Maternity Pics Preview

Sunday, February 17, 2013


Faux Picnic!, Alamo Square Park  

Our friends Rene and Selena generously gifted us a maternity photo shoot with Selena's sweet and talented sister, Kristal.  Kristal lives in Portland, but was in town last weekend for Selena's birthday so we got to meet her and be pretend models for an afternoon.  Kristal is such a sweetheart and I love this preview pic she sent us.  After the photo shoot, Selena, Rene, and our other friend Ross all met us back at our apartment for dinner.  As if giving us a beautiful photo shoot wasn't enough, Selena and Kristal then cooked everyone amazing pizzas.  I should have taken photos of all the personal pizzas coming out of our oven, but just trust me that the entire operation was impressive and delicious.

Luckily, we get to see these ladies again in a couple weekends.  Selena invited us to celebrate her birthday at her family home in Tahoe!  I'm very much looking forward to a fun weekend with such nice folks--there may even be snow!


31 weeks + home birth


Yesterday we had another amazing day in Berkeley and Oakland. We saw a couple of great houses in Oakland with our realtor, enjoyed a veggie burger at Smart Alec's on Telegraph, saw Life of Pi at the Grand (trying to take advantage of being able to go to the movies while we can), and spent a wonderful night with close friends celebrating a dear friend's birthday. Great company and our friend's homemade enchiladas and cheesecake made the evening! We also finally got to play Cards Against Humanity, which was pretty redonkulous.

Today Eric and I are going to a 2.5 hr prenatal yoga workshop with my favorite teacher. It's our second time doing the workshop, actually. It was really useful the first time and we figured a refresher would be good as we get closer to our due date.

BTW, did I mention on here that our meeting with the midwives went super well and we decided on a home birth?!  The decision feels really good and I feel so fortunate to have found such great women to help us through this huge next step in our lives.  We are also just 1.5 miles from UCSF in case we do need to go the hospital route for whatever reason.  We've already been able go to a centering group with other couples who are doing home births with our midwives and it was so much more informative than the centering meetings I went to through the hospital.  We are just going more in depth into topics that the hospital took for granted that you would just do, like testing/antibiotics for strep b, and immunizations for the baby as soon as s/he's born.  I'm not saying we are or are not going to do these things, but it's nice to be informed ahead of time, get a chance to read up on arguments for both sides, discuss with others, then have time to come to a decision.  Plus, we take turns hosting the groups in each other's homes and it's so much more welcoming than the meeting room in the hospital.  At the last meeting, our midwife showed us how to tell what part of the baby is moving and now I'm extra happy to know if I'm rubbing little feet or a rump through my belly!  She also showed us how to feel for the baby's head, but Eric has an easier time with that as it's more difficult for me to push on my own abdomen that way.  But Eric can now give the baby little massages on his or her occipital bone!  This also means the baby is now head down--ideal for birthing--so hopefully they'll stay that way for a couple more months.

Last, I've been thinking more and more about taking more time off before the baby is born (1 full week or dare I imagine, a full 2 weeks?!) to have time to wind down and mentally prepare.  Everything is so busy and hectic when teaching full time.  I basically spend 1 weekend day lesson planning or doing other prep for teaching.  It doesn't leave much time to read the birthing books I want or make other preparations.  Plus, I am very much enjoying my big bump and pregnant body these days, but I have found myself slowing down considerably in the past 2 weeks or so.  I get winded far more easily by walking up flights of stairs and getting ready in the morning takes longer since bending over and getting up take so much more time now.  My original plan had been to work right up to or very close until the due date in order to properly prep my students for their state test.  I still want to be able to do this and am struggling with my new thoughts of possibly altering this plan.  I'm not sure yet, but guess I'll need to decide pretty soon.    

