21 Weeks and News

In an attempt to make up for last week's missed photo I decided not to stick to my photo every 2 weeks schedule and instead have Greg snap a photo today. Here I am out back in a new maternity outfit right before we headed off to church. My wardrobe is seriously limited these days but new clothes always make you feel good. My belly doesn't look very big from this angle which is probably why my mom was clamoring for a profile shot this week in the comments. I think I usually turn a little more to the side but Greg can never remember what he does from week to week and he isn't much for shooting multiple shots. Here you go Mom! I made sure to post a profile picture this week just for you. Turned out to be a pretty big difference actually. I always take one of these profile shots each time but we do them inside and the lighting is so bad that I usually don't like to post them. We just don't have very good lighting in this house compared to our awesome lighting in the Bronx. Anyway, I think it is pretty obvious that I am pregnant but when I mention it to professors at work they act so very surprised. I can't image what they thought was growing in my midsection. A giant tumor perhaps?

So on to the big news. Last Wednesday Greg and I decided to go ahead with the routine 20 week anatomy scan that is offered to pregnant woman AND we decided that if the baby wanted to cooperate we would find out the sex. Well........here she is! It was very cool to see her again on screen jumping around inside of me. From what they can tell she is developing normally and everything is looking good. Praise God for that. This photo was Greg's favorite that they sent us home with. Those are 2 little feet. She also had her little hands balled up in cute little fists. So amazing. We can't wait to meet her face to face. Now that we know the sex we are gearing up to start planning again. When we made the decision to find out several weeks ago we pretty much stopped planning stuff like names and the nursery because it seemed like too much effort to pick two options for everything. Now we have to revisit those topics.

One thing we did this weekend was sort clothes. We live near a Goodwill Outlet store. They sell clothes in huge bins by the pound. So when Greg goes to look at records I have been tagging along to look for baby clothes. I have found so many nice things that are in terrific shape, many of which have obviously never been used but up till now I have been buying boy and girl stuff. They clothes are only 1.69 a pound and you can get a lot of tiny baby clothes in one pound. I figured even if I had to toss half of them I would only be out a few dollars. Well today we went through the bags of clothes I had purchased, washed and stored. We sorted them by boy or girl and then by size. Turns out most of what I had found was girl stuff anyway so there was only a small pile of distinctly "boy" stuff. From that pile I am going to put my crafting skills to the test to modify some things and make them more girly and then a few items I will redonate. Overall we have a nice amount of clothes to get us started.

20 weeks

In week 20 I did not get my regular photo because we were in Montreal for the weekend. We drove up to meet Greg's parents who were vacationing for a few days in the Canadian City. Greg's dad has been very ill over the last month or two so their making it on this trip was a very big deal. We had a nice low key visit which was perfect for me. Lots of tasty food, slow walks around town, a little shopping and a daily nap. Can't complain about that. This was our second visit to Montreal so we felt no pressure to get out and see everything. Here we took a buggy ride around Old Montreal and the waterfront. You can see we had beautiful weather. Lots of sun and blue sky with just a slight fall chill in the air.A visit to Mount Royal for panoramic views of the city. This is a self portrait. I need to get one of those self portrait sticks that lets you hold the camera a ways away. And a little belly shot after nap time. The baby is always hanging out on wedged up on my right side when I wake up but a gentle massage usually coaxes a more even position and a lot less pressure on my belly. At this point I can't feel any distinct kicks or punches, just general sensations. Greg can't wait for movement to start that he can feel from the outside.

So now we are back to the daily grind. I should have an exciting update for you this weekend!

18 Weeks

My mother reminded me last night that I have been delinquent once again on my posting. Here is my 18th week picture. I had to break down and buy maternity pants that week which made life much more comfortable. Still not really filling out maternity shirts yet. I had my last class of the summer during this time so I was busy with studying and taking my final exam which took all day Labor Day to complete.

