KidKate

The way my 2009 is going

For lunch today I consumed:

• A Weight Watchers SmartOnes, followed by
• Two (regular) mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches
• Two half-glasses of all the remaining wine in our house (Reisling. It was a gift.)

In other updates, Ellie is enjoying daycare immensely but I am still unemployed. So some decisions are going to have to be made.

Back to work then.

Not mom jeans but...

I introduce you to the "mom" bathing suit:

OK, so it's from J Crew and not Lands End or LL Bean, but it's one piece (obv), sits low on the thighs, high on the back, and (this is key) has a supportive underwire bra. And it doesn't look nearly as good on me as it does on her.

Happily, I am back into most of my old clothes, though I have had to adjust my wardrobe a bit as I feel mighty silly sitting around the house in creased wool trousers, kitten heels, and dryclean-only button-down Oxfords. I am still figuring out my new size--my waist is slowing returning (hallelujah) but I'm a bit bigger on top all around and my skinniest pre-pregnancy jeans (which weren't all that skinny; the jeans I wore around the time I got married, now that would be the test, but I threw those out long ago) keep sliding down my new muffin top. This is unfortunate, as while I have always been the proud owner of thunder thighs, I've at least been small-waisted up till now.

Isn't pregnancy a hoot? And to think we're just going to do this all over again at some point. Only then I'll be older and even less likely to get my old body back.

Totally worth it, though. Really.

See?

Measurements

Shopping online for a new postpartum bathing suit (previous options: too small, too small, too big, and hello, milk jugs!), I get up and go to the kitchen to retrieve a tape measure to record my new postpartum measurements. I return to the computer with two Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and not a clue as to what I was supposed to be doing in the kitchen.

Go figure.

Venice

Canals

Gondolier


Clothesline


St. Marks Square


Me at 16 weeks: Not really showing

Self-portrait by camera phone

On the Millennium Bridge.

Near Trafalgar Square.

Attempted photo on the London Eye.

Just for kicks.

.

Note: Battery on real camera died. Only adapter in the house connected to computer. New phone came with "self-portrait" feature. Will remedy soon.

Rockin' that '80s look: Part II

Circa 1988.

Let's just hope this particular look doesn't make a comeback.

Rockin' that '80s look

Or not.

Is anybody else as disappointed as I am that the '80s are back? I'm not one for trends per se, except for on those unfortunate occasions when they're on their way out and having newly converted, I hang on for dear life  as the rest of the world looks back in pity.

But the closest I've been able to bring myself to this '80s craze is a pair of black cable knit tights. With feet, which I guess doesn't even really count. I am short-waisted and thick-thighed, which pretty much ruled out leggings and tunics for me even in the actual '80s. There was that one year in the mid-90s when I hadn't yet adjusted to dorm food and lost 10 pounds that I sported a pair of Gap charcoal gray leggings with various long t-shirts and button downs, but that's pretty much my experience with leggings in a nut shell. Oh, and there was fifth grade (1985 or so) when I positively pined for a black pair with stirrups like Mari's and my mom informed me that 10-year-olds do not wear black. (Guess her mom had a different philosophy, though I have to hand it to my mom for her prescience about the stirrups.)

Also, do skinny jeans and leggings with no actual pants (LOVE the title of this article) actually look good on anyone? And am I total bore to admit that I am sad to see flare pants and flat fronts and tailored shirts and (some) pointy shoes on their way out? I am dying to see how Stacy and Clinton are handling this. Alas, I am stuck with Trinny and Susannah, who actually strip people down to their underpants in the 360-degree mirror and tell them what's wrong with their bodies before they will take them shopping.

Oh, the horror.

Mari and me

Mari and I have been best friends for 20 years now, which is kind of hard to believe considering we're just 30. As kids, Mari and I planned to share a dorm room in college and divide it in half
--her side would be purple, complete with purple paint, purple bedspread, and purple telephone, and mine would be pink with all the requisite pink accouterments. Or maybe she was pink and I was purple--I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and take responsibility for the pink. In reality, she got her GED after 11th grade so that she could work full-time, while I went off to Austin, where my first roommate was a compulsive-eating Fulbright scholar who eventually stopped speaking to me. No matter, Mari and I spoke and wrote weekly and never ran out of things to talk about (granted, mostly those "things" were our ex-boyfriends). This was before we knew about email or the Internet, so one of our favorite things to do was write out song lyrics longhand (mostly about said ex-boyfriends) and mail them to each other. This required recording songs off the radio and then hitting "stop" and "play" over and over again on our tape players; apparently, this was also before we knew about CD players.

