This Saturday, after joining Southern Mom for a pedicure and before dashing around town with Pete taking pictures of fleur de lis, Pete and I headed to the French Quarter to see the Vatican Mosaic Studio Exhibit at the Old Ursuline Convent. CS could not join us as he was pulled to Audubon Park to photograph our friend’s children for their aunt’s birthday.

The mosaics were beautiful and intricate. Here’s some pictures I took of a few that I particularly liked. And it was awesome that they were in New Orleans. The mosaics haven’t left the Vatican in 500 years and had never been to the U.S. Aren’t we special?? And the Ursuline Convent isn’t too shabby either. It’s history is pretty cool, and I learned as much (if not more) about it as the mosaics.

My only ever so slight criticism of the mosaics is that they were mosaics of other artists’ famous pieces (like Van Gogh’s Starry Night). I mean, hey, I couldn’t do a mosaic of a stick man drawn by a three year old. I am not knocking the quality of the mosaics. I was just a wee bit disappointed to be looking at art that I was familiar with that had been “mosaic-ed.” I would have much preferred to see the artisans original concepts captured.

All in all, Saturday was a very good day. Pedicures, history, art. What’s not to like?

Well, Pete and I were back on the streets of New Orleans this weekend hunting for the Fore! Kids Fleur de Lis. And we found plenty. Check out the new page Pete is working on to highlight all the Fleurs. We still have some more to capture; I’ll let you know when they get added to the new page.

Enjoy!!

Well, my shower ROCKED! Big shout out to Wendy over at Southern Mom, my sister, my friend Cyndie, and my cousin. These girls know how to throw a party! Everyone really liked the “open shower” concept–apparently its all the rage according to the hipster crowd. So we were all pleased to be on the cutting edge of it!

There was good company, good food, and fun games. And they didn’t even make me wrap toilet paper around my girth!

And the loot!!! I don’t know what I didn’t get. Sun can come tomorrow–we are PREPARED! The gals throwing the shower all joined in to get us the travel system. It is sooo cool. Or so swears SM. I am sure she knows. And speaking of SM, she rocked it out with this amazing creation. She was very modest, saying, “Oh, it was easy. I got the instructions online.” It was the hit of the day. She also got this for me too–more diapers and pacifiers and all kinds of good stuff.

Here’s a picture of the loot I got. And another and another and another. And amazingly, I got no duplicates. I got dresses, embroidered bibs, blankets, books, toys, one diaper bag for mommy and one daddy, a mobile, a Diaper Champ, a monitor, a Pack N Play, towels, swaddlers, a ducky to tell me if the bath water is too hot. . . . I got things I don’t even know what to do with but am told emphatically that I need (such as lap pads, receiving blankets and other mysterious items). And I learned that I am NOT to use baby powder in Sun’s diaper–it’s not good for little girls. So I got butt paste to use instead.

And the cake? From Swiss Confectionery. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Now I gotta figure out how to make all this stuff fit in her room. I was delighted with the shower (can you tell?). It was perfect. My chicks did a stand-up job. And maybe that is why I have this pit in my stomach. Looking at all this STUFF is freaking me out. It’s SO MUCH. Damn, a baby comes with a lot of baggage. I mean, one of the items you need to have if you have a baby is a BAG. That means baggage. How did I not see this coming?

A very sincere and heartfelt thanks goes out to my sister and cousin, Wendy, and Cyndie. Not only do I know that you all did a lot to get this together, each of you told me in private how much you others did for me. It was very touching and reassuring to this hormonal mess of a mom-to-be.

This post started out being about yesterday’s adventures, but a digression in that post took so long, I deleted the stuff I did yesterday. I’ll put that in a separate post. Instead, let me write about what is really on my mind.

My Baby Shower is today.

Two friends (one being Southern Mom) and my sister all voiced interest in coordinating my shower. Color me surprised–I mean, these people WANT to work with my family? And me, being pregnant? Damn, I have good friends (and a good sister).

Anywho, my sister knows I do not like surprises. So my sister told me the date of the shower some time ago–and that it wasn’t going to be a surprise. Frankly, I was, well, surprised. I mean, I love my sister, but usually it doesn’t really matter much what I think (she’s the older sister–if you are a younger sister, you know what I mean)–and with SoMo and my other friend involved, I thought they’d do the surprise thing. I was just curious how they were gonna get me in a dress without tipping me off.

Well, once the shower was on the table, my sister then asked if I wanted an “Open Shower.” Have you ever heard of this? I hadn’t. My sister explained that she’d been to an open shower recently and apparently the idea is to NOT wrap the gifts so that the shower is not spent with time having Momma open them all and “oh and ah” for her alloted 2.5 minutes per gift. Rather, the guests all mingle and eat and view the open gifts on a table. Well, hell, sounded good to me. I told my sister to go with what everyone else felt like–but that an open shower was fine by me.

Then I learned that my aunt and cousin are now on the “planning committee” too. Which freaks me out only because there are not that many guests on my list, and it seems most of them are now comprised of the planning committee.

