Baby predictions

At my baby shower here on Long Island, each guest gave a prediction on Russell's birth date and weight. Since I am so terrible about losing things like tiny little pieces of papers, I thought I'd record them all here.

CJ May 23 7lbs 10oz
Kate May 28 8lbs 13 oz
Anne May 31 6lbs 9oz
Ashley June 3 9.6lbs
Sarah June 5 9lbs 4oz
Warda June 11 7lbs
Jessie June 13 7lbs 6oz
Gina June 13 8lbs 10oz
Suzanne June 15 8lbs 9oz
Saumya June 16 8lbs

Let's see who's closest! (If you made predictions at my Mass. baby shower, Kim still has those; I never got a chance to look at them) Good luck everyone!

Congratulations Dr. Justin Georgi!!

Yesterday Justin successfully defended his dissertation defense! He gave an excellent talk that was enjoyed by all. I couldn't be more proud of him.

Tonight we celebrate with friends.

If you get a chance, drop him a line and congratulate him.

Long Island Baby Shower!

Catching up on some stuff I hadn't had time to post about earlier.

A little over a week ago my dear friend Sarah threw me a baby shower here on Long Island for all my local friends. We had a fantastic time. Again, everyone was more than generous, and I thank you all most dearly.

Some pictures to share:


We played some fun shower games - here we're all trying to guess the flavors of baby food, which is a lot harder than it looks. Turns out, Ann and Kate have the most discerning palates!


The 'diaper cake' gift Sarah made for me. Very fun!


And the opening of the above. Every time I'd take something out of it another piece would fall into my lap. It was more of an 'exploding diaper cake' by the time I was done, but honestly that sounds much ickier than it was.

A great time was had by all! Thanks again Sarah for hosting, and to all you who came from near and far to celebrate with me.

Cute cute cute cute cute!!!!

OK, so I have a bunch of stuff I haven't blogged about recently (like a trip to San Diego and my Long Island baby shower...) and I promise to get to them eventually. However, I just cannot stand to wait on this one because it has me so very overjoyed!

The crib is up! AND we got the crib set we wanted so very much (OK, I wanted) and now it's super super cute.

See:





Yes, I am full of new-baby joy! But really, can little cartoon dinosaurs ever be anything but cute?!?!

I mean, seriously.

A post-script on the car debacle.

Well, after the whole car debacle, I wrote a letter to the NYS DMV with a recommendation or two about the license plate surrender process (like letting the vehicle owner *know* that their plates have been surrendered if they were not the ones to turn them in.) and AMAZINGLY I got, not one reply, but two. Both informative. It turns out that our missing license plate (the one from the front of our car we hadn’t noticed was gone) was actually being used by some reprobate on their car. It WAS, in fact, stolen off of our car. The state police confiscated it, and surrendered it to the DMV.

Now, why, you ask, were we allowed to renew our registration 3 months after this? Because the state police did not actually report this information to the DMV until JANUARY. Six Months Had Passed. After that, it only took them 2 months to “catch” us driving on surrendered plates. That we had no idea had been surrendered. Argh.

At least I know how our plates got surrendered now. At least that much is clear. Now, if only someone had had the common courtesy to tell us. (Obviously, if we hadn’t reported our plate missing *and* had renewed our registration, we might not know our plates had been surrendered – but no one thought to check.)
At this point I have determined that almost every single individual at the NYS DMV is competent individually. Each person we have interacted with has treated me with courtesy, and respect, and prompt information. But somehow if you consider the whole lot of them together – the SYSTEM is inept and incompetent.

Further proof that bureaucracy just causes more problems than it solves. (and, it turns out, is impossible to spell on the first try.)

Phoenix Bound

I hadn’t posted this sooner, mostly because it never seems wise to post about Justin being out of town and me being all by my lonesome…but Justin had a job interview in Phoenix about two weeks ago. He was made an offer, and has accepted the position as a tenure-track faculty at the Midwestern School of Medicine. He starts mid-August! Which means I better get off my butt and finish up things that need to be done here so I can move with him ASAP! I don't need (want) to be a 'single mom' with an infant one minute longer than I have to be.




I am super excited about the prospect, although I am having a hard time with how far it will put me from the whole family and all my friends (Mass or NY). You’ll all just have to come out to sunny Phoenix and visit!



Now comes the tricky part - all I have to do is figure out how to get myself a job in the area too. I have a lead or two, and we'll see how this goes.

Drumroll please....

For all of you who have been wondering, and asking, and wondering, and asking some more…we have finally decided on a first name for the baby.
And the name is……

Russell!

So far it has met with widespread approval.

And no, for all of you who have been wondering, and asking, and wondering, and asking some more, we have no idea what his middle name is yet. Not. A. Clue. Although, there have been some very creative suggestions. (Thor, anyone?)

We will be sure to let everyone know AS SOON as we finalize something.

Getting ready for Russell has been a lot of work, but worth it. Last weekend we totally rearranged our bedroom to make room for the crib and all the stuff we brought back from the baby shower(s). Now, we don’t actually have the crib yet (it didn’t make it back from Mass just yet) but we have space for it, AND a very, very clean bedroom. See:



The very clean bedroom.



The 'nursery'. Note how fantastic Tasha's quilt looks on the wall.

It’s amazing how much junk you can accrue without even knowing it. We donated 4 big boxes and a bag to Goodwill just this afternoon. (Of course, it was supposed to go to the Lupus Foundation, but they couldn't find our apartment to pick it up.)