During my last year in Austin, Mari got engaged to Ed (not the ex-boyfriend but the best friend of the ex-boyfriend--life is funny that way, isn't it?) just as my ex and I ended it for the last time. I was in a bad place, while Mari was in a very good place, constantly dragging me to bridal extravaganzas and dictating (OK, maybe advising--I said I was in a bad place, OK?) how long my hair should be in time for her wedding. (She was outraged disappointed when I cut a lot of length off my hair six months before the big day.) In any case, she was engaged for a very long time--almost 2 years--and by the end of it I backed out of my maid-of-honor commitment by telling her I would be moving to New York before her wedding anyway. We had had a couple of incidents just before that, with her dictating advising and me telling her just what I thought, so after I backed out of her wedding, we didn't speak again, even after I had to move back in with my parents to save money for New York.

Her mother eventually sent a shower invitation to my parents' address in Houston, and I sent a gift rather than showing up. Mari had the grace to call (I would've sent an email), and we patched things up in time for the wedding--but not soon enough for me to resume my duties as maid of honor. It is one of my biggest regrets in our friendship, and wasn't really resolved until just a few years ago when I told her how very, very sorry I was. She, of course, had taken it all in stride, but because of my hurt over my ex and the fact that she was the first of my friends to marry, I just missed the boat on that one. In my immaturity, I never thought I would get married and refused to see what all the fuss was about. That all gelled for me on her wedding day.

I eventually moved to New York, where I met Yan, and continued to correspond with Mari every week--by now, we had also discovered email. I had nine visitors the first year I was here and thoroughly enjoyed each of them, although my poor friend L had the misfortune of visiting just after I found out I was pregnant, and J came to apartment hunt with me just after Yan and I broke up. All of my friends were wonderfully supportive, concerned, and helpful during that incredibly trying time, but Mari was the only one who I think came truly to see me. While I was at work one day (I had been laid off and couldn't get paid for time off at my freelance job), she washed every dish in the house--they were overflowing from the sink to all the counters, the top of the microwave, etc--took out the trash (also overflowing) and was just generally awesome. At the time, she said "There's depressed, and then there's depressed, and you are depressed." We did quite a bit of sightseeing but we also spent a lot of time on the foldout bed in front of the TV, eating Tabasco-flavored popcorn and watching chick flicks with Simon. We both cried when she left a week later.

I have been meaning to write a post about Mari for a long time. And by the way, while I tell people that the picture at the top is from Halloween, it's actually me in my drill team outfit. I was probably hanging out at Mari's before practice and brought my stuff over to get changed before my mom picked me up. (Alas, my tenure as a Golden Girl--or as Yan puts it, "Solid Gold!"--only lasted a few months, as my mom revoked my privileges after I woke up for school too late three mornings in a row.)

In any case, Mari had a baby boy on April 7, her second, and I just wanted to wish her well and tell her I much I love her and her family. And who couldn't love these faces?

Most Flattering Picture Ever

The lovely bride and Kid "The Face" Kate.

Ha.

I've mentioned more than once (read: exhaustively) that I've gained about 15 pounds in the last six months. So concerned was I, in fact, that I made an appointment with my PCP to check my thyroid. While this is not as outrageous as it might sound--I do have hypothyroidism and haven't had my dose adjusted since I was diagnosed--it was wishful thinking. Alas, my thyroid is normal. My eating habits are excessive. Yan and I plan to join Weight Watchers when we return from Europe next month.

In other news, I recently started a rather nasty prenatal vitamin. I had no idea that something as innocuous as a vitamin could be so incredibly distasteful. It gives me bad breath, heart burn, and a general feeling of queasiness, though Mari assures me this is completely normal. She suggested that I take them at night with a little food, which seems to do the trick. Thank god, because if I had to continue taking those every morning followed by rocking back and forth at my desk in a sea of nausea, this whole baby business may have been off.