Density

Hi everyone,

Sorry it's been so long since the last update. We've been spending virtually every evening getting ready for the big day -- packing bags for the hospital, getting the apartment ready, and generally just counting down the time in a state of perpetual disbelief as to how few days we have left until Avery's due date. (Five!)

Anyway, it's taken a lot of creativity figuring out how we're going to fit two adults, a baby, two cats, and all our junk into a 600 square foot apartment. Fortunately, we've been able to store a ton of stuff at Stan & Elaine's house. It'll still be a very tight fit, but it's looking like we'll be able to pull it off, at least for awhile.

Here's the new crib, which was delivered on Friday. The bumper and sheets are courtesy of Jacqui. (Yes, we realize that you aren't supposed to use a bumper with a newborn. Or at least we realized it after Elissa reminded us... but we thought it looked nice for the picture.)















The cats are having a great time taking turns napping in the drawers underneath the crib! Fortunately, neither of them have shown any interest in getting into the crib itself, but we have a crib tent to put on top in case they ever do.

The crib is wedged in between Cher's closet and our bed, which has now been moved several feet down the wall from its original position. Thus, as you can see it's somewhat of a tight squeeze for me to get out of my side of the bed.

Here's Avery's new closet, which was formerly known as our bookshelf.

And here's a typical corner in our bedroom... two dressers and a little bookshelf (with a makeshift cat bed on top) all wedged into one corner. As you can see, it may be a bit tough for me to open my dresser drawers with this new arrangement, but I should be fine so long as I never have to change my socks or underwear.

Here's the stroller parallel parked in a tiny space between the TV and piano.


And here's our new, smaller couch which is wedged up against the cat tower, which in turn is wedged up against the windowsill.













I can't wait to see what happens with so much love, stress, joy, change, laughter, tears and experiences packed into such a small space! Here's to our baby's densely-packed future, and to my beautiful wife who has been so strong, loving and nurturing to little Avery for these last nine months, and to our entire family for these last eight years.


("My density has popped me to you.")

Update

Hi guys,

I made a few improvements to the blog this weekend. It now only displays the most recent entries, so if you want to read any older ones just click on the archives links on the side. We also added some fun links to our friends/family and to the hospital, and will be sure to add more soon. There's also a button in case you ever want to email an entry to anyone.

We had another good weekend of baby prep. On Saturday we went into the City and bought a bunch of storage bins to keep on my old bookshelf, which is now Avery's closet. We also figured out how to put the Pack n' Play together, as well as the crib tent (to keep the cats out), and also did our first two loads of baby clothes laundry.

Elf

Just wanted to share how skinny I am in my elf suit (if we haven't sent you the link already)!
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1318341516

We are at 37 weeks and everything is still normal - not dilated as of Thursday morning.

Getting ready for Avery!

What a weekend! Between selling our couches, getting a new (smaller) one, moving all of our books out to NJ, receiving all of our clothing and presents from NJ - we have been workin' (or I should say Scott has been working) double time!! Unfortunately, we have no new pics b/c we are still rearranging everything in the apartment and trying to get organized.

Avery is 36.5 weeks and I only have to get up for 14 more days of work before she's born!!!! I thought this was a pretty cool picture of how she's positioned inside of me. Her legs/feet are usually on my right side and her shoulders are usually on the left side, but she really does quite a bit of elbowing regardless of where she is. We think with her giant limbs she must take after Scott's side (with all those tall and thin genes- she'll be a lucky girl!). We do joke about how she looks, but of course we really just want a healthy baby girl (who sleeps well and doesn't fuss too often and behaves well when being handled by others, who adores all of her relatives and friends AND we hope she is super intelligent and caring, etc, etc)!! No really... just a healthy baby would be great.



Hopefully we'll have a new and exciting blog soon!!

Fun in the cold!

Scott and I managed to get quite a lot of Hanukkah and baby shopping done on Saturday. It was exhausting and freezing but worth the trek.

