Platform Shoes on Table Tops: Think I’m Going To Have a Baby.

You know, I never thought there was anything I’d be reluctant to share, but it turns out, having a baby is a hard thing to really open up about, for me at least.  Thanks to blogging there are countless catalogs of everyone’s experience, and I realized I was having trouble thinking of each individual experience as anything but “the right” experience.  But I think the best thing about having a baby is this: there are totally as many ways to do it as there are women in the world.  

So, to answer a few questions I get quite often that are totally specific to me:

Did I get morning sickness?

Nope, not once.  I think I maybe just over ate a few times, but I never threw up from morning sickness.

Are there any weird cravings I have?

I can eat my weight in hot sauce and ketchup these days, but I never DIDN’T like these things, I just didn’t do things like dip bread in them. They’ve moved from “take it or leave it” to entre.  

Do I drink coffee?

I do–yes, one cup a day, because I’ve had two doctors and they both said it was okay and while I haven’t had morning sickness I have had horrible, horrible headaches and coffee, as my midwife suggested, has helped A TON.

Is it a boy or a girl?

A GIRL!  I was shocked, because you’ll hear a lot of “sayings,” when you’re pregnant.  One I heard a lot was “if you get sicker it’s a girl.”  Well, I didn’t, so I was pretty sure this was a dude, but turns out it’s a girl!  Totally pumped either way, but I am excited about a girl.  I love dresses and tom boys, I grew up toeing a fine line, usually wearing princess dresses covered in mud with no shoes, so I feel like no matter what type of gal this is, I’ve got it covered.

Do I work out?

Work out? No.  But I never “work out.”  I run, but not with the urgency or frequency I might usually run (once  or twice a week).  I run slowly and, once I hit around week 15 it made me really have to pee, so it’s not as much fun as usual, but still gets the blood flowing.  I also walk to and from work every day (about a mile an half each way) and was doing prenatal yoga, which I will start again soon.

Am I still a vegetarian?  

I am!  Actually, my doctor indicated MOST of her patients move in that direction during pregnancy even if they usually ate meat.  I was astounded.  I was ready to be like, craving and clawing for meat, but nah.  Totally fine with my normal diet, though I have added cheese, eggs and yogurt in–which is another totally personal choice.  I fully believe you can have a healthy baby without doing so, but my family has lots of bone issues and the baby takes calcium whether you’re getting it or not, so I made the decision to eat it.  It’s also something I’ve always liked the taste of and, unlike meat, have to purposely avoid eating when I do.  So there you have it.

Okay, so there you go!  My first blog about baby. There will be more, but it’s been hard to share, like I said.  

Here Comes the Sun (Better Late than Never!)

That seems an applicable title on many levels–but, at long last, OUR WEDDING PICTURES!  Of course there are tons more, but even this many is totally inappropriate some how, for a blog.

I’ve been trying to think back and evaluate.  Would I have changed anything?  Done anything differently?  Hm.  I might have thrown in a flower girl or ringbarer, for cute factor.  But seriously, beyond that, I think I have no regrets.

We were AMAZINGLY fortunate to have a wonderfully generous friend with a beautiful home she was willing to share, so the setting was fantastic–had I all the money in the world I couldn’t have done any better than LA in the hills surrounded by all my favorite people.

I spent a lot of time on the food: it ran the spectrum from vegan-friendly (done perfectly by Food!) to totally meat-centric taco options and included gluten-free and vegan cake from Lark Bake Shop as well as crazy traditional floral wedding cakes from our favorite, Sweet Lady Jane and the amazing Amanda at Food.  (I have quite a sweet tooth and love to bake, so I feel like I had my bases covered as far as engaging LA’s finest baking spots).  It was, despite the hustle of the day, really gratifying to have people with dietary restrictions (or just strong opinions like me) express their thanks.  And, for my midwestern family who’d never had the experience of “real” tacos, our taco cart made their night.

But, ultimately the music and wedding party and guests made the experience.  Moses worried I’d made my bridal party too big–but I chose just right.  I needed everyone of those ladies with me, whether it was helping me become the bride (I spent half the morning in pjs, no makeup and bright blue socks with red ballet flats–the transformation took EVERY BIT of the help of everyone who so graciously did), to just being there to share that with us–it made the day totally perfect.

Our friend Mark played music–a lovingly chosen array of All Things Must Past George Harrison, Wings and Beatles (I walked down the aisle to “Here Comes the Sun”), and our fantastic and newly married pal Sean made the ceremony and vows seem that much more important with his totally tangible honesty and goodness.  Seriously, we have some totally remarkable people in our lives, and having them all there to share made it SO the magical day it was supposed to be.

