarter, mathematically-inclined child, and as always, the hubby wants to do everything that can possibly give buba an advantage when he or she comes out.  This I find sweet most of the time, and a few times quite irritating too (like when I am asked to eat black beans because they are considered a power food for baby, when as most expectant moms know, you really cannot afford to add to the whole ‘gas’ situation).

Anyways, the show was quite worth it (worth the price of the tickets, worth the hubby’s rushing to leave work to make it to Lincoln Center on time).  Martins’ new ballet Mirage was sandwiched between The Prodigal Son and the Western Symphony, which was a great idea because you get warmed up and get more receptive before the new ballet, and the Western Symphony cheers you up on your way out.  The ballet itself was brilliant, the dancers movements were choreographed perfectly to this — there’s no other word for it — sculpture, that also moved.  The collaborative work was so seamless, it became hard to tell if it was the dancers you had come to see or the great piece of art that was meant to be a  background, but certainly commanded attention.  And then when they threw some lighting effect onto Calatrava’s sculpture at the end, I truly felt like I had witnessed a breakthrough in the world of ballet.  Although who am I to say, I have only seen a handful, and of that handful my favorite had been Sleeping Beauty, which probably says I do not have as educated a taste level as the critics.

Now if only buba could also already see and not just hear 🙂  Oh well, hopefully they will start to do more collaborations with architects for him or her to see in a couple of years.

Stress management for working moms-to-be

Here’s what works for me when I get stressed at the office:

1) A 10-minute Facebook break, going through my loved ones profiles (I especially love seeing old pictures of me when I was a kid looking so very happy with my parents)

2) Looking at gorgeous, gorgeous jewelry from my favorite designers/brands, Cathy Waterman, Gurhan, Yossi Harari, Temple St. Clair and Chanel.

3) And if you are like us, instead of just working on a necessary, my husband and I are actually applying finishing touches to our entire apartment.   I am finding shopping for things like wall sconces and door knobs really relaxing.  Here’s a door knob I really like from Emtek.

4) And if all else fails, I get myself a treat like a cupcake from the place beside our building 🙂

On maternity dresses…

It’s almost the end of our first trimester :), and also apparently, the end of the line for my regular clothes.  As I sit here after a burrito lunch (which cannot have helped matters), and unbutton my pants, I thank God for having an office and proceed to look for maternity clothes online.  I remember reading somewhere about there being fashion forward wear for moms-to-be from the retailer Asos.  And without letting myself be distracted by the great items in their “regular” women’s line, I head straight to the maternity page, and almost immediately find a dress that will surely help me come to terms with having to give my current wardrobe a hiatus.  The navy color and the no-frills yet coolly different air of the dress makes it fit in with my usual style, and aside from the extra room in the tummy, it could be part of my neutral, well-cut uniform.  And by the way, only $51!   Now just crossing my fingers that I love it as much when the package arrives 🙂

When stars are aligned

May 5 was quite a great day for me and the hubby.  It was a beautiful Wednesday morning for our first prenatal visit to our obstetrician.  And although as with annual physicals and other routine check-ups,  you are always a bit uncomfortable, seeing our baby on the sonogram was quite amazing.  And he/she was such a show kid, the little feet even gave a few kicks while it was being measured 🙂

After the checkup, still marveling at having seen him/her, we decided to take the crosstown bus back to the UES.  But just as we had hopped on, my phone rang with someone at a leasing office for an apartment on the UWS that I had left a message for the previous day.  Very unlike us, we decided to get off the bus and meet the agent at the building on W 78th and Columbus.  Lo and behold, we walked into an apartment that we just felt had to be destined for us to have a baby in .  It was perfect.  Like most nyc apartments, it was not a massive amount of square footage, but the living room area and the bedroom had 13ft ceilings, big windows in both spaces, looking out to a garden, a brick wall, and only one flight up.  The husband then went on to the leasing office to do the application while I headed back to work, and by the end of the day, the perfect apartment was ours.

Days like that one are rare, but every once in a while you are lucky to have the chance to be thankful that the stars line up for you.

Kandinsky on the color Yellow

“Yellow is disquieting to the spectator, pricking him, stimulating him. Yellow can be raised to a pitch of intensity unbearable to the eye and spirit.” Quoting the artist from the book Spiritual in Art is how the audio guide discusses Kandinsky’s Impression III. In case anyone wonders in the future how we came to the decision to have a yellow baby room, I am noting down that it was not from any sense of practicality (yellow’s gender-neutralness), but from our being captivated by this particular oil painting by Vasily Kandinsky.
We saw the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim on the 21st of October, coincidentally also the museum’s 50th anniversary. The festive spirit of all the visitors standing in line to get in (the line had rounded the block before 11am) certainly helped the tiny bit of anxiety I usually face as I walk in this particular building. We all of course acknowledge Frank Lloyd Wright’s brilliance in designing this 20th century architectural icon, but the physical effort needed to walk up that spiral ramp whilst your brain is processing various works of art has never been a small matter for me.
And this is how I was able to ascertain the impact of Impression III. Considering that the painting was sequenced in the middle of the exhibition, which meant I had already walked up a considerable amount and had seen a number of great works, Impression III’s wide expanse of black on a background of bold yellow woke up my slightly fatigued mind like a jolt of caffeine. I was invigorated enough to muster the strength to finish the walk up to see the rest of the show, instead of deciding to leave the rest for another day.
The work left such an impression (pardon the pun), that we started searching for a book on Kandinsky that would have an image of the painting. Our hunt produced a book by Thomas M. Messer, first published in 1997. I went directly to the page of the book discussing Impression III to read what was written on the work in an attempt to figure out what it was that forcefully caught my attention. It is written that the work’s predecessor, Impression II, was painted in 1911, two days after Kandinsky attended a New Year’s concert in Munich. It would be safe to assume that both works were inspired by Kandinsky’s experience of being at that performance.
Messer writes that the black on the yellow may represent “the artist’s identification of black with negative attributes.” While I do recognize that everyone has a bit of darkness in them, I suspect that my interest has more to do with my obvious attraction to black and gold combos (such as my love for a gorgeous black leather bag with goldtone metal accents, or admiration for all jewelry pieces with gold and onyx). And so despite this possibility of a negative connotation, we are determined to find a print of this particular work that will one day be on the wall of our nursery. A room that will be decorated predominantly in yellow, which will go with the yellow STOKKE we had long ago planned to get for our future babies.
As for the rest of the exhibit, while my interest in seeing Kandinsky at the Guggenheim stemmed from encounters with Abstract Expressionist works at the gallery that gave me my first job in New York City, I left the museum an exhilarated (if a bit tire) fan. I would therefore like to end with some text from the exhibition that may help in the appreciation of the artist’s works.

As identified by Kandinsky, there are three types of paintings designated by their associations with music:
Impressions – based on real life subjects
Improvisations – spontaneous and unconscious images from the artist’s inner life
Compositions – formally developed formats often preceded by many studies.