30 wks (baby) + 35 yrs (mama)

Monday, February 11, 2013


This weekend was Chinese New Year and my 35th birthday!  We celebrated with a perfect east bay day.  We started off by meeting our realtor at a house in Berkeley (it was cute, but on the corner of a busy-ish street and didn't have a drive way.  When we purchase a house, I want a parking spot!).  Then we met my brother at his house in San Leandro so I could have a brief reunion with my cat, Esme.  She's living the good life with him this year in the sunny suburbs with a big backyard to run around in and unsuccessfully hunt birds.  My bro came with us to La Pinata for a delicious Mexican Breakfast, then we headed back to Berkeley to do some shopping on Telegraph.

That's when we took this photo in front of my beloved old house on Blake St.  I found this amazing house, room, and roommates on Craigslist back around 2002 and lived there for many a happy years before moving to Austin in 2005.  It's an old, crumbling house, but the rent, location, and housemates, were perfect.  I have so many fun memories inside this house of parties, dancing, game nights, ANTM, barbeques, and laughing until my sides hurt and tears rolled down my cheeks.  It was strange to stand in front of it 30 weeks pregnant and with my husband who I brought back from Texas!

We had a maternity photo shoot scheduled in the city for Sunday with our friend's sister, so Eric was a great sport and helped me shop for cute pregnant lady dresses in Buffalo Exchange and American Apparel.  I had these 2 lovely mamas in mind.  I like how they rocked regular clothes in their megabelly months.  Buying clothes for these last 2 months of pregnancy was an obvious splurge, but I wanted to feel extra nice for the pictures and I figured birthdays are a good time to TREAT YO SELF.

Speaking of, we totally did that at Crepes-A-GoGo, with a nutella, stawberry, and banana crepe.  NOMZ.  As an undergrad at Cal, I would get these to go, walk to a nice, quiet spot on campus, and usually end up passing off a few pieces of nutella-covered fruit to a fat, brazen squirrel.  Multiple times, squirrels would come put their paws right up on my lap and sniff around until they received their Crepes A GoGo.

After Telegraph, we headed to Rockridge Kids on College Ave in Oakland to purchase baby's car seat.  The folks at the store were really nice and helped us install it.  I must admit, I'm stupidly happy to see the carseat in our backseat now.  It feels good to get these big baby needs off the checklist.  In the past 2 weeks, we've ordered a changing table and co-sleeper, and inherited a free glider rocker for free from my yoga studio.  While we are trying our best to accumulate minimal extra things for baby, our apartment is already changing and I know this is all good and necessary.

Then we caught a matinee of Zero Dark Thirty at the beautiful the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland.  It was a bit slow, but with good pay-off.  Catherine Bigelow is great at building tension and I enjoyed it.  Totally made me want to make Eric watch Point Break with me soon.  He's gotten through life with somehow never seeing it!  After the movie, we drove by a house in Albany our realtor had emailed us about.  It's just off of Solano Ave, which is great, but also a bit close to BART, which = noise.  We'll return for a better look this Saturday.


"Babes.  The correct term is 'babes,' Sir."


After all of that, I finally let us return to the city.  Don't get me wrong, SF RULES, but I also hope to fill 35 with more perfect east bay days!    

Santa Cruz, Part 2

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Here are a few more pics from our weekend in Santa Cruz over the MLK holiday. One of the highlights was catching the sunset at Natural Bridges State Park.














Babydaddy

Monday, February 4, 2013

Practicing.



Chinese New Year Flower Fair

We spent Saturday with our realtor looking at houses in Berkeley and Oakland (fun!), finally trying the fried chicken sandwich at Bakesale Betty's (omg, already want to go back), shopping for baby furniture (can't put it off any longer!), having dinner at Tomaso's in North Beach (sadly, not as good as our 1st experience there), and catching the end of the Chinatown Flower Fair (flowers fill Chinatown for New Years).

It was a super fun, busy day. We made up for it on Sunday by not leaving the apartment, staying in pjs, and working from home all day. May sound dull, but it was a good balance for me to shut out work for a full day, then allow myself plenty of time on Sunday to get things done.

(Yee is my mom's maiden name, but that is not our restaurant! It's a common Chinese name.)









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