16 Weeks

Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes. We are happy to be "out of the closet" on this topic finally. We wanted to wait until we could tell our families in person which was done during our recent visit to the Northwest. Needless to say we are thrilled and a little freaked out by the news ourselves. I found out I was pregnant right in the middle of the transition to my new job and finals at school. At that moment it was very overwhelming news but life has settled down as it always does and we are getting used to the idea slowly but surely. The 2 main questions I get are:

1. How do you feel?
I feel good. I would say great because as far as all the possible difficulties that come with pregnancy go, I have had a pretty easy time of it but it has not been trouble free. I have not had any morning sickness which is great but do suffer from chronic constipation, a common side effect. It is MUCH better than during my early weeks so at this point I am confident to say I am managing it just fine and most of the pain I was having is now very minimal. My biggest problem with pregnancy is my migraines because I am choosing not to take any medications. There are no class A or B migraine meds and I would rather not risk taking class C drugs though some woman do. My migraines are not as severe as they are for many sufferers out there. That means that when one hits I can only take Tylenol and ride it out. That totally sucks and I have had quite a few since getting knocked up. Otherwise I am feeling good.

2. How did you do it?
Some of you are aware that Greg and I have been trying to get pregnant for almost 3 years now after a lost pregnancy in early 2007. We had gotten to the point where our next step was to decide if we wanted to go the drugs and procedures route. We are pretty big procrastinators so we never got around to making that decision. I got busy with school and we both had thrown ourselves into our jobs. Anyway, we conceived naturally. I should however give props to the iphone. Yes, an iphone can get you pregnant! I found a free app in the apps store that is a "lady" calendar where you can track FAM data (Fertility Awareness Method). Greg and I had used FAM to get pregnant the first time but had taken a break from using it after a while of unsuccessful trying (long story I am happy to share another time). I downloaded the App and thought maybe it was time to give it a try again and after 1 month of charting we had success! Ultimately we know that success came because the Good Lord decided to open my womb which was a great answer to prayer but it is fun to think that the iphone had a hand in there too!

3. Not really a question but I have actually had people comment that it is shame I went to all that trouble to lose weight only to put it back on again! Well, who cares I tell them! Who says something like that anyway? Geez people! I had to drop out of weight watchers when I got pregnant and I will admit I went a little post-diet crazy for a few weeks eating all the foods I had been denied, but actually WW taught me many great lessons about food and eating that have come in handy with my pregnancy. I pretty much eat all day long (low blood sugar triggers my migraines even more now) and that is the same thing I did while on the program, lots of small meals and snacks throughout the day plus I was in the habit of making good choices which also comes in handy. I was a little sad to have to quite right before reaching my goal weight but WW has a program for lactating moms so I will be happy to sign right back up after the baby comes.

So I am finishing my 16th week today and my belly has finally decided to pop out a little. Up until now I was definitely in that phase where people stare at your middle and ask themselves, is she pregnant or fat? I am in the in-between phase where I can no longer zip my pants but pregnancy clothes are really baggy on me so I am using Bella Bands and Pant extenders in the meantime. Greg snapped that photo yesterday and sadly it is the first one we have taken. I wanted to take photos every week from the beginning but never got around to it. I am such a bad scrapbooker and blogger these days!

This just in.....

