Birthday Nom Noms

My birthday was on Saturday and normally I like to have something nice and low-key (with the exception of #29 when Mark threw a surprise birthday dinner party for me…and #30 in Thailand…but really, they are usually low-key). For some reason, for the better part of this year I thought that I was turning 33. So when I actually did the math and realized I was only 32, I felt like I had gained a year and was pretty happy with that already. Bad math aside, Mark knows that eating also makes me pretty happy so he planned my birthday around some pretty good meals.

First of all, there was some sleeping in. I’m not sure in what part of the universe waking up at 9 am is considered “sleeping in” but apparently I live in that part of it. Mark and Noah left so Noah could do some birthday present shopping for me, so Julian and I had a nice, leisurely morning by ourselves. At noon I met up with Mark and Noah at Sevva, one of Mark’s favorite restaurants, where we had lunch reservations. Noah was pretty tired from all the shopping so he kind of conked out in our booth, but not before he presented me with the gift that he had picked out — a modernized friendship bracelet in silver and pink:

Of course, Noah woke up in time for my birthday cake — the Marie Antoinette Crave cake. Yes, my cake comes with its own name, but then again, if you were a cake and you looked like this:

well, you’d probably want your own name too. It was a pistachio layer cake with a light raspberry cream filling, studded with different types of macaroon cookies and topped with a huge mound of cotton candy.  Naturally we all had massive stomachaches afterwards…but it was totally worth it.

Mark and I had dinner reservations later at Spoon (which is one of my favorite places…in the whole world) but we seriously needed an eating break.  So after spending some time with the kiddos at home, Mark and I did a little pre-dinner shopping.  I had seen a coat at Ted Baker a few days ago that I loved but had resigned to “strictly covet only” status, but with Mark alongside me (and more importantly, his credit card), I got to pick it up as my birthday present:

I seriously love this thing.  Seriously. There’s nothing about it that I don’t drool over — double-breasted, military-style trenchcoat with a twirly lower half — how could you not love that? And it’s red! And even the lining is cute. Of course, the cold spell has ended (for now) and we’re back to running the A/C again but this gives me just one more reason to look forward to winter.

So it’s safe to say that Mark done good. Leave it to him to find a way to make aging less painful.

Hello, Winter Knitting!…Or, Why I Won’t Be Blogging

For about 300 days of the year, I’m usually complaining about the heat and humidity out here in Hong Kong.  So when a cold front moved in earlier this week, for the most part it was a welcome change.  Well, welcome except for one thing — we are seriously lacking in the cold weather clothing area.  I took Julian out for our regular morning stroll on Monday and popped on the only cap he hasn’t outgrown.  It was cute, but made him look like a pudgy little longshoreman:

So for the last couple of days, I’ve been working on bulking up our winter gear. This includes an alligator scarf for Noah:

A little brimmed cap for Julian:

As well as an aviator style helmet complete with strap to ensure that it actually stays on his head:

For me, I need to complete the right hand for this pair of gloves:

And for Mark, a scarf. I haven’t gotten around to starting it yet — Mark wanted to design it himself so I’ve got to come up with and test out the pattern on my own so this might take a while, but hopefully it will be done in time to be worn during this winter. And on top of that, there are Christmas gifts and baby things to be knitted so if I’m not around much, well, now you know why.

Change Is Good

That’s what I keep telling myself but, really, I dislike change.  Change is uncomfortable and messy and scary.  I prefer routine and stability — much like a toddler.  There’s just something comforting about being able to rely on something…like that you’ll eat turkey on Thanksgiving and open presents on Christmas Eve after drunken karaoke.  Still, even I have a limit to how much predictability I can take.  Such as having pretty much the same haircut for about two years.

Which is how I end up with bangs every now and then:

This is also the first haircut I’ve gotten in Hong Kong (I tried once a couple of years ago — I walked into the salon and asked for a haircut but got a blow out instead and afterward considered it a narrow escape if the language barrier was so huge that my stylist did not understand the English word for ‘haircut’) so hooray me for jumping on the change-wagon.  Of course, now I remember what a huge pain in the butt it was to grow these things out the last time I had them.  Which is why, whenever the mood for change strikes again, I’m going to need someone to remind me that having bangs is actually kind of sucky after the novelty wears off.

