It's a...

GIRL!

Here's a picture of her from the ultrasound we had done yesterday. For some reason she stuck her foot up in her face as the doc took the picture. I say she's got "ballerina" written all over her.

There's something in my bed...

"Don't mind me, I'm just cuddling with my Snoogle," I told J a few days ago after we arrived home from BuyBuyBaby with my newest purchase in hand. After unwrapping the thing, it was love at first hug. The Snoogle is one of those total body pregnancy pillow things that looks more like a prop from a Gwar concert than an actual pillow:


Scary, right? But desperate times call for desperate measures. At this point I'm no no longer supposed to "lie on my back," since doing so supposedly cuts off nutrients and other things to Peanut by compressing my "vena cava" (whatever that is), according to my maternity book/bible Your Pregnancy: Week-by-Week. So, in order to avoid waking up on my back in the middle of the night and freaking out over visuals that Peanut is somehow suffocating in my tummy, one little unformed hand on its throat with the other unformed hand helplessly clutching out into the murky depths of my womb for help, I opted to rely on a Snoogle to do all the propping up for me.

The pillow comes with no directions, just a few pictures on the packaging that show you just how versatile it is:


And the first night was bliss. I assumed you were supposed to loop that curly-q end between your knees with your back snuggled in against the pillow, which I did and it was fabulous. I woke up feeling great, and not minding so much that I spent the entire night sleeping on my side. Then night two rolled around.

Sure, the thing was a little awkward to use at first since the hooked end more wants to poke you in the butt than it does want to stay between your legs, but the worst is turning on to your other side to bear hug the thing. This entails you un-entwining your legs from the massive hook between them, which promptly begins poking at your crotch as you try to flip over to face the Snoogle. After a few nights of this I finally understood what it must feel like to wrestle with a jellyfish, albeit under a down comforter and while I'm wearing flannel chihuahua print pajama pants (both not conducive to easy-flipping-over action).

Like a once-exciting fling who now bored me, the Snoogle seemed to have outlived its welcome in my bed. I had just started taking to propping myself up against J when I did some research online yesterday and realized that I was approaching the Snoogle all wrong -- I had been using it upside down the entire time. No wonder it never felt right; I had been outsmarted by a tube of polyester. When I realized how to use the pillow right I couldn't help but think of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but instead of throwing a bone high into the air in slow motion, the Snoogle would be hurled up in its place.

Anyway, hopefully now I'll get a proper night's sleep, since the old back is starting to hurt the and the bump is beginning to show as I'm about to hit the halfway point in this pregnancy!

First baby purchase

Sorry to bore you with all-things-baby, but I've got to highlight these moments in our lives so that we don't forget! This weekend J and I went to BuyBuyBaby to buy ourselves a stroller for Peanut. No jogging prams (hello? do I look like I jog?) or bugaboo designer strollers, just something simple and small that would be easy to manage in claustrophobic Trader Joe's aisles and to fold up fast for airplane rides.

After five minutes it was clear which one I'd fallen in love with: the Graco FastAction Fold Travel Stroller. J was on the fence about it for a few minutes, since he thought the bigger strollers had more to offer, but I LOATHE big strollers. All that bulky plastic seems so unnecessary. So we brought the thing home and I took pictures (naturally) while J put it together. It was surreal watching him click the wheels on and inspect the infant seat; I don't know whether it's the hormones or what but I almost cried from all the sentimentality. He's going to be such a great father.

What I'm looking forward to this month

1.) Mad Men finally returns


Um, has this show been off the air long enough for you all yet? Personally I've been dying -- the past 525 days of it being off air has resulted in me rewatching old episodes multiple times, along with Matt Weiner commentary, to sate my MM fix. I'm very curious to see where Season 5 will go...will Don and Megan actually marry? Will the season fast forward and start a year or two into their marriage? How will Pete be as a real father? Will Betty and Henry finally get a divorce, and if so, will she continue to try and get back into Don's good graces? Will Greg die in Vietnam and leave Joan free to carry on her dalliances with Roger? Would she even want to with Jane still in the picture and a baby on the way? Will Sally blossom into the flower child we all know she's going to be?

