Ten things to love about being pregnant

Alright, my last post may have been a bit negative about the whole pregnancy thing, but, I have been getting sleep lately, enjoying a pre-natal yoga class near my new home in San Mateo and generally feeling a lot healthier. So, I decided that I should stop whining about my aches and pains and celebrate the good things about being pregnant (other than the obvious fact that there is a little mini Lafferty boy growing inside of me). Here is what I came up with as VERY positive things regarding being pregnant.

10. I don’t have to have my period for 9 months (maybe more… I’m not sure when Aunt Flo will return after childbirth). Apologies to any male readers that you had to think about a woman’s period for a brief moment.

9. You have an excellent excuse to sleep in, be lazy, not carry heavy things or work out too heavily. I have probably not been taking advantage of this benefit enough.

8. You get something like an extra 500 calories per day!

7. People tend to offer you food first, seconds, or the last helping of food. They love to point out… “You are eating for two!” (even if that other person is only a pound or two)

6. You get to shop for new clothes.

5. Doors open to a whole new world of friends … moms love other moms. Even co-workers who have families somehow seem to have a new kinship with you because you will soon understand them a little better than before.

4. Rubbing your belly is now cute and loving instead of just a sign that you ate too much.

3. Friends say you are cute even though you have gained 10, 15, 20 or more pounds.

2. Doctor’s visits where you get to hear your baby’s heartbeat coming from your stomach, or ultrasounds where you actually see this person growing inside you. What a crazy process.

1. Lastly, the one thing I’ve been enjoying a lot these days are BABY KICKS!! When I am at work, doing yoga, eating or laying down to bed, I tend to feel baby Lafferty moving around and kicking. Sometimes it makes me laugh because some kicks are a lot harder than others. I often think, did he like that meal and is giving me a high five, or did I eat too much and he needs a bit more room in there?  Sharing these kicks with Kevin is really fun too. He really felt the kicks a couple of days ago when we were going to sleep. It seemed liked our baby was dancing that night.

25 Weeks and counting…

Up until about 20 weeks, I was thinking that this pregnancy thing wasn’t so bad. I had some nausea, dry skin and a couple of your other standard symptoms in the first trimester, but, compared to some friends, I had it pretty easy. I hadn’t even gained too much weight at that point! Score for me! I was even still going on 3 mile runs in my hilly neighborhood up until 20 weeks. Then, the turkey eating, stuffing, chocolate munching holidays came where we drove down to LA just before flying to Australia. During this time, I got no exercise and did some LONG days of travel… Plus, as of 20 weeks, you are supposed to begin the real weight gain at about 1 lb per week. During this time, I was gaining more weight, not getting exercise and being set through the motions of jet lag and long days.  By the middle of our vacation in Australia, I began to get a pain in my right abdominal side every time I walked for just a short distance. And, let me tell you, not being able to walk far when you are on vacation, kinda sucks. Kevin began carrying everything for me (like my camera… No, I did not make him ever carry my purse… I just can’t do that to the poor guy). When, I got back to the states, I called my doctor to ask about these pains and the nurse told me they were very common. It was sometimes caused by water retention or various other things. The pain often caused pregnant women to have the “duck waddle”. So, suddenly, I went from running to waddling.   Then, after 1-2 weeks back, I started getting a terrible back pain whenever I lay down. I had a few nights where I fell asleep sitting up… not fun. When, I posted about these pains on Facebook, suddenly all the ex-pregnant women friends had a million suggestions for me. Apparently this pain and not being able to sleep was a normal symptom. But, why doesn’t anyone talk about it? Everyone talks about morning sickness or hemorroids… but, not being able to sleep because of excruiciating pains in your back? I thought that the sleepless nights wouldn’t start until later.

Anyways, the good news is that several things have alleviated most of my pains from the previous weeks. I have gotten back to yoga at least twice a week, I got a full body massage (oh heaven!) and I bought a pregnancy pillow (some of the best $40 ever spent). Now, I’m able to enjoy sleep again… at least for now. Actually, its possible that none of these things actually helped. Our little baby boy may have just switched positions and gotten off my sciatic nerve causing less irritation. Who knows… but, I’m a lot happier.

