Monday, October 23, 2006

Baby Fever And A Trip Back To Michigan

This past weekend, we flew back to Michigan for a whirlwind trip to attend a friend’s wedding and our new nephew’s baptism. It was…..fun, but definitely exhausting. I think I needed another weekend just to recover from it! Getting out of bed on that following Monday was positively NOT fun.

We got to see all the babies (well, I’m talking about the “real” babies) of the family…Yay. Joey (Heidi and Phil’s baby) is definitely a cutie-pie. Anna’s all blond-haired, blue-eyed…Actually, come to think, they both are…Pity our kid won’t be….Ours will probably be the typical squinty-eyed, bowl-cut hair Asian baby

Speaking of babies, John is definitely experiencing baby fever. He can’t leave all the babies alone! So I’ve started my research on the whole labor issue…just reading about it makes me want to buy one of those old-fashioned chastity belts!! A few things I found out:

1) On a scale of 1 to 5, the pain level of natural childbirth is oh, about a TEN!!!!
2) There will be vaginal tearing…I KNEW that it’s not quite so natural for something that big to come out of something that small!!
3) There’s always the possibility that the mother will POOP when pushing
4) Even getting the epidural will hurt
5) And if I get a caesarian, I get to look forward to bedrest because my skin, muscle and whatnot were cut open and stretched out to take that darn baby out.

So tell me, why on earth would I willingly have a kid???!!! And this does not even take account of the hemorrhoids, the stretch marks and the all-nighters that we’ll have to go through once the baby is here….I told John that if he wants a baby, he’ll have to start the adoption process. There’re plenty of babies in China…and chances are, people won’t even notice the difference when they compare the baby to us…I’ll probably get, “Oh Steph, he/she looks JUST like you!” cause all Asians look the same to the Americans anyway!


Back to the weekend…It was so nice to socialize again!! John and I obviously don’t have a life back here in Connecticut, and to have a taste of what being around friends again felt so good! And his immediate family were all there, so we got to hang out with family too! Two birds with one stone, anyone??


Thursday, October 05, 2006

John's Birthday

So John turned 25 (old fart!) on Sept 10 and guess where he wanted to celebrate it? I'll give you three guesses............what? What's that I hear?? Yup, New York City...Are you starting to see a pattern here? When we are bored, we go down to NYC. When it's a special day, we go down to NYC. When we need a treat, we go down to NYC. I'm surprised that the people at the train station haven't recognize us by now.

Once again, it was hop, hop, hop over to the Amtrak in Stamford (veeery close to A.Florence's place....we should make it a point to knock on her door someday) and onto the train. The weather was so-so...the moment I put on my coat and wrap my scarf around my neck, it gets hot. But when I take it all off, it's cold again...I bet that if the weather was human, it'd be a woman (who's going through menopause)

Since it's his day and all, I allowed him to "plan" this trip. Direct translation: Walk around aimlessly until it's time to go home. Boy, was that fun!

On our way to nowhere, we passed this amazing display of cakes, pastries and pies and naturally, we went in since it was Johnny-boy's snack time. I'm not really into sweet stuff lately, so i passed. Which was a good thing since a single serve was HUGE


Street fairs in NYC is pretty common during the weekends, and this weekend was no different. There were vendors selling fresh blended juice, popcorn (LOVE the kettle corn! We bought a big bag, and had to carry it for the rest of the day. It was worth it!!), kebabs, funnel cakes, etc etc etc....it was almost like the pasar malam down in Bangsar (not as crowded/ noisy though, but close enough)
Finally, after trying to send telepathic messages to John all day long, he got the hint and we went down to the Times Square area and toured Madame Tussauds' wax museum...Dang, the entrance fee was high! But it was definitely interesting....almost eerie. 50% of the time, it took me awhile to realize that the person in front of me was not even technically a "person"! The wax figures were THAT good! With this museum, we mere mortals got the opportunity to get chummy with Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson (whose shirt now says the Ex- Mrs Lachey – interesting. Good to know that they keep up with the current events!), the Beatles, etc etc etc...To be quite honest, I had no idea who most of the people were...