Enablers

As much as I would like to continue on, I’ve decided that I can’t do NaBloPoMo this year for no better reason than I’d really rather just be knitting. It was getting to a point where I was really starting to resent my blog.  Each post takes on average two hours for me to write (I get distracted very easily) and over a one month period that’s 60 hours I could’ve spent knitting instead.  Two and a half days!  Just writing!  No thanks.  Hong Kong has about a three-month window where wearing a sweater isn’t a completely insane thing to do so I’ve got some sweaters and other cold weather stuff to knit before it warms up again.  But really, I couldn’t do all this alone.  I have help — a group of enablers if you will.  Like…

Enabler #1: My mom.  Who, when she came to visit last month, brought me about 60 balls of yarns, a knitting magazine, blocking wires, and a mini sewing machine (for steeking).

I know it doesn’t look like much now, but you’re really looking at two sweaters, a blanket and a pair of gloves. (If you squint really hard you might be able to see it)

Enabler #2: My knitting group. Yes, I go to a weekly knitting group (don’t laugh) where I sit for two to three hours and knit and talk and eat yummy pastas and cakes with a small group of awesome and diverse women. Besides the dedicated knitting time, these women also provide me with some much needed grown up time that I never really had before and it’s a part of the week that I’ve come to really look forward to.

Enabler #3: Traveller’s Yarn. Who is one of the women in my knitting circle (at least until the end of this month when she moves back to Australia) but who also runs an online yarn store and is pretty much responsible for getting me interested in dyeing my own yarn:

And on top of the gazillion balls of yarn my mom brought over (which is in addition to the mini-yarn shop that currently masquerades as my stash) I keep ordering more balls from her store for me to dye.

Finally, the biggest enabler of all: Mark.  He is incredibly supportive of my knitting problem habit hobby — he always has a kind word for anything I’ve knit (and turns a blind eye to whatever mistakes are in it); he never tells me to stop buying more yarn, needles or patterns despite the fact that my knitting space at home has metastasized from one bulging basket to an entire closet; he doesn’t nag me about the zillions of knitting projects I have going on and instead pretends not to see half-finished projects, yarn and needles lying around everywhere in the house.  One day I might even actually knit something for him.

So there you go.  That’s why I’ve decided not to blog daily anymore.  But you really aren’t missing much anyway.

Short Weekend, Lots of Catch Up

This past weekend was Mark’s last weekend before heading back to work after a two-week, baby-induced break.  I was hoping for something low-key and relaxing so naturally it was weird and hectic instead.

A Family Outing
Noah starts school at Hong Kong Academy in one month so Mark and I figured it would be a good time to finally pick up his school uniform so on Saturday we set off for Causeway Bay for a little shopping. Admittedly, our goals for the day might have been just slightly overambitious considering it was our first family outing together — going out and doing stuff is much different with a preschooler and a baby in tow. Two hours after setting off from home, we had yet to accomplish anything on our To Do list. Still, we did manage to cross off three out of the four things on our list and tossed in a haircut for Noah as well. Not bad at all. Being a product of the public education system in the U.S. I’ve never had to deal with school uniforms before so I geeked out a bit at the thought of my little boy in a uniform and as soon as we got home, I made him try on his new clothes and parade around the house with them on while I took pictures (nerd!):

Typhoons and Cyclones and Hurricanes, Oh My!
Apparently, there’s really no difference between a typhoon, cyclone and hurricane except for the global area where they form, but that’s not really important. After over a week of beautiful, clear weather, the Hong Kong Observatory issued a level 9 tropical cyclone warning early Sunday morning after tropical cyclone Molave made landfall near Hong Kong. Normally I’m completely oblivious to weather and storm reports but after going into our bathroom at 4 am on Sunday and stepping into a puddle of water, I quickly realized we were in the middle of a storm. Of course, what better time to discover that your apartment has leaky windows than during a typhoon? Wheee! So Mark and I spent a good part of early Sunday sopping up puddles and pushing towels up against all of our sea-facing windows and doors.

On another note, I had been fascinated by the view of the sea and sky outside our balcony recently and just randomly started taking some pictures before and after the storm blew through so here they are…

Friday evening: On most days the sky outside is so hazy that you can barely see the mountains in the back but on Friday the sky was freakishly clear. Well, clearish…if you can ignore that blanket of yellow just above the mountain outline.

Saturday, noon: This is the view during a moderately heavy rain. If you squint you can make out the ships in the picture:

Sunday, noon: The aftermath of the typhoon. This is about eight hours after the T9 warning was initially raised.

Monday afternoon: The good thing about a big storm is that they really help to clear the air.