So many questions, so little answers in AMC's many teaser trailers. At least the premiere will be a two-hour event. March 25th: You can't come soon enough.

2.) Neiman Marcus opensNot like I'm in that echelon of people that can casually shop at Neiman's like it ain't no thang (yet), but Neiman's is opening in my town and I can't wait. Construction on the building wrapped up a while ago and it looks all retro and lovely as usual, with avocado-green glass panels and the store's classic signature logo pinned nice and high on the side. The day it opens, Neiman's is holding a VIP gala indoors with live music, champagne, decadent foods and other fun things that wealthy people commonly partake in. Unfortch tickets to this gala cost somewhere around $250 per person, and well, with remodeling underway and a baby in our future, $500 on a black-tie night in a high-end department store doesn't seem to be in the cards for J and I. Luckily Neiman's understand this and is hosting a big outdoor party the next evening with live music for the commoners.

3.) We find out what Peanut is!


March 27th is the big day for the gender ultrasound. Boy? Girl? At this point I don't really care. Prior to getting pregnant all I wanted was a little girl to dress up and take shopping with me and teach how to be a lady. Now that I'm with bébé, though, my desire to only have a girl has dissipated. I can still dress a little boy up very cutely (I'm thinking Janie and Jack preppy here) and have just as much fun with it. Plus it's not like this is going to be our one and only kid. Other babies will be in our future, so we'll have many opportunities to roll those dice.

The most unproductive Sunday ever (relatively speaking)

So normally J and I don't make solid plans for our weekend afternoons, choosing instead to reserve planning for Friday and Saturday nights, which usually consist of either dining out or attending dinner parties (clearly, this is an indicator that I hate cooking). Those couples that plan all those fun Saturday and Sunday afternoon activities like mini bike trips or drives out to the nearest beach or fascinating hikes in any of the Bay Area's many locales? Yeah, so not us. Not because we don't want to do these things, but because neither of us is proactive enough to actually plan anything. (Ugh, so lazy, I swear in my other life I was a cat.) Once in a while we'll go on a picnic with my Totally-Amazing-Decked-Out-Picnic-Basket-complete-with-wine-glasses-and-gingham-handled-flatware, but more often than not our weekend days are unscripted. Shopping the clearance racks at Burberry in SF? Might as well look on a whim. A croissant and cappuccino at La Boulange? Why not. A stop at Trader Joe's is usually in order, and who knows, things can always get a little crazy if we find ourselves wandering the paint section at Home Depot.

Normally this method of madness bodes well for us, but it also leaves room to improvise, which can be detrimental if either one of us is undergoing a current obsession. Such was the case this past Sunday.

I have become OBSESSED with the Game of Thrones book series. As in I've got my face in one of the books almost every waking second, sometimes even in the car, and if I'm not reading them, then I'm thinking or talking about them constantly. I begged J to start reading the first book, just so we could discuss, and right when he started it, he too became obsessed. So in spite of our best intentions (he had reams of legal work to do and it would have been nice for him to finish installing our tile backsplash in the kitchen), here's how our past Sunday rolled out:

• J wakes up before me, reaches for Games of Thrones, reads until I wake up.
• I wake up.
• We talk in bed for an hour or so.
• We move to the couch and continue reading, he on book one, me on book two (A Clash of Kings). Hours go by. We periodically graze on restaurant leftovers for sustenance.
• I decide it's more comfortable to read in bed, so I convince J to continue reading in bed with me. Another three hours go by.
• J claims he can't lie down any longer, so he moves back out to the living room couch with book. I follow him.
• Evening: I finish book two as J nears the end of book one. We head to Target since I obviously need to buy book three so I can continue reading that night. After purchasing book three and two blue raspberry Slurpees, we return home and continue reading, he on book two and me on book three. End scene.

The next morning I realized our Sunday was a bit ridiculous. We have SO much to finish around the house before the baby's born, but instead we succumbed to levels of college behavior that left us nothing to show for ourselves at the end of the day. Obvi this can't happen once Peanut is born, but I've got to admit, I felt a little guilty indulging in my obsession to such a degree. Do my depths of laziness know no bounds? Or do we need to get these kind of days in before they become a thing of the past?