Now if only all that cleaning hadn’t meant neglecting the rest of the apartment…

Baby Showers and much gratitude.

My coworkers and department threw a lovely baby shower for me and another woman on the floor on March 21st. We had a tasty cake and everyone was way too generous. I have no pictures to share, but much thanks! Particularly to Molly who organized the whole thing. It was really wonderful of you guys.

And then…

My family and friends all gathered up north for a baby shower on the 22nd hosted by my loverly sister Kim. Before we went up, I made cookies as table décor/favors – I am really proud of the way they came out. And before you all start wondering why I made cookies for my own baby shower, I wanted to. My dearest friend Sarah found the cookie cutter for me; I had been searching for ‘the perfect’ one for a few weeks “with a tail”.




It was really great to see everyone and just have a good time. Unfortunately, after double and triple checking that we had the digital camera with us when we drove up to Mass, we left it at home the day of the shower. One of these days we’ll figure out how to have a camera when we need it. The only pictures I have were taken by others – and I want to thank you all for sending them my way. Here are a few of the highlights.


28 weeks along - and all belly (photo courtesy of Ann)


Justin and the dino sweater grandma Ann made for the Baby (photo courtesy of Ann)


The obligatory gift table picture. (Photo courtesy of Sue)


Mo with the cookie she decorated. (Photo courtesy of Sue)


One of the many (and my favorite) gifts that grammie Sue made. (Photo courtesy of Sue)

While ‘real’ thank you cards will be coming soon, I wanted to say thank you to all that were so thoughtful as to bring me and the baby gifts at both showers. You were all so very generous. I wish I could see you all more often.

Lots of excitement.

And this time, it's the good kind.

Baby showers!

Today my coworkers are throwing a baby shower for me here at the office (in a few hours) which is so incredibly sweet of them.

Then, tomorrow Kim is throwing me a shower at home with the assistance of TC and Ann. For this one I made a bunch of bunny cookies...yes, I made cookies for my own baby shower, but it is OK I asked to. As soon as I download all the pics from my camera I'll get to show them all off. They are SO cute.

It means I get to go home and see the family this weekend, which I am really looking forward to. It's probably the last time I'll make it up there until after June.

Other than that - things are, well, things. Being pregnant is really a roller coaster. Sometimes you don't even realize you're pregnant, and some days you either emotionally or physically cannot function within the real world. There's no predicting it.

Anyway, I promise pictures early next week.

Happy Easter everybody.

Murphy's Law

I know, delinquent blogger...it's been more than a week. More than two to be fair. But at least one of those was spent in total chaos. The proverbial Murphy came to visit, and stayed for a week.

In my last post, I mentioned tangentially:

...on Friday we discovered that due to a clerical error at the DMV, our plates came up surrendered, a fact explained to us by the very nice cop who pulled Justin over and confiscated our plates. Not fun. Now we expect to have quite the adventure trying to get it all straightened out and getting new plates for our car.

Right now, we're just lucky to have a backup vehicle (THANK YOU GRANDPA) otherwise we would be totally up the river. Go figure it happened on the President's Day Weekend so we can't even start to straighten it out until Tuesday morning.

Well, it turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Friday night (in a bit of shock after the nice officer confiscated our plates from car #1) we took car #2 to our optical appointments, which we were running late for.

Which means on Saturday, when we went to go shopping, the battery was dead (yep - I *still* cannot remember to turn my lights off...) and we had to jumpstart the car. Minor details, easily done. (Since I so often do this, we own a pair of jumpers, and a car doesn't have to have plates to jump start a battery).

Sunday and Monday, as I recall, were unblemished by Murphy. Ironically, I had to cancel my oil change appointment on car #1 for Monday, because I couldn't drive it the mile to the shop with no plates. On the bright side, Mom, Jimmy and boo came down to visit for the night, and we had a loverly evening visiting.

Then Tuesday hit, Murphy was back.

Plan: Jus goes to work with car #2 at 7am for scheduled data collection and returns by 8am. We both then take car #2 to the DMV to get plates straightened out for car #1.

Reality: Jus leaves the front door at 7am, only to return 10 minutes later. The transmission won't engage on car #2. Now we have 1 car with no plates, and 1 car with no transmission. Fantastic.

Thankfully, mom and Jimmy were still about, so Jimmy drove Jus to work and back and I got everything together for the DMV (and made a transmission appointment for car #2 at the shop). Then mom drove us to the DMV. An hour+ later, we had determined that something 'unexplainable' had happened and that while we were still responsible for the tickets at least we had new plates for the car. The woman at the DMV was very nice, and recognized that we were somehow the victims here, but there was simply nothing she could do. (Try proving you didn't make a transaction. Good luck with that.)

When we got home we put the new plates on car #1 and drove it down to the autoparts store to get transmission fluid to fill car #2 with in an effort to drive (as opposed to tow) car #2 to the shop. SUCCESS!

Thursday we dealt with the fixing of one car and the replacement of the front plate bracket on the other (plus the delayed oil change.)

By the end of Wednesday, things were looking up with the car situation, and a friend of ours was in town visiting. It was a pleasant evening. More wings. Good times.

But Murphy was not done.

Thursday night, our DVD player died. In the middle of a very special movie night. With 12 people watching it. Argh.

All day Friday we were waiting, but with the end of the week (Fri-Fri) came the end of Murphy's visit. We were drained, and tired, and were muchly glad to be done with Murphy.

Since then, things have been uneventful - knock on wood - and perhaps even (dare I say it) normal.