Baby Shower Fantastic

We had a wonderful time in Redwood City & San Francisco this past weekend, seeing lots of great friends and getting royally feted. We flew down Saturday morning, and went right to Melissa & Brian’s house in Redwood City, where Melissa & Amy hosted a baby shower for us. Redwood City’s motto, “Weather Best by Government Test,” held true for a beautiful day and early evening that set off Brian & Melissa’s tasteful and charming new deck and landscaping to perfection. And unsurprisingly, Melissa and Amy proved themselves an incomparable hosting duo. Thank you both so much!

The shower was filled with laughter and smiles, delicious food and tasty drinks, amusing activities and multiple pregnant ladies. (Yay, Kim & Kelly - it was a very big & fine meeting of the bellies!) Some thirty people, a half-dozen of whom were little-kid-sized, entertained each other for the first part of the shower playing a game in which the word “Baby” (or any of its derivatives or foreign-language counterparts) could not be spoken. If said, the violator had to reliquish a pin to the person who caught them out, the goal being to accumulate as many pins as possible in order to win the prize. Kudos to the instigator of this game because it kept most conversations from sinking into a huge hole of nothing-but-baby-stuff for at least a couple hours! Although the rascally older kids seemed to have a leg up most of the time, yours truly was in the right place at the right time, and busted Trish to win control of seven pins. Mmm, those prize chocolates were delicious!

One charming shower activity was hand-decorating little onesies with colorful paints. We will forever treasure Amy’s butterflies, Steve’s paranoid sun, and myriad other more – ahem – hard-to-describe artistic self-expressions! The crowd merrily devoured a superb cake from the Prolific Oven in Palo Alto, and the kids all got to whack at a duck pinata. After many an amusing turn swinging largely in vain, the duck was finally beheaded and disgorged candy that had several parents rushing to forestall a sugar-fest.

Also on the agenda was a challenge to identify a dozen varieties of baby food. Smelling but no tasting was allowed. Perhaps the most notable part of this game was the wrinkled noses and disgusted faces of kids and adults alike at the uniformly mashed and awfully-mysterious array of jars. Chip won this game, but for posterity’s sake, here were Mike’s guesses:

A. Soylent green
B. Vomit
C. Mucilage
D. Peas
E. Lava
F. Suet
G. Aardvark spleen
H. Rotten pumpkin
I. Baby
J. Moldy cheese

(Um, not even peas was right!)

We especially want to thank everybody who attended the shower for their generosity with gifts and good wishes. We are thrilled to have a wonderful number of adorable outfits, snuggly things, and sure-to-be-loved books, handmade treasures, and toys, as well as necessary gear like a playpen and car seat. But let us not overlook the value of your encouraging advice and warm hugs! I guess there’s some sense out there this whole parental thing is both doable and infinitely rewarding, and that Mike & I will be A-OK. Your kindnesses were truly too numerous to mention, but let it be said that we treasured every rare moment that we could share with you on this momentous occasion in our lives.

Post-shower, the evening wrapped up with more bottles of wine, good conversation, and yummy Chinese food. Amy did take a moment to point out how it was only folks without kids who remained at that hour…but over the coming years, we will continue to look forward to more late evenings with this stellar crew! The next day, we took the leisurely scenic route up to the city, riding Highway 84 to the coast. We stopped in at the San Gregorio General Store and listened to a remarkably tight local blueglass band while sipping some drinks. Once in the city, we took a quick trip to upper Haight, and breathed the ever-questionable air of that unique hippie haven. Along with Meg and Chip, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening indulging our inner sloths at Amy & Steve’s house, where Amy prepared the most delectable homemade pizzas imaginable. Who knew that fig, goat cheese, pesto, and mushroom toppings could send one over the moon? Alas, the weekend ended all too quickly....

Over the past two weeks, we also have started attending Newborn Care and Childbirth Prep classes run by the local Providence hospital where we’ll be delivering the baby. The Newborn Care class involved watching slide shows of spotty-looking newborns, practice-swaddling of plastic babies, and feeling rather silly for ever wondering how disposable diapers open and close. As expected, though, the Childbirth Prep class has involved a bit more mental engagement. I’ve felt fairly emotional coming to grips with the actual mechanics of birth. Looking on the bright side of things has worked really well thus far, but there’s no disputing that it’s going to be intense! At 34 weeks and counting, we’re definitely closing in on the big event.

--Liz

Gack! Death to spam!

After the half-a-dozenth or so pass through to weed out the spam comments we've reluctantly enabled comment moderation. This means that when you post a comment as "Anonymous" it won't show up on the blog until we've manually approved it, so there will be a delay.

We hope this won't discourage any of you from commenting - it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you do.

-- Mike

p.s. You can circumvent the delay be signing up for a blogspot account. It doesn't cost anything nor does it obligate you to start blogging yourself (...although you could...). If this sounds worthwhile go to blogger.com. You'll have to create a blog for yourself but there's nothing to say you ever have to post anything to it so please don't feel intimidated.

Oregon fun and autocross adventures

Things have been busy and fun since our last post -- how the time does fly! I can say happily that my health remains excellent, and the belly continues to swell most remarkably. Quelle vie!