Lots of friends have asked for pictures of my growing belly, but, honestly, I don’t have many. I haven’t organized photos from Australia yet, and even in those pics, I hardly have any with the belly. So, I had Kevin take this one of me. Please ignore the nerdy plaid red pajamas (its a bit chilly in our new house).

We are home owners!

Three years…six offers..three homes in contract and more Sunday open houses than I care to remember LATER… we are home owners! We closed on our house last week. I can’t wait to move and settle in. Here’s a picture of our new house:

We are leaving the city of San Francisco for our own home. I don’t even feel sad about it.

The Growing Belly and other news

Currently, I’m sitting in my sister-in-law Lise’s apt. in Sydney enjoying a little downtime after nearly 24 hours of travel to get here from SF. Kevin and I just arrived for a two week Australian vacation this morning. After some refreshing showers, we’ll be off to Chinatown for some Dim-Sum…. mmm… Luckily, Lise and her roommates agreed to host us during the New Year’s eve holiday because hotel prices skyrocketed. When we looked, you couldn’t get anything decent under about $550/night. So, we are bunking here for three nights before heading on a road trip from Brisbane back down to Sydney through all the little beach towns.

In other news, I am now over 20 weeks pregnant. That means more time has passed of being pregnant than is left before the baby comes! We found out a couple of weeks ago that we are having a healthy baby boy which is really exciting. It took us a while to finally tell all of our friends and family the news because we were paranoid about anything that could go wrong. But, so far so good… hopefully, its smooth sailing from here on out. As of 20 weeks, I’m supposed to start the real weight gain of 1 lb. per week!

We are also buying a house in San Mateo! We are truly excited about this beautiful house that our good friends actually currently own. Assuming all goes well, it will close by  mid-January and we’ll move in after some work on the hard wood floors. Our new LG washers get delivered on the 20th. I know a washer and dryer aren’t normally something people get excited about, but, after years of not having one… we are super excited about these beautiful, RED, front loading washer and dryer set…. oooo…. its so beautiful.

Well…we are off to get dim sum.

Coast to coast travel in October

As October began, I knew it would be a crazy, busy month. It started with my trip to LA for Adobe’s yearly MAX conference from Oct. 4-7. Including this year, I’ve now been to the conference five times, however, I usually am just attending or acting as a teacher’s assistant for one or two labs. This year, I was asked to speak. Oh my! I was pretty scared to do this talk on my own. I did a talk earlier this year with my coworker to a smaller audience which went well, but, I wasn’t sure if I could pull this off on my own. But, seeing as few people were asked to speak, I felt that it was an honor and a challenge that would help me with career growth. Plus, there are so few women who speak at any developer conference, so, I always feel this nagging thought that I need to step up and act as a role model for more women to get involved in our developer communities. Anyways, the talk which was on moving from version 3 to version 4 of my product, Adobe Flex went really well. I gave the talk twice and it was definitely smoother the second time. I also did an online interview with a tech website about the same subject. The interview should be released sometime early next year… very strange to have a camera video taping me. By the end of the conference, I was exhausted. I returned home on Wednesday, took a day of rest on Thursday and then returned to work Friday.

That next Saturday, I flew off to New York to visit some friends since Adobe has this entire week off (another forced shut down). I was hoping this would be a really relaxing vacation, but, I am not sure I was all that relaxed although I did REALLY enjoy running with my buddy in Central Park and sitting around Bryant park listening to music and reading my book. But, I think that all this travel and sleeping on couches for four nights had me really exhausted. I was glad to return home to SF and just get stuff done around the house. Yesterday, I folded 8 loads of laundry. Yes… eight! Kevin and I have obviously fallen behind, so, he did four loads right before I came back and then four more yesterday. My job is to fold it all. While I was really tired afterwards, its great to see the bottom of the laundry hamper!