Hospital Again
After our wet, 4 am wake up call, on Sunday morning I woke up exhausted. By early afternoon I was still feeling pretty crappy and to top it off I started experiencing some really heavy bleeding and clotting — all signs of a postpartum hemorrhage. I called the maternity department at Matilda Hospital for advice and the midwife told me to go to the hospital immediately so I quickly stocked up the diaper bag while Mark got the two boys and soon after the four of us headed out to the hospital. Luckily for us Mark got a hold of Clarita even though it was her day off and she met us at the hospital and took Noah back home with her. After an examination, my doctor scheduled me for a routine surgery later that evening to treat the hemorrhage. By then I wasn’t feeling as scared and freaked out as I had been when I initially called the hospital (which reminds me, What To Expect When You’re Expecting is quite possibly the worst book to read if you’re worried about anything. Seriously. You will end up thinking you’re going to die.) and I was more worried about having to stay overnight and how much trouble that was going to be for Mark and Noah. The surgery itself though went by quickly (hooray for general anesthesia!) and Dr. Doo cleared me to go home that evening if I wanted to, but we had paid for the hospital room overnight and by god we were going to stay overnight. Mark, Julian and I had a bit of a rough night — in large part because we were unprepared for having to stay overnight — but Dr. Doo checked on me again in the morning, gave me another green light to go, and we were off in time to make it to Julian’s first appointment with his pediatrician.

Doctor Appointment
Julian’s doctor appointment was pretty routine. Being our second baby, Mark and I didn’t have too many questions or concerns this time around. Not to mention we were both pretty unprepared for the appointment. I had been worried about Julian’s eating because he only nurses for 10 minutes before completely conking out but it turns out that he’s gained quite a bit of weight so Dr. Wong had no doubt that he was getting enough to eat. She was actually quite surprised at just how much weight he’d gained. Apparently, by 10 days old most babies are usually back up to their birth weight (babies lose weight after they’re born in case you didn’t know) and then gain about 1/10th of a pound a day after that. Julian, at 13 days old, not only regained the weight he’d lost but at 8.25 lbs was already a full pound heavier than when he’d first come out. That made me happy to hear. I guess I just like fat babies.

A Milestone Of Sorts
Not to be too braggy (ok, maybe a little braggy) but I was pretty happy on Saturday when — after realizing that all of my pregnancy jeans were either dirty or in the wash — I tried on a pair of my regular pre-pregnancy jeans and found that they fit. I’m not claiming they fit all that comfortably right now, but dammit, I can get them on, zip them up and button them so to me that counts even if I have a hard time breathing in them. It’s not that I’m not happy to lose the weight — I did work out with my trainer through my eighth month since getting back into shape was one of my big concerns, especially since my metabolism now isn’t what it was when I first had Noah — but there seems to be something not right about shedding so much weight so fast. So during my examination on Sunday I mentioned to my doctor that I was concerned about the weight loss. He mocked me a little bit at first for complaining about it but he’s also running some tests on my thyroid…just in case it is a problem. Still, hyperthyroidism or not, a milestone is a milestone so when we got home I made Mark take a picture of me so I can remember the moment forever and to help motivate me to eat more chocolate (yay!):

Family Pictures
Finally, I’m posting some more pictures. Just because I can.

The boys — all squished together on Noah’s bed:

For my mom, who swears she hasn’t seen the baby’s eyes yet:

Crunch Time. Or…More Waiting

Less than two weeks to go and all is well in Babyland. The baby is fine so far and according to the ultrasound weighs in at about 6.9 pounds. He’s definitely not going to be the 8 lb, 10 oz newborn that Noah was and I’m happy about that. He also doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of wanting out — no effacement or anything and he still seems to be lodged pretty high — and, with Dr. Doo leaving the country tomorrow for 10 days for a conference, I’m also ok with that. Although carrying a baby around in your stomach can get pretty old…or at least the constant tiredness, occasional and sudden assaults on my bladder and little feet jammed into my ribs is getting old. On the other hand, I was going through some of our old pictures and saw some that Mark took while I was in labor and man, I looked so miserable, so I’m not really looking forward to going through all that again. See? Misery:

I’m glad my sister at least was enjoying herself:

So, as I inch closer and closer to my due date, my anxiety level is start to climb as well. For sure I’m still excited but there’s also that nagging feeling that I’m completely unprepared and have no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure everything will be fine once the baby is actually physically here but being anxious doesn’t make the waiting any easier. Also, I tend to deal with anxiety by getting nostalgic which means my embarrassing 80′s hairband music has been in heavy rotation on my iPod. Which means I hear Starship’s We Built This City pretty much every day which makes me homesick for a karaoke duet with my sister:

At the same time, there is a weird calm-before-the-storm feeling — of wanting to do as much as we possibly can now before a new baby turns our lives upside down again. So far this has translated into catching up on past seasons of Ultimate Fighter and Top Chef and watching a lot of movies. Nevermind that I have a hospital bag to pack or baby clothes to put away. Who wants to do that when Star Trek has finally come to Hong Kong (which, by the way, is probably one of the best movies that we’ve seen all year…which either means we watch a lot of bad movies — *cough* Night at the Museum 2 *cough* — or that Star Trek was just a really awesome movie)? For me, this has also meant knitting like crazy. I finally got around to going to a weekly knitting group on Fridays — something I’ve been meaning to do for close to two years but naturally I waited until a month before popping out a baby to actually do — and I’ve managed to knock out a few projects in the last few weeks:

A bag made out of hemp yarn (which is still waiting for me to sew on the handles but I’m all sewed out right now from having to hand-sew the lining):

A mohair wrap which I’m not sure why I knit since 1) I don’t wear wraps and 2) apparently I’m currently impervious to cold air in my overheated pregnant state:

And now I’m working on this tank top which, again, I’m not sure why I’m knitting since I won’t be in any shape (literally) to even try it on for a few months. Oh well.

Anyway, if you made it this far through my post, congratulations and thanks for bearing through all my mindless rambling. And as a bonus, here’s the baby’s latest ultrasound picture:

When Mark and I saw this, we both thought he looks just like Noah when he’s sleeping. Of course when we showed Noah the picture, he disagreed, saying, “I think he looks too orange.” You gotta love literal-minded 3-year-olds.

Things That Made Me Happy

I’ve been pretty miserable lately.  I have a lingering cough from a cold last week and on Saturday I coughed so much that my ribs were sore.  Well, on Sunday I tried to stretch out my sore back/rib muscles and an ill-timed cough pulled my back out of whack and I’ve been in Pain City ever since.  It hurts when I cough, sneeze, laugh, yawn, walk, breathe, lay down…pretty much any time I’m awake and moving.  Today was just a smidge better than the weekend and as miserable and mopey as I was for a good part of the day, by late afternoon I realized that — pain and whining aside — some pretty nice things happened to me today regardless.  So in the spirit of not dwelling on the negative, here are the highlights of my day:

Photography Happiness
My Travel Photography class started today at the YWCA.  It’s a short course — just two hours today and next Monday — but the class itself is a nice break from my usual routine.  We were supposed to bring in five of our travel photos to the first class so we could critique each other’s work at the end of the class and having the class and the instructor tell me that three of my photos were perfect as is was a pretty sweet feeling.  Yay!

Grocery Store Happiness
I’m insane in that I love to go grocery shopping. I hate having to go to more than one grocery store a day though so after spending an hour at one grocery store only to realize that I needed to go to another one to finish picking things up for that night’s dinner, I was pretty grumpy by the time I got to city’super at IFC. I instantly perked up when I saw that they were having a Tastes of Thailand promotion which meant lots of samples of Thai food. And not just Thai food, but Thai candy — specifically coconut candy, which I love. So despite my doctor’s ban on sweet things, I picked up a small bag. I’m giddy just thinking about all the coconutty goodness ahead of me. Mwuhahaha….

Finally…Knitting Happiness
Not much to say here — I just love to knit. Lately I’ve been feeling weirdly incomplete when I don’t have a project on my needles so casting on a new project today made me pretty happy:

So yeah…in the words of Ice Cube: today was a good day.

Arts and Crafts Sunday

Mark stopped in Tokyo for a wedding on his way back from Texas so it was just me and Noah over the weekend.  I initially planned on taking Noah to the beach on Sunday but the weather had been iffy all weekend and we both caught a little bit of a cold so our Sunday beach outing turned into an arts and crafts day.

Noah is majorly into beads right now.  Thankfully he skipped that phase where he sticks them up his nose and I have to take him to the emergency room and he went straight for stringing them up into necklaces (whew!).  On Saturday I let Noah pick up a small jewelry kit so we would have something to do the next day (besides watching movies all day.  Which, believe me, I was definitely tempted to do) and on Sunday we spent a good part of the day stringing up beads, cutting out foam shapes and gluing stuff together.  Who knew jewelry making could be so exhausting?  Noah insisted on taking two breaks (including a nap) during our little craft session but after four hours I am now the proud owner of a sparkly hair clip, two bracelets and a necklace.

Noah has also been enamored of the stuffed bunny I knit up for baby #2 so to ward off any potential baby jealousy I decided to knit up this turtle for Noah on Sunday.