The last weekend in July, our friends Ali & Ilon were in town for a visit, and we gorged on some Portland good times. Saturday, we spent all afternoon at the Oregon Brewer’s Festival, held at the McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland for its 19th annual incarnation. 72 breweries from around North America had their choicest brews on tap for tasting and general consumption, along with a selection of local food and musical entertainment. Convivial – and as you might guess, increasingly drunk – people packed two large tents erected on the festival site, where spontanous “Woooo!!” cheers erupted through the crowd every five or ten minutes. Mugs and voices were raised in these recurring waves of hearty bonhomie, which faded off into laughter and more drinking. For such an alcohol-soaked event, I have to say that it remained remarkably civilized, and I even enjoyed tasting a few sips of the choicest beers.

By seven p.m., our eyes crossing, we were all glad that we rode MAX (Portland's awesome pub-trans light rail system) downtown. After taking refreshing naps – well, technically Ilon & Mike had a deep conversation about physics while Ali & I got some shut-eye – we went out for a late dinner at Paley’s Place, where the NW gourmet cuisine was a treat. We concluded the day's events with a late night of dancing to the inimitable beats of DJ Anjali & the Incredible Kid, who spin Bollywood-laced electronic hip-hop for the pleasure of a happily boogiein’ crowd.

Sunday, after a yummy brunch, we simply couldn’t let another opportunity for Oregon beer and music pass us by, so we attended Jerry Garcia’s Birthday Celebration at Edgefield. Edgefield, located just east of Portland in Troutdale, is one of the renowned McMenamin joints, comprising many acres of hotel accommodations, gardens, golf course, random historic buildings serving locally-distilled whiskey and, of course, a range of pubs and eateries. We grooved the afternoon away listening to a Dead tribute band and other funky-jam music while avoiding threatening rain and appreciating the explosion of tie-dyed garments people busted out for the occasion. We look forward to more fun weekends with Ali & Ilon, as we’ll have to check out their new San Diego pad!

The first weekend in August, Mike and I poured heroic hours into painting the master bedroom. Although time is running short for such home renovation projects, we were motivated to erase the last room of the beige-on-beige decorating style of the previous home-owners. Thank heavens they didn’t also indulge their love for wallpaper in there! The window trim still isn’t done – it will be the deep earthy rose that’s the color of the bathroom walls – but we’re very pleased with the overall airness created by pale sky-blue walls and a bright white ceiling (pix on Flickr for the masochistically interested).

The second weekend in August was the occasion for my last big pre-baby autocross hurrah: the SCCA National Tour event in Packwood, WA. Back in June, Mike volunteered to be my pit crew, so despite my 7 ½-months-pregnant state I’d been looking forward for months to attending this challenging event. One big wrinkle added to the affair, though, is that we decided the racecar Miata should be sold to make way for the wagon Rita. It simply wasn’t reasonable for such an impractical car to be our second family automobile, especially when autocross is not liable to be a big focus in my life over this next year or so – plus, the Eclipse remains fun to autocross if I get a real jonesin’. So, I put the fantastic Miata up for sale a few weeks before the event, and found a buyer (we’ll call him M.P.) who wanted to purchase it right before the Tour and then co-drive with me that weekend. Serendipity! We drove up to Packwood on Thursday night (I took Friday off work), and I met up with M.P. Friday morning so he could get to know the car during Friday’s practice driving session. We had a fun day of autocross, each getting 10 runs on the short Test-n-Tune course. And once you drive that Miata, she wins you over completely, so that evening he purchased the car with a cashier’s check and I signed over the title.



The next morning, we ran in the first group; M.P. took a run, then I took a run (awfully tentative & slow!), and then M.P. took a run that involved spinning out, an exciting milestone for getting comfortable in the car. On my next run, however, something was off – unhappy sounds were coming from the front left wheel. We jacked the car up to discover no visible shaft where the shock should be inside the spring! Apparently a horrible catastrophe, the Miata had to be withdrawn from the event. Of course, not only was this shock failure a big blow to our competition hopes, but I felt utterly horrible about having sold this nice guy a car that up and broke the next day. The Miata’s Penske double-adjustable shocks run about $3000 for the set, and are a major reason why she drives so sweetly. I told M.P. that I’d cover half of the repair costs, but it was cold comfort since he had ambitions to race away the rest of the summer and fall. Happily, we knew that the autocross performance specialist who originally built the shocks would be responsive and helpful, but still…it spelled an emotionally crushing end to my last big pre-baby autocross hurrah.

The tragi-comic ending to this autocross story came yesterday: M.P. called me to say that when he removed the shock to send it for repair, he discovered that the shaft hadn’t broken! Apparently, it had simply gotten de-coupled from an extender piece that’s required for the shock to connect appropriately with the Miata’s suspension. So, if we hadn’t been so completely rattled by having the breakdown, it literally would have taken five minutes to re-screw the shaft into the extender piece, and then we would’ve been good to race. Despite the regret such news engenders, I’m mainly just relieved that the car is fundamentally OK – and delighted that this pureblood autocross Miata racecar is now in the hands of somebody who both intends and knows how to take good care of her! I really should’ve taken my dad up on his offers of automotive/engine care lessons back in high school, sigh….

This big update doesn’t even include the most recent weekend’s events, so stay tuned for Bay Area Baby Shower stories and new family congrats…

--Liz