Above are some sort of nutcracker/festive people that we took pictures with at the Marc Jacobs store (possibly the home of my future diaper bag if we are crazy enough to splurge on one indulgence item for me). We also bought our new camcorder (thanks to Lorie and Stefan for our Hanukkah gift) and a long awaited pair of new glasses for me. I'm so glad I'll actually be able to see in the hospital now (and make sure I'm taking home the right baby!). After dinner in the West Village, we ended the night with banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery (our favorite dessert EVER!). But best of all we bought our 3 nieces and 3 nephews some very cute Hanukkah presents that we hope they enjoy.

In Avery news - According to the baby sites , Avery is now the weight of a honeydew melon. We have our 36 week sonogram tomorrow as well as the last round of tests. Hopefully all will be well! We have also started to receive some pretty great presents from around the country! Thanks to everyone for being so generous in helping us get ready for our bundle!

just 5 weeks left!!!

Jaime was in town from Seattle for Thanksgiving so the girls came over to see my big Avery bump. Apparently whatever huge alien movements she was making were hilarous and terrifying to Elizabeth, Miya and Jaime!!

6 weeks old and 6 weeks to go....

Sadie came to visit this weekend (Avery's BFF and future UofM roommate).














Scott and I had a lot to learn from experts Drew and Gil - so they spilled as much as possible during their visit of what we need to expect. Sadie was exactly 6 weeks old yesterday and we were exactly 6 weeks until our due date. Can't wait for the girls to meet!

Back to School

This weekend was pretty laid back. Saturday, we spent several hours going through Cheryl's closet and drawers, making piles of stuff to give to charity or store in NJ, thereby freeing up a few more cubic feet for all the incoming baby stuff. We actually made some pretty good progress.

Today we went to six hours of baby classes at a hospital here in Brooklyn. We had an infant childcare class in the morning and a breastfeeding class in the afternoon. We did learn several useful things. For example, Cheryl and I both got to try out some advanced baby handling techniques (along with some deranged facial expressions):



Half of the class time was spent watching terrifying videotapes from the 80's featuring extreme close-ups of doodie diapers, babies spitting up, rotting umbilical cords, circumcision scabs, manually expressed lactation, meconium, and (to borrow from Animal House) more than two dozen other individual acts of childcare so profoundly disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here.

Aside from that, everything has been wonderful these last few days. Avery is now the size of a pineapple, and we are really excited to meet her in seven weeks! And of course we're both looking forward to a fun Thanksgiving later this week at Elissa & Jon's house. We'll post more during the long holiday weekend.

Lorie & Lisa visit

My mom and Lisa came to town this weekend and we all had a great time together. We were supposed to see Spring Awakening, but weren't able to because the Broadway stagehands went on strike just a few hours before our show, but we still had plenty of other highlights. Just to name a few, we...

Had an amazing brunch at Norma's. The food was so pretty that mom broke out the camera.










The potato pancakes that we all shared for an appetizer were incredible!

We then spent the afternoon at the MOMA. They had an exhibition of Seurat's drawings, and some great sculptures by Martin Puryear. This is one that we all really liked...



















We also spent a long time checking out the paintings on the 5th floor. Mom and I both really liked this one, Dynamism of a Soccer Player by Umberto Boccioni.


















And as the sun set, we finished off our day there in the sculpture garden. Here's mom next to a big something or other.














But the best part of the weekend was when we were just hanging out together at home. On Saturday night we brought in dinner, and also bought a ton of treats from the cookie place down the street. We ended up with eight different types of cupcakes and whoopie pies, all of which we shared.















It was an amazing dessert! (You may notice the sudoku on the coffee table... This was actually Killer Sudoku, a new version mom taught us all how to play. I struggled mightily with some purportedly easy ones, but they were fun to work on together.)

On Sunday, I helped Lisa set up her new Project Runway Fantasy League.


(Email her if you want to join!)

Ultimately, however, Avery was the true star of the weekend. Mom and Lisa got to enjoy some of her powerful kicks, and we all spent a lot of time just talking about her and looking forward to meeting her. It was a ton of fun.

















All in all, it was great to see them, and great to see how excited they are to meet Avery. We feel the same way.