Naked turtle:

Turtle with his shell on:

This was surprisingly quick to knit up — taking only a day — but man, was it a pain in the butt to put together. It basically comes in eight separate parts that all needed to be sewn together and at 8″ long he isn’t a small thing to knit. Nevertheless, the effort and the carpal tunnel on Monday was worth it. Noah loves his turtle and gave it the ultimate honor by sleeping with it last night. He even gave it a name: Super Fast Turtle. We may need to work on his names a bit but at this point I’m just glad he actually plays with it.

Baby Stuff

At this point in my pregnancy (32 weeks) I’m going in to see the doctor every two weeks instead of every four so I’ll probably not update as much because it’ll just get redundant. Everything so far is progressing normally, although Dr. Doo has decided to subject me to random blood tests to check on my sugar levels. It’s a little funny and makes me feel like some kind of weird sugar/crack addict, but so far I’ve had two random tests and my glucose levels have been normal both times. Gestational diabetes, shmiabetes…and that’s with me cheating and sneaking in a smoothie, a cookie or some ice cream almost every day. I feel like I’m cheating the system and winning. Ha HA!

On the other hand, Dr. Doo has also warned me that because of my predisposition to GD, he’s unlikely to let me go past my due date (July 8th) because there are increased risks to the baby’s health otherwise. So for anyone making bets on when I’m going to pop this little guy out, at least you have a firm end date. Anyway, here is another picture of baby #2 (and yes, we do finally have a name for him but I’m not telling quite yet). Mark is usually the one who scans the pictures but since he’s not around I did it the old-fashioned way and snapped a picture of the picture. Lame, I know, but it’s the best I can do until I have access to Mark’s work scanner:

On another note, realizing that I’m 32 weeks along made me additionally realize that we’ve only got two more months before this little guy comes out and joins us. We put off doing/buying a bunch of things because we felt we had so much time left but with 8 weeks to go we’re kicking things into high gear. Last week we finally got around to ordering a new stroller, car seat and an awesome high chair for the baby and next week Mark and I are taking a tour of the hospital where I’ll be delivering (you must check out Matilda International’s maternity video in that link. If only for that one scene of the guy in the chef’s uniform cooking something in the kitchen. I’m slightly embarrassed to say this, but I’ve heard the food at Matilda is excellent…not that I would base something as important as where I have the baby on how the food is…but it sure helps).

With Mark out of town and me being super tired and extra lazy with limited mobility, I’ve kept the baby prep down to a minimum this week.  However I did manage to arrange to have all of Noah’s old baby furniture repainted from white to black:

On top of that, I also finished the blanket I was working on for the baby:

And as an added bonus (read: boredom killer) I also knit up a stuffed rabbit for him as well:

This is Sophie with Elijah, the elephant that I knit up for Noah that he refuses to play with:

Of course I still feel horribly unprepared and there’s a ton of stuff that we still need to get before the baby comes, but at least starting to get the nursery together is a start.

Pregnancy Update — 26 weeks

I had my 26 week doctor’s appointment on Wednesday (that’ 6 1/2 months for those of you who are bad at math.  Jae.) and again, everything so far is coming along great.  No problems or complications (besides the usual pregnancy gripes), we discussed our upcoming trip to the U.S. and the precautions I need to take for the flight and of course Mark and I got to see the baby again:

I also went back yesterday for my glucose tolerance test to check for gestational diabetes. With Noah I was borderline and Dr. Doo said I’d probably be the same way again this time around. And three blood drawings later, it’s confirmed — I’m on the high end of the gestational diabetes scale and have to cut back my sugar intake. Boo. Dr. Doo summed up what my diet should be from now on in this way, “Basically, if it tastes good then you can’t eat it.”  But at least he’s honest.

By the way, this is how Noah thinks the baby is going to come:
Noah: Mommy, how long until my baby comes?
Me: Three more months.
Noah: And after three months, two months. And after two months, one month. And after one month your tummy will CRACK and then my baby comes!
Which is a little weird to think that Noah thinks my stomach is a giant egg, but there you go…the mind of a three-year-old.

On another note, forget about anything I ever said about preggo brain not being so bad this time around. Lies! All lies! Lately I’ve just had the hardest time understanding people. I can recognize the words that people say to me but my brain is having trouble piecing together what they’re saying. It’s like people speak to me in English but with holes in it. I feel so bad for anyone who has to deal with me lately — having to repeat everything they tell me two or three times and needing to speak slowly like to a child. If I was not pregnant right now and had to speak to the pregnant version of me, not-pregnant Cathy would be rolling her eyes till they popped our of her skull. It’s terrible. So, to the people that I’m going to be seeing in the next few weeks — consider yourselves warned.