So, until this not-so-tiny baby emerges, this will stand as my most wonderful day…thank you everyone for loving us!

Shut your eyes and think of Peru.

 

Today’s a hard day.  The weather’s gotten cold again and I keep watching all the new spring blooms being ripped from the tree branches by this crazy wind.  Hard to watch, since I’m such a spring enthusiast—needless to say, I am very, very ready for warmth.  I am ready for blue sky and outside and long days.  So I found myself, as I often do, wishing for California.  I decided it was probably healthier to reflect instead of the awesome honeymoon we had in Peru (where the sky was blue and it was 80 degrees).

 

 The weekend whether, sadly, wasn’t great either, so we spent Sunday inside watching documentaries on Netflix.  I made the mistake of watching a new release on Charles and Ray Eames.  I thought I liked Charles Eames.  I DO like Charles Eames, but I might not like him as much as a person.  I’ve been in love with the love affair of Charles and Ray Eames for ages—the collaboration of it all and cognitive matching’s…anyway, this documentary bummed me out and I’m feeling a little like I lost something idolized.  Boo. 

 

 

 

So I’ll show you pretty pictures I took in Peru, where the food is wonderful and the light is amazing.

A little hiatus.

Well, a short break during a move and busy school schedule turned into a really long break when our internet went out A MONTH ago.  Because we’d already missed a day of work to have the internet set up, we couldn’t justify missing ANOTHER day to get it fixed: so our airports sat blinking for the entire month and we had to watch reruns of The League and sustain on my unlimited media plan via iPhone for Netflix.  It’s a hard life.

 

On the bright side, we got some more of the apartment done, in the absence of all that television (plus a spring break from school).

 

The move hasn’t been easy.  In fact, I think this has been our hardest move ever.  Moving across Brooklyn made it hard to throw away or sell anything, so instead we just kept it.  But moving into a railroad with five small rooms (and ONE closet!) verses a studio-style apartment with two giant ones (and tons of closets) was a tough transition.  We’ve been hanging anything and everything and buying lots and lots of storage containers to fit under everything.

 

Our biggest expense for the new spot has been plants.  Our last apartment, though roomy, lacked sunlight and everything died.  This time we have lots of natural light (in the rooms with windows), so we’re building a kitchen herb garden (a work in progress) as have several woolly pockets in the bedroom to brighten things up.

 

More to come, but it’s shaping up.  Moses told me, as we were getting ready for bed after a very straight-laced St. Patrick’s day, that I should do a post about how our “green” efforts were all plant related.  It’s true: we spent all afternoon looking at plant shops and filling woolly pockets, eating bahn mi in our neighborhood and enjoying some spring weather.  A beer or two would have been a nice addition–we just totally forgot.

Breakfast Pizza

One of my favorite things is brunch.  I’m always trying to arm-wrestle someone into going with me.  The past two-times I’ve gone to a neighborhood place called Ortine.  It’s cute and small and centers mostly around pizza.  Their brunch is understated and really nice, and my favorite thing on the menu is their breakfast pizza.

They do a nice one with ricotta cheese, potatoes and eggs (which I always get over-hard because runny yolks are the worst).  The only downside is it’s 15 dollars!  It’s not a TON for an entre, I suppose, but more than I’d like to spend, so this week I decided to take matters into my own hands and make us our very own breakfast pizza.

It worked out pretty well, though I spotted an online recipe that opted for pie dough instead and made a breakfast gallette, which, trust me, would be better, but far more decadent.  All that butter…AND ricotta?  Yikes.

We used veggy bacon, fingerling potatoes and a very thin layer of ricotta as a base.  I added salt after baking because I could have used a pinch extra in the recipe I made up for the crust.  I also put in maple syrup instead of the pinch of sugar I usually use for pizza crust…because, you know, it’s breakfast.  But all in al a pretty amazing home remedy (and far less than 15 bucks total).

Breakfast Pizza Dough:

1 3/4 cup bread flour

1 cup semolina flour

1/2 cup corn meal

1 tablespoon sea salt

1 packet dried yeast

1 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup

2 cups luke warm water

Mix yeast with water and syrup and whisk with fork and let sit around 10 minutes.  Arrange flours and salt in a separate bowl and make a well in the middle.  Pour yeast/syrup mixture into the well and use your hands to turn the dough (keeping your hands floured so dough won’t stick).  Once dough is spongy and won’t mix any more, cover with dish towel and let sit for 10 to 15 minutes (you can use that time to dice potatoes, coat them in olive oil and red peper flakes if you’re making the breakfast pizza).