Next weekend, Cheryl and I are taking an introductory childcare class and a breastfeeding class at a hospital here in Brooklyn. Should be fun. Hope everyone has a great week!

31 & 31

This weekend, Cheryl turned 31 (years) and Avery reached 31 (weeks). Cheryl and I had a really nice weekend together to celebrate her birthday. Saturday night, we went to the Brooklyn Museum, which is free & full of fun events the first Saturday of each month. We heard some live music, watched some short films, and looked at all sorts of art. Below are some images from the Contemporary Caribbean Art exhibition, which is where we spent most of our time.







After the museum, we had a late dinner at a Turkish spot in the neighborhood. It ended up being a nice evening from start to finish. Today, we saw Michael Clayton, which we both enjoyed very much, then had a great BD dinner at Po, followed by some great caramel gelato and a cupcake (with candles in them) from our favorite local bakery.

My mom and Lisa will be in town at the end of this week, so we're both looking forward to that. Cheryl and I keep telling each other that we have to get serious about baby prep soon, so their visit may be our last hurrah for awhile. Which reminds me... please vote in our new poll!

30 weeks and Elaine's Bday

Friday we reached 30 weeks and Avery is now the size of a cabbage! Saturday we celebrated my mom's 65th birthday - the soon-to-be grandma of 6! We had a small catered dinner while all the kids played in the basement with a babysitter (baby Ryan stayed upstairs with the adults). Jon came home from Portugal Saturday and also celebrated his 35th bday this past week!! Lots of Scorpios in this family!!!

Stefan and Deborah visit Brooklyn

Sorry we are so slow blogging these days, but the bigger I get, the less room i have on my lap for the laptop. Stefan and Deborah visited last weekend and we had tons of fun with them. Avery was particularly fond of the broadway show A Chorus Line and she pretty much danced her way through the whole show (it's nice to know we have the same taste in music, at least for now). We had what seemed like a million amazing meals and I'm sure Avery appreciated the huge quantities of great food as well. Here's some pics highlighting a walk around DUMBO and other family pics.







All four of us standing near the Manhattan Bridge (outside a funky gallery).






Sitting on a bench taking in the beautiful scenery of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.

Stefan and Deb at the Brooklyn Promenade in Brooklyn Heights.

28 Weeks

Sorry we haven't been posting much lately. We have been pretty low-key these last couple weeks, although this weekend we enjoyed a fun party with some of our friends who went to law school with Scott. Who knows... Swati's party might be the last late-night out we have for a long time!

In Avery news, she has been practicing her martial arts recently. Her movements are much more pronounced and she's much pushier than she used to be. She even managed to knock my arm off of my belly with a huge kick. It was pretty shocking!!!

And in great big news, Avery's BFF was born Saturday, October 13th (7lbs, 6oz). SADIE HANA
As Drew says, her cuteness factor is off the charts!! We hope to meet Sadie soon and we wish Gil and Drew lots of love and happiness with Sadie!!!

Stefan and Deborah will be in town in just a few days, so we'll be sure to post some pics from our weekend with them soon.

Atlantic Antic 2007

This past weekend we also hung out at the Atlantic Antic, a great street festival that goes on right outside our building. As always, it was a lot of fun. Whereas most street festivals in NYC seem always to have the exact same food, vendors, etc., the Antic features all sorts of local and unique artisans, restaurants, and bands.

Here is the view from our window. The NYC Transit Museum (which is a block away from us) always brings out a bunch of old buses onto the street that you can walk through.

Some of the buses we checked out.

One of the best things about the Antic (and Brooklyn in general) is how many different people and cultures are represented there. At one point, I was enjoying a locally brewed Brooklyn beer with a Vietnamese sandwich (pig liver pate, ham, ground pork, pickled carrot, cucumbers, cilantro, jalapeno, and mayo on a baguette) while watching a pair of women in burqas watch a turkish belly dancer. And of course, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was there (that's him right behind Cher).

As was this guy who plays for the Nets. We have no idea what his name is.

There was a ton of live music... almost a different band every hour on every block.

All in all, just a really fun day in Brooklyn. How could we ever leave this place?