Now that I’ve been home for less than 48 hours, another big event is coming. My 10 year college reunion is tomorrow. So, friends arrive today! We’ve got three friends sleeping in our living room and then we will all be down in Santa Clara tomorrow night for some receptions on campus, a visit to our old watering hole, maybe mass and then a big reunion party. It should be a lot of fun. I’m not sure how I’ll pick myself up to return to work on Monday

A summer celebration

Kevin and I have a list of goals to accomplish in 2009. We come up with these lists every year. I think we just love checking things off lists. So, #14 on this list was to throw a party with more than just my co-workers. The last party at our house was a holiday party in December that I threw for work. So, we haven’t really had friends over for nine months now! So, yesterday, we had about 25 people over for food and karaoke.

I was a bit ambitious with the menu. I planned on making individual Mac N Cheese cups, cantaloupe salsa, bacon wrapped hot dogs, asian cole slaw, watermelon lemondade, sangria and crackers with Alaskan smoked salmon, cream cheese, cucumbers and capers.  Unfortunately, a couple of those items (the Mac N Cheese and the salmon crackers) never happened. I even have all the ingredients for the smoked salmon cracker concoctions. Oh well! In my rush of shopping and cooking for the past two days, I didn’t even take any food pictures (one of my favorite things to do). The asian coleslaw and cantaloupe salsa were particularly beautiful with their variety in colors. The cantaloupe salsa was made from a recipe off of smittenkitchen (again!) while the asian coleslaw was a recipe from a Food and Wine cookbook that someone left in our laundry room with a “Free” sign.   Some else’s garbage is my treasure, I suppose.

Friends brought some yummy desserts including Rodney and John’s Rice Pudding, Ryan’s Flourless Chocolate Cake (sorry, i don’t actually like chocolate cake, but, others LOVED it), and Joann’s cream puffs which Kevin continued to rave about this morning. Other folks brought wine, beer and salami!

Overall, we got a few folks singing including our youngest ever singer: Mr. Rex Hall (under 1 year old). He’ll probably be a star someday!

Channeling my inner Julia Child

Last weekend we watched “Julie & Julia” at the theatre. The first time Kevin saw the movie preview, he knew that this would be right up my alley. And… well…. it was. I loved this movie. Watching all of the food and the scenes in New York and Paris (two of my favorite cities) was a lot of fun! I never liked Julia Child very much, but, the movie gave me a new respect for her. The movie also inspired me to do a bit of baking and cooking over the weekend. So, I went to my favorite food blog “smitten kitchen” (also written by a female cook in New York who previously had no dishwasher, just like Julie Powell, in the movie) and I picked out some blueberry bars and a pizza to make for Sunday dinner.

I shopped at the Saturday Ferry Building Farmer’s Market to get the freshest blueberries, but, unfortunately, they aren’t in season anymore with the local farms. Instead, I decided to substitute blackberries. I also substituted the fresh lemon and lemon zest in the recipe for some lemon extract that our friends Sara and Steve gifted us with, years ago. I am always worried when substituting during baking, but, in this instance, the Blackberry Bars turned out phenominal. Here are a couple of fun pictures:

Blackberries and the butter, lemon crumble mixture

The finished product, just out of the oven

Blackberry Bars

After all of this baking, I didn’t think I’d have the energy for making dinner, but, I did it anyways. I had already purchased ingredients for a provolone, grilled eggplant and olive pizza, so, I made it. It was pretty easy. I just grilled the eggplant on a grill pan with garlic and olive oil. Then, I topped the pizza with the eggplant along with provolone cheese, green olives and some parsley.

Grilled eggplant and provolone pizza (before the oven)

Dinner! (not the best photo)

This pizza ended up being enough for three meals. However, we couldn’t keep the blackberry bars at home with us for long without finishing the tray, so, I brought the majority of them to work where they were devoured within a couple of hours.

So, thank you Julie Powell and Julia Child, for a little bit of inspiration and to Deb (of Smitten Kitchen) for the wonderful recipes.

Fun Surprises at the Symphony!

