And So It Begins

The boys just got their first love letter!


It was in the form of a Hello Kitty email that read "To: Luke and Joseph Iloveyou!!!!!!!!". From this little red-headed cutie.

HI, ANABELLE!!!!

Chopped Liver

This is the third day in a row that I've made it to the gym (yay!). And I'm trying not to take it personally, but when I drop off the boys at the nursery I can't help but feel that they are entirely too happy to see the backside of me.

No matter how beastly and cranky pants they are at home, every time I hand them over to the nice ladies in the infant room, they are nothing but charm and huge smiles. Where were those smiles for Mommy??? Then when I pick them up and ask how they were, all I get is that they were maybe a bit fussy for, like, 5 minutes but little angels other than that. Tuesday when I got Luke, the lady handed him over and he was still staring at her and giggling like a little boy in love. Really, guys?? Really?

I can't tell if they just love the nursery that much or if those ear-to-ear grins are their way of saying, "Thank God! A new face to stare at - FINALLY!" Either way, I guess I shouldn't complain because these 2 hours a day that I get with the gym membership are life savers some days. And if they're happy, I'm happy.

Most days I'll maybe exercise for 30 minutes. The other hour and a half are spent in the whirlpool or taking a nice, leisurely, steamy shower, a rare luxury at our house these days. Then in those last minutes, I come to the couch area in the locker room (I love this gym) and pull out a book or catch up on my internetting like now.

I love, love, love being at home with my boys, but decompression is good too.


The boys are 5 months, one week and 1 day.

Girly Baby Shower

This time there were no boys allowed. :)

My lovely friend Katie hosted a baby shower for me on Saturday. It was great. I got to see lots of girlies that I don't get to see very often, including my mom. The spread was delicious - mimosas for the lucky ones who can indulge in such things (I'm not jealous at all...), and quiches, fruit & pastries.

We played the game where you have to measure the preggo's girth. Yeah. I have no idea so I guessed an astonishing 62". Not even close, thank goodness. If you're curious, Lauren got it right on the nose at 46". I'm really curious how much more I'll expand in the next weeks. Scary!

Then it was pressy time.

Mom, me & Alisha

Tons of sweet cards, most of which with penciled in corrections to make them twin-appropriate. :)

Beth, Janice & Heather, tying knots on a few baby blankets.
Apparently they love that - the babies, not Beth & Janice. :)

Lauren & Caroline, looking cute and thin (damn them!)

Ooh, feel these blankets!

Heather & Katie had to feel too

Surrounded by presents!
It was amazing. These babies are almost completely kitted out.
I really can't believe how generous everyone was (AGAIN!).

And I had to add a picture of the cake.
The bakery perfectly matched it to Katie's shower invitations.
So cute and very tasty!

Mom and I spent much of Sunday sorting through and washing all of the absolutely adorable clothes, blankies, booties, mittens, pacifiers, and various baby gear with much ooh'ing and ahh'ing. We had a grand ol' time doing it.

But Lani's favorite is definitely the swing. Ha ha!

Our First Baby Shower

Greg works at this great company, full of young, happy people. And a few of the girls wanted to throw us a baby shower. So nice!

I headed up there today for the potluck lunch to find their break room decked out in blue everything - table clothes, balloons, streamers, confetti. It was pretty cool.

Me with the hostesses, Dilek, Lauren & Rebecca

Look at this uber-cute spread! There was so much food. This is just a small section of it.

Admiring Rebecca's cake-making skillz

Seriously. Take a look at this thing! She made everything herself, including these super-cute fondant duckies & umbrellas. I'm so impressed!

And this diaper cake was made by the girl friend of one of Greg's co-workers. She's due to pop with their little girl on Friday. Not only is it adorable, but it is chock-full of all kinds of little goodies.

Peeps, enjoying their food. It was delish!

Greg and I with our hostesses!

(psst - Rebecca, the one in red, has lost 105 pounds using Weight Watchers. One hundred and five pounds! Doesn't she look fabulous!)

It was so much fun & I am so touched by everyone's generosity. They pooled money & Lauren spent two hours at Babies R Us last night decking us out with both of our infant car seats, a changing pad, many crib sheets, burp clothes, and tons of nursery thingies. Plus, there's still a gift card left over. It's just so generous & thoughtful that I don't even know what to say.

THANK YOU, EVERYONE!!!