Please excuse the shameless rip-off of Becky Higgins' baby announcement!f

Puerto Rico

Well, now July is almost over. Perhaps I am becoming a one time a month blogger! I wish I could say I have been living it up here in the big city and my active social life was keeping me from blogging but that is not the case. I just spend all my time working and when I am not working I am trying my best to enjoy my little 6 week break from school which usual translates to reading a novel for fun before bed or if I am really lucky, watching a television show in real time instead of from a recording. I did manage to take a week off for some R&R and accompanied my friends Suzan and Marcela on a trip to Puerto Rico. We had a pretty great time lounging on the beach, eating lots of great food, and seeing a few sights. Here are a few pictures:
We spent the first 3 days on the island of Vieques which is a few miles off the coast of Puerto Rico. It was beautiful. This is the guest house we stayed in called Bananas, it has a little restuarant/bar out front. Very rustic and fairly inexpensive but this.....was the view out the front. The little town we stayed in, Esperanza, was adorable and had a prominade build on the water. The whole island is overrun with wild ponies that roam around and there were all these random dogs roaming around too but they weren't strays since the shop owners could identify them and knew who they belonged to. The dogs would just roam in and out of the open air restaurants and no one really cared. Needless to say it was very laid back there. This is Belly Button, the only breakfast place in Esperanza but no worries because the food was amazing. We ate here both mornings we were in town. The best thing we had were these......banana pancakes. So so good. I tried to make them at home like this were you grill the bananas and pour batter over them, but mine were not nearly as good as theirs. Delicious! We also spent an entire day at the beach. We chose Sun Bay because it was nearby and we could walk along the coast to get to it. We were a little apprehensive about going there because it is a more developed and popular beach. No worries there. The beach was great, there were not a lot of people and they had planted palm trees all over the beach to provide shade for visitors.This was my view as I laid on a towl enjoying the sun and reading a book. The water was great too, so warm and blue and not too deep in Sun Bay. So relaxing. They also had bathrooms and a little cafe there where we had the best empinadas and tacos of our trip. It ended up being a fabulous day at the beach. That evening we took a Bioilluminscent Bay tour. Puerto Rico has 4 Bio Bays (there are only a handful in the world) and the brightest in the world is in Vieques. I don't have any photos because there was no way to keep a camera dry but it was pretty amazing. The water is full of little micro-organisms that emit light when they are disturbed (as a defense mechanism) so once it is dark the tour guide tosses everyone out of their kayaks into the water to swim around and as you swim the water glows blue green. It was pretty cool. The later is got, the darker it got, the brighter the water glowed. It was a fantastic experience that I would recommend to everyone.

After Vieques we returned to the main island and moved into a condo we rented in Condado. We were one block from the beach which we could see from our balcony.This is one end of our condo's pool where we spent a portion of almost every day we were in Condado. So nice! With the condo as our home base we adventured out to the grocery store (we had a kitchen so we ate a couple meals a day at home), out dancing at the Mariott across the street where they had Salsa night and a casino, to the beach just down a short side street, the girls took a jungle tour which I opted out of, and also a full day spent in Old San Juan.We caught a free bus to Old San Juan to look around a little bit. The city was built behind a large wall but they have built walking paths around it....And in a few places are these huge gates to get through the wall. We roamed the streets and peered into shops and looked at landmarks like this...Banco Popular, the first bank in Puerto Rico which is a great example of Art Deco architecture. Actually there was art all over this city, especially in the form of sculpture. We stumbled upon sculptures at almost every turn. We stopped in a plaza for some shaved ice from a street vendor then continued on our adventure.We ended up here on the top of a hill at the site of the old fort. The photo doesn't do it justice but on the massive lawn there were tons of people flying kites. There was also a craft fair going on to the left of this photo which we walked through. Unfortunately we didn't watch the clock close enough because the fort was closed by the time we go up to it. We didn't get a chance to look around inside but we had a great day in the city. We stayed for dinner before heading home. On our last day in Puerto Rico we decided to live the high life and buy day passes to the Ritz Carlton.With a day pass you get a room for the day and access to all the facilities. Big fluffy pool chairs, free towels and water, poolside food and drink service, and beach chairs and umbrellas set up for you by cabana boys. Here is a big iguana that just mosied out from under a bush and walked past all the guests. Cool! It was a fun day in the lap of luxery. We stayed for a very fancy smancy dinner at their upscale Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, though I had been really careful with my skin the entire trip I did manage to burn my ENTIRE backside that day at the beach. It was beet red and very painful. Good thing we went home the next morning becuase I was not a fan of the sun after that! It was a fun trip. Returning to lots and lots of work was less fun. The only thing I wish was different about the trip was that Greg would have come. He didn't really want to spend a week with 3 girls being girly but I missed him a lot.