I use this dough for…everything.  Except for when I use it for dinner pizza I use brown sugar or honey in place of the syrup.

If you want to go the breakfast pizza route, just turn out the dough on to a parchment lined cookie sheet and pat into shape, cover with ricotta, oil, and arrange potatoes in a “fan” so they cook evenly and get crispy.  Put in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes or so, until potatoes look crunchy.  Pull out five minutes prior to “done” and crack the eggs over the top.  (We used two eggs and I did it ten minutes early because I’m an egg weirdo).  I also cooked veggy bacon on the stove top and crumpled and added to the top of the done pizza (veggy bacon isn’t very good unless it’s very crispy and burns quick, so I didn’t put it on until the end).

On a side note, Kitty Viv has a squirrel arch enemy.  I’ve been feeding (heavily feeding) a squirrel Moses has named Samantha, but I think is male.  He has three make-shift bird feeders to himself and just parks his squirrel butt on our window ledge and eats and eats and eats.  He also taunts Vivi.   In the midst of baking I went to check on her in the bedroom and saw this:  Which is basically a squirrel’s version of the finger, right?

 

My Luna Miel in Peru.

Guess what?  (If you’re reading this blog, you probably know) I got married!  Since I don’t have those pictures yet, here’s some from our honeymoon in Peru.

Turns out, Peru’s not super easy to get to: at least not if you’re not staying in Lima.  We flew from LA to Lima and then boarded a tiny plane (which we missed the first time around—long, treacherous story involving not enough layover time and a late take off) to Cusco.  Once we got to Cusco we took a (very expensive, we later found) cab ride to our first hotel, a resort called Tamba del Inca.  After a day of being pampered we switched to our hotel for the next five days, a two-story bungalow on a compound with five friendly dogs and four other houses.

Of course, we had loads more photos, but here are a few just to show you how amazing our trips to town, ruins, and meals were on our “luna meil.”

Santa…baby.

How weird is it that Christmas is over?  When I was a kid I remember the Christmas anticipation was good for MONTHS.  I noticed things like carols on the mall PA system and Santa’s throne thing set up in the middle of the Jefferson City, Missouri Capital Mall.  I made my mom pop open and bake crescent rolls and dust them with cinnamon and sugar.  We got assorted paper plates of cookies from church bake sales and I always liked about two or three of the twenty random cookies and found the greasy paper plate vaguely disgusting.  My uncle always gave me a $50 gift certificate to Dillard’s.  I thought it was the most posh gift EVER.  We saw movies after we opened gifts—things like Little Women, Titanic and Hook.  We listened to Nat King Cole’s Christmas and put up the tree—except for the year I turned 15 and made everyone listen to Nirvana Unplugged, which I’d still probably do except that now we have Phil Spector’s Christmas, and there’s really nothing better.

We had a very relaxed Christmas.  Blame it on the wedding looming on our horizon—our smoking pocket books and anxiety-tinged dreams (dear subconscious: I would never, ever, ever buy a floral-print gown with a smocked high waist and bell-sleeves.  I just wouldn’t, so please stop telling my sleepy brain it’s only hours before I have to stand in front of 70 people and confess my love publicly while wearing such a thing).

This year we had a friend for a lazy, sodium-rich breakfast casserole (I used fake bacon and Morning Star sausages—yummy, salty delicious).  Then we sat around and watched America’s Funniest Home Videos on Netflix.  I made a mobile from feathers and felt, and we practiced wedding decoration ideas to make sure they’ll work for the big day.

The next day we took a long walk around the city and we ate and ate and ate—breakfast sandwiches from scratch (“Just like McDonalds,” as Moses requested, “but homemade and healthier.”), margarita pizza with a semolina flour crust and peanut butter and chocolate cookies.

We spent Christmas Eve with a few friends who all had children, so we got to get all the fun and excitement of Christmas for kids (and a free, delicious meal courtesy of Miss Kelli and the always-darling Liam).

Rion and Mandy came to visit!

And Kitty got a bowl of treats, Moses got a fancy razor, and I got a ring—another one, but it hasn’t arrived juuuuust yet.

And the most amazing little Christmas family let us spend xmas eve with their little Sweet Pea.  You can’t tell here, but she has sparkly tights on.