Bump Progress: 27 Weeks

It has been TWO months since I last posted a bump picture. You'd think that since this is my first (and probably last) pregnancy that I'd have a whole series of weekly photos to document the entire process. But then you'd be wrong.

As you can see there has been significant progress in the bump expansion department. But I feel the picture above doesn't adequately capture the magnitude of the beach ball that is my belly.

So how about some nekkkkid pictures?! :)


And here is where I freak out my friends who haven't been pregnant...


See that dark line that's traveling down the middle of my belly? Don't panic! That's the linea nigra, another one of the weird perks of pregnancy hormones. It goes away (or so I've been promised) after the babies arrive. I have a really bizarro one that sometimes looks like there's also a bruise around my belly button. Normal but not as common.

No stretch marks yet. (Thank you, thank you, thank you) My mom never got any in the course of having 3 BIG babies so I'm hoping I'm in the clear on that one. No swelling yet - unless you count my chubby cheeks. (I was referring the ones on my face, not my booty, but I guess that applies as well.) I gain weight like a damn chipmunk so one of the first things I get is a fat face. In fact, I've recently seen evidence of a double chin. Lovely.

I've since gotten used to maneuvering my body. No more crushing the babies by bending over because I forget the bump is there. There's no forgetting this puppy anymore! Since the weather's warmed up, I'm on a strictly flip-flop shoe regime so Greg's been spared from helping me dress in the mornings. I can still roll myself over in bed, but the movement must be accompanied by a grunt or two. Good thing Greg's a heavy sleeper.

One of the very cool things I've noticed this week is the fact that my belly MOVES! I mean, if the boys are kicking, especially Left Baby - he's definitely more squirmy than his brother, I can sit back, look at my belly and actually see my skin bounce from all the kicks & punches & rolls! It really is amazing. And I'm loving every minute of it.


p.s. In case you were wondering, my 27-week belly is the equivalent size of a singleton mom's 34-week belly! That's almost FULL TERM, people! And we still have a long way to go. I'm going to need a crane to move myself around by end of this...

Brianna's Bachelorette Party

I hadn't been bar-hopping in Austin in a looooong time so a few things took me by surprise.

1. Scantily-clad girls paid to dance on bar platforms seem to be all the rage in Austin right now. Pangaea, a ponce-y bar where the old downtown Alamo used to be, had a few with everyone awkwardly trying not to stare even though they really, really wanted to.
2. Every party girl in Austin owns some variation of this trapeze dress:
3. When traveling in a bachelorette party, its ridiculously easy to get free drinks. This wasn't so much a surprise, but it never ceases to amaze me...

First we met at Manuel's for dinner.


Then we hit the town.

Free champagne - awesome!

With the Bachelor at his new bar. Ladies, I'm sorry but he is not that tall. :(

The bride with another cocktail to add to the deadly mix

Subjects in photo are not as drunk as they appear - one of them anyway...

Fun night!

Good Times with Old Friends

Hi. Its me again. No, I'm not dead. Still playing catch up on the blog...

SO! The week after the going away party below, two of our friends blew into town to stay with us for a while. One of my favorite people in the whole, wide world - Ms. Shelley! (In my head, that sounds like Mizzzz Shell-laaaaay all sassy-like...) We had two days of girl time before she had to head back to L.A., and boy did we take advantage...

Squishing into Chuy's photo booth - it wasn't working so we made our own

The other was Gunther! We hadn't seen him since his wedding in Spain last year. He was in the U.S. for a conference in Vegas and made a side trip down to Austin for several days. Our time with Gunther is always... ... unique. :)

Click on the photo to see all the shots and action.

We miss you guys!!!

Wedding Reunions

I love the feel of freshly cleaned and polished teeth, don't you? I almost hate to ruin all of my dentist's hard work from this morning, but it must be done.

Mark & Brianna's wedding is quickly approaching, and friends & family have already started to trickling into town. We went tubing with Brianna's parents down from Michigan, and Mark's sister over from Australia at the week-end. Karl is here from Mississippi, soon to be joined by Terri on Friday. Fred & Kristie fly in from England tonight. So do Jacque & Ian. Everyone else will be arriving over the next few days. Yay!