Oops, did I miss June?

Wow, I am not sure I have ever gone this long without blogging. Sorry MOM! I am sure you are probably the only one still checking this page. June was a crazy month. Early on I found out that a position was opening up in the Biology Office, a position I have had my eye on and THE position that had sent me back to school in order to be eligible for it someday. Once I expressed an interest in the job it was like jumping on an express train that was running 100 miles per hour. I was all of a sudden appointed into the interim position and had to begin training immediately since the woman leaving (one of my bosses) gave only 2 weeks notice. At the same time I had to identify and begin training my own replacement in the lab. So long story short I am the acting interim Director of Administration for the Biology Department and the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at NYU. It is a very exciting move and while I have hit the ground running thanks to my past experience here it has been all uphill and has required long hours. In addition to my work chaos I was also taking a summer intensive marketing course at the same time. I am glad that the class is now over. The only thing that really happened in June besides work was my birthday. My 33rd birthday fell the day before my marketing final so you can probably imagine that I didn't do a lot of celebrating that day. I did wake up to this balloon curtain hanging in the living room curtesy of my sweet husband. And the ladies at work weren't going to let me get away without acknowledging the day either. They brought me up a little gift of too cute earrings and a cupcake with my name on it. So sweet and just what I needed at the end of a crazy day. The necklace I am wearing was a birthday gift from my boss who also wouldn't let me get away with skipping my birthday. So so sweet of them all. I saved the real festivites for the following Saturday. Greg and I went out for a very fattening lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood mexican restaurants. I am not used to eating a ton of food at one sitting anymore and totally over did it. I had to lie down after lunch and take a nap because I thought my belly would explode. Oops! Goes to show how much my eating had changed after all my weight watchers time. That evening we had made plans to go on a cruise around the waters of NYC with my dear friend Marcela who is moving away to Rhode Island soon. I am wearing a strapless dress in this photo. Don't worry, I wasn't naked in the back of a cab! We had a great time hanging out on the boat, catching up with old friends, enjoying lots of Michael Jackson hits (in tribute), and taking in the sights. We even caught a glimpse of this great rainbow over Brooklyn (much more vibrant in person). It was a lovely way to spend my birthday.

New baby!

No, not the squishy human kind but the electronic kind. Greg's and my contract with T-Mobil was set to expire in May so Greg had been researching our options for a very long time. Then a couple weeks before going to block island my Blackberry stopped functioning altogether. It wouldn't hold a charge and couldn't accept calls, emails or texts. It was like that for over a week and then started working again. So frusterating. Greg's phone had been on deaths door for a long long time so the combination of the two forced our hand a little. Instead of waiting for the new Palm phones like we had intended we decided to switch to ATT and get iphones. Well, we are in love with our new babies. The best thing about them are of course all the applications you can buy. I have been loving the apps that track my weight watcher points, graph my weight loss, my "lady" calendar, tip calculator, to-do list maker, and games among others. Yesterday I took the day off from work to go shopping with the girls at the outlet mall in Riverhead. At one point I found 2 dresses that I loved that would both work for a wedding I am going to in August but I couldn't decide. So I had my friend Marcela use my phone to take photos of the dresses so I could look at them and think about the decision while I shopped. I even emailed them to Greg to get his opinion at work. I have never had a phone with a camera before. So cool! I chose the brown one by the way! Then after shopping we decided to have dinner before the drive back to NYC. I used the "AroundMe" app to find all restaurants in the area, then I used the google maps app to get directions in real time to drive there. So cool! Then after dinner I used my tip calculator to determine how much to pay.
I am loving my new phone!