On Tuesday night, Kevin told me not to make plans on Wednesday. I asked, “Why? What are we doing?”… he wouldn’t say. Apparently, there was a surprise in store for me… fun! On Wednesday morning, he tells me that we need to dress nicer than jeans. Hmm…. that is not my usual weekday uniform for work. But, I found my one pair of black slacks and a nice shirt and was ready to go. I figured we were going to dinner somewhere nice after a couple of stressful weeks. Then, at around 6 PM, Kevin called to say he’d come and pick me up from work around 7 and I should find something quick for us to eat. So, we weren’t going out to eat after all. We must be going to a show. I thought maybe we’d be going to the theatre… maybe the symphony, ballet or opera? Well, after a short dinner at the burger joint near my work, we were off toward Civic Center. So, we were going to either Herbst Theatre, the Symphony or the Opera. We ended up following the crowd to the symphony, but, even when we were already inside, I had no idea what we were watching. I saw a poster for the comedian Kathy Griffen… maybe we were watching her.

Finally, I saw someone carrying a program for Diana Krall. We were seeing Diana Krall the vocalist and pianist that I love! I have to admit, I had a couple of tears in my eyes, I was so excited. I have every one of her albums except the most recent one. Wow! I’ve wanted to see her for years, but, she rarely comes to the bay area and when she did it was ridiculously expensive.  Anyways, I found out that Kevin got these tickets from iTunes. Someone offered them up at work, so, we weren’t even paying a dime for them. When we finally found our seats, we found ourselves sitting 7th row center in the orchestra. Oh my god!!! We have never had such good seats to any show. It was quite phenominal. Diana Krall played and sang for about two hours with a bass player, drummer, electric guitarist and occasionally the SF symphony that sat behind the main performers. So, not only did I see Diana Krall, but, the SF Symphony! It was a great night!

This absolutely beat the major events of the past couple of weeks which included finding a house we loved, bidding on it and getting out bid… AGAIN! There were seven bids. Who would have thought that the housing market was still so strong in SF. Anyways, we also got some bad news about the Volvo which apparently is leaking oil over the transmission and timing belt ($$$). So, I guess this is a good time to think about a new car to replace one or both of our cars. Unfortunatly, the good ole LAFF mobile is not a clunker. It gets 21 mph instead of the required 18. :p

Trip to Angel Island

Kevin and I have a list of goals to do this year… we haven’t made too much head way on the list, but, one of them (pulled over from last year’s list) was to visit Angel Island. We finally did it last weekend after only 7+ years of living in SF. We took the Blue and Gold Ferry to Tiburon and then Angel Island. Then, we hiked around the island visiting the immigration station which was the Ellis Island of the West. Here are some photos from the trip.

That US Weekly subscription was no help

Yesterday we spent the evening with some friends and played the Pop Culture edition of Trivial Pursuit. I had only played the classic version many, many years ago which is absolutely impossibly for anyone born after 1970. With the newer Pop Culture edition, I figured that all my years of watching way too much TV, reading ‘The Daily Dish’, reading US Weekly and listening to music 24/7 would finally pay off. All of that useless knowledge would finally benefit me. Well… it didn’t. I realized that all of those bits of information came in one ear and out the other (probably because my brain was already fried from these forms of media). I couldn’t answer questions like “What was Madonna’s first top ten single?”, “What two cities did Frasier live in?”, “What clothing line of the 80’s made a comeback with their palm tree logo?”… huh? The most obscure question that I did get was “What show was once referred to as ‘The Jesus of Malibu’”… ‘Highway to Heaven’! I have to admit, I watched many of these goodie two shoes shows like “7th Heaven’ and ‘Touched By An Angel’ a while back. I had hoped for more American Idol trivia. Kevin was much better at the game. For some reason, he can’t remember any of the toys that he played with when he was a kid, but, he remembers the actress who played Wonder Woman, the face of Downtown Julie Brown, the 80’s show that the character ‘Arnold’ was on (Different Strokes). His team did much better than ours except that they screwed up and gave up a few points here and there.

One thing very good did come out of our evening last night (besides some good laughs and food). In chatting with our friends, we heard about a good triple play Comcast deal (because we apparently need to be watching more TV). This deal would get us internet, phone and cable with a year free of HBO! We are currently obsessed with the show Entourage, so, we REALLY wanted HBO.  Kevin called up Comcast this morning and somehow convinced them to give us a new customer special which includes internet, phone, and cable… plus a year of HBO for just over $100. And we get the price for a year!!! Yipee…. I can’t wait to fry my brain with more TV. This time… it will be PREMIUM TV.