Tonight while all the boys are hitting 6th street for the bachelor party (or 'stag do' if speaking the Queen's English), the girls are indulging in half-price appetizers and martinis at 219 West. The 'hen night' was last week-end so this is just a chance for us all to re-group and get into party mode. The next few days promise to be action-packed with boat parties, rehearsal dinners, poker games, Barton Springs time, and much too much alcohol. Can't wait for it all, but as for now, I must go make myself downtown-presentable.

I'll try to update the blog regularly but as we'll have 3 house guests, I'm making no promises.

Marshmallow Menagerie

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen was the topic of discussion for our book club meeting tonight. (Hi, Beth! Hi, Janice! Hi, Alisha!) Our host requested we bring "circus food".

Do you know long it's been since I've been to a circus?

I was struggling to find something as yet unclaimed when inspiration struck in the form of this Kitchen Retro blog about making marshmallow favors, unearthed from a 1965 McCall's Family Style Cookbook. My sister and I assembled the circus animals before I headed over.


Okay, so it's not exactly "circus food"... It's even better!

The menagerie:

Animals packaged for transport...

Shopaholics Anonymous

It is a sad fact that when shopping with my mother-in-law, I often covet those little treasures that she seems to effortlessly pluck out of oblivion while I am blindly fumbling through all the crap hanging on the racks. The woman seems to have a 6th sense that allows her to spot the fabulous little things that I overlook or dismiss without a second glance. And even better, she always manages to find them at 50-70% off! This must be a talent that I either do not posess or have not honed to perfection as she has.

During this visit, we dedicated two full days to outlet shopping. Eventually I just gave up and began following her around, conceding to her obvious superiority in the realm of fashion and bought several duplicates of her finds - a pair of lovely leather boots, a fuschia top, and this little brown number. And under her influence, I also finally replaced my 10-year-old black peacoat with a new sexy gray one. And miraculously, Greg never even lifted an eyebrow at my shopping spree. Perhaps Ewa should visit more often. :)


Oh, and for the record, I have no reservations about wearing the same clothes as a woman twice my age. She looks damn good for 62! And dresses a hell of a lot nicer than a lot people I know.

Shopping Madness. Madness, I Say!

Ewa spent the entire day after Christmas stranded at the Round Rock outlet malls just as happy as can be. And she's totally ready for more. So today we attempted the unthinkable. We braved the insanity that is the San Marcos outlet mall during after-Christmas sales.

At 11 a.m. there were already tons of cars, but not too bad. There was still decent parking, and you could navigate the shops with relative freedom from frustration or strangers encroaching into your personal space. We were happily shopping until about 2 p.m. when things started to get a bit claustrophobic. By the time we decided to break for lunch the parking lot was absolutely packed with lines of people desperately circling like buzzards for exiting shoppers so they could pounce on their spots. We had to resort to Taco Hell because every other place was filled to the breaking point. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. Then again, I rarely brave the malls. Is it always like this? Surely not.

Anyway, we escaped unscathed and with a trunk full of pretty things. Yay! That's my shopping for the next year.

Spa Day, Baby!

As part of Ewa's Christmas present, we had a girls' manicure day at Lake Austin Spa Resort. May I just say, a girl can get used to this kind of treatment...

We met up with my friend Katie, her mom, sister and sister-in-law for manicures and lunch. We also took a tour of the grounds. Its absolutely lovely. And if I ever go again, I'll make sure to bring my swimsuit. They have an outdoor lounge area with pool, jacuzzi, and massive padded chairs, which were unfortunately soaked with freezing cold water, a rather rude shock when Katie and I tried to sit on them. But there's also a heated indoor lap pool. What a way to spend a lazy day. Ah...

Dreaded Boobie Sag...

My husband just sent me this lovely article from BBC news about how jogging irrepairably damages the sensitive breast tissue leading to saggy boob syndrome. My immediate response to this:

1. Are you trying to tell me something???
2. ...hence my $50-60 sports bras...
   
3. Some day I will insist on a breast lift operation. So please prepare our finances accordingly.
   

But I appreciate your concern, babe...

Shoe Whore

So my self-imposed shoe-buying moratorium. It lasted all of... um.... ...well, nevermind.

But come on! 80% off at DSW! How do you expect me to pass that up? A person can only be so strong! So, babe, if you're reading this...

...the devil made me do it.

Honest!



***UPDATE***

Greg won poker Thursday night! So he got home last night - I had been home for hours because I lost early - and informed me that his winnings financed my new shoes. What a good husband. :)