Block Island

Last week Greg and I took a mini vacation to celebrate my one week off from school before summer term starts. We headed up to Rhode Island to visit Block Island for a few days. Block Island is 16 miles off the coast of Rhode Island accessible only by ferry from Port Judith (or Long Island, NY in the summer). We got a great package deal because it is still the off season on Block Island which kicks off its tourist season Memorial Day weekend. That was perfect for us since we were looking for rest and relaxation. It takes about 3 and half hours to drive to Port Judith where we ditched the car in long term parking and hopped on the ferry. It was an hour ride on the ferry and then a short walk from the dock to our hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Manesses which, like many of the buildings on the island, is an original dating back to the 1800s. The furnishings and decor are all antique. Our room had no TV or internet connection. We didn't even have a phone. No problem since we were happy to get away from technology for a few days. It was very quiet. In fact the hotel was unstaffed! We actually checked in and had our daily breakfast up the road at the 1661 Inn, another property owned by the same group. We rarely saw anyone else in our hotel though there were some other guests staying there. It was a little creepy at first especially since we are rarely "alone" in NYC with people living and making noise all around us. Here is the rooster who was hanging around our hotel and was kind enough to crow in the morning. He had 2 hens following him around most of the time, such a playa. The first night we explored Old Harbor a little, walked on the beach, and then enjoyed a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant. The Manesses Restaurant is the fanciest restaurant on the island and had just re-opened for business the week before. It was pretty busy which is kind of nuts since the hotel above it was so empty and unstaffed. We were given a $100 gift certificate to the restaurant in our room package. With a bottle of wine and 3 courses we didn't even manage to spend it all. One of the perks of eating vegetarian is that your entre is usually the cheapest on the menu! It was a very nice meal and it was great to sit and catch up with eachother. Then we settled into our room and turned in early. Because it was the off season many of the shops in town were closed. Not a problem for us though because we decided for our second day we would rent mopeds and do some exploring. The Island is only 10 square miles but it has lots and lots of trails for walking or biking. We rented 2 mopeds for the day and motored all around the island. Starting with a stop at the local grocery store to pick up fixins for a picnic lunch. We drove out to settlers rock to park our bikes and walked along the beach to the North Lighthouse. It was closed for construction but we enjoyed sitting out on the beach and having our lunch in the sand. Next we hoped back on our bikes and drove out to the Clayhead Trail. A short hike through the forest brought us back to the beach but this time a beach down below the bluffs. We spent a while hanging out on the beach enjoying the sun (though it was a bit chilly) and the peacefullness of it. Then it was back onto the mopeds to visit the great salt lake and the basin. The great salt lake isn't really a lake, but an ocean inlet (hence the salt) and is the location of New Harbor (they are really creative with the names there!). We drove through on the way to the basin. The Basin is a low area that was carved out by a glacier and is filled with vegetation that happened to be in bloom while we were there. We hiked a loop trail to the lookout spot. It is hard to tell from the photos because some dark clouds had rolled in but it was very pretty up there with the scrub brush in bloom with white flowers and we could see the ocean as well. Greg dropped our map at one point and we got off the trail somehow and had to double back (and found the map on the way) so we ended up walking the loop twice! Then it was back on the mopeds to complete our tour of the island at South Lighthouse. This lighthouse was also closed but we could at least get right up to it. It is fully functional and recently restored. Can't get away from technology completely!Then it was back onto the mopeds to head into Old Harbor to turn them in. Just in time too since the sun was going down and it was really chilly riding at 25 mph. Our 6 hour tour was over and we were pretty exhausted. We enjoyed dinner at a pub in town and recounted our day. We also noticed at that point that we had gotten a little too much sun. We both had red noses and poor Greg had a mild burn on his whole face and neck. Oops! Easy to forget that it doesn't have to be hot to get a sunburn. The next day was spent enjoying a long breakfast, checking out of the hotel and heading home. We had a great time and though the Island was REALLY quiet, almost too quiet we were really glad to have gone on the off season. They say the population swells from 1,000 full time residents to 15,000 tourists during the summer and I can't imagine we would have had such a nice time dodging mopeds on the road and people on all the trails and beaches. If you are ever in the RI area, check out block island. I think it would make a really great day trip no matter what time of year!