Then my mother called last week and said, “Honey, since the gifts aren’t being wrapped, I’m bringing yours over today.” That’s how my mother’s logic works. I can’t explain it other than to say that my hunch was that the gift was large and she’d worry how I’d get it home in my Corolla with all the other gifts the day of the shower.

Sure enough, her gift is a rocker. It’s a nice gift. But I already have a rocker–a rocker she refinished for me and had apparently forgotten about. So now I gotta arrange to get the receipt from her, load this thing into my Corolla, and lug it to the store to return it. All because of an attempt to have saved me an aggravation. Did I mention I am eight months pregnant? UGH!

And to top it off, SoMo is THREATENING ME if I don’t like her gift. It’d better not be Sun’s name in billowy pillows for her wall.

And the worst of it? I did ask one small request. That I get the cake I wanted. I was told absolutely not. Never. No way. Well, damn.

Last night, my heartburn returned and forced me to cancel some pretty good dinner plans we had lined up. Instead, we watched a two-hour Dateline about a guy who’d been convicted of killing his wife. At the beginning of the second hour, as they were cutting to a commercial, they showed what was coming up–your quintessential southern defense attorney. I turned to the hubs and said, “Oh, yeah! I LOVE a good southern defense attorney! ‘That dog won’t hunt.’” CS just kinda looked at me weirdly.

Sure enough, the show returned and the defense attorney made much ado about how an alleged big lead was not followed up by the police and that other arguments the prosecution made did not add up. Then he said it: “That dog won’t hunt.” I burst out laughing gleefully. CS just shook his head that I would even KNOW this was going to be said, and that I’d be happy that it was.
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I had my first Non-Stress Test (NST) today to monitor Sun’s heart rate. The doctor was very pleased, which, in turn, means we were very pleased. Earlier this week, we had an ultrasound done which indicated I have an “old placenta”–one that looks 42 weeks old and not 32 weeks. So now the doctors want me to get the NST done twice a week. We go back to the ultrasound specialist next week for her to do a “biophysical profile”–they use doppler radar to see whether the blood is flowing to and from Sun’s vital organs. What does it look like to me? Stormy weather to the north with a front heading south. I’ll let you know if any hurricanes form.

So now I have decided to work from home on the days I see a doctor (roughly twice a week for the next eight weeks or so). That way I don’t feel too rushed all day long. Seems the doctors want me to rest up.

This week, however, work finally began on the back of our house to add a porch for the doggies, and the workers are using a compressor to operate a nail gun. This compressor is in the main bathroom in the house with the electrical cord fished out through the window. This thing is LOUD and turns on and off. So every time it goes on, Peanut and I jump. She’s getting used to it a lot faster than I am.

Oh, and CS is also in the back yard with a chain saw cutting down the jungle of bushes back there so the yard will look better. With this cacophony of noises permeating the airwaves, I am certain, at least, not to be tempted to nap instead of work.

Am I starting to get through that my family is weird with food? I never saw this attribute growing up. And maybe it did me good–until getting pregnant, I never had heartburn and rarely suffered from a stomach ache. I think I had food poisoning once (but it could just as well have been a virus or something). I can eat ANYTHING and not have a grumbling belly. Maybe I owe that to my family–all their food peccadilloes may have caused me to have an iron stomach–you know, that-which-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger kind of thing. I mean, it’s apparent we have not needed Pepto-Bismol for, like, 20 years. So, really, I should be grateful to my family for giving me this gift.

Nonetheless, my grandfather went too far on at least one occasion. I had forgotten this episode and owe this little gem of a post to CS.

My family was at my grandfather’s house a couple years ago for the Metairie St. Patrick’s Day parade. My grandfather had a bag of fruit on the counter. All the fruit was either very ripe or over ripe. “That’s a lot of fruit for one person. Must have been a sale,” I thought to myself. I was wrong, oh, so wrong.

My grandfather offered all of us some of his fruit, but we were in a chips & dip and fried chicken sort of mood and passed. He then grinned proudly and said to us, “They were throwing these out.” We all just looked questioningly at my grandfather, so he continued, “You can go back to the produce department at the grocery store and ask them for compost stuff and they’ll give you perfectly good fruit. They just give it to you. For free.”

My grandfather was offering us trash. To eat. With pride.

Several weeks after CS and I met, Hurricane Georges threatened the city. I decided to ride it out with my grandparents at their house. Through their 80 years of living in the city, they had never evacuated, not even for Audrey or the infamous Camille, and their home was never damaged in any storm. Further, they had a generator! If electricity was lost, we’d be back in business in no time.

Within twenty minutes of my arrival, lightening lit up the den and seconds later a loud clap of thunder rang throughout the house. The television and lights blinked off. The wind was not blowing strong, and the rain was mild. I waited for the lights to come back on; they didn’t. My grandfather went to investigate. He came in moments later and reported that a transformer had been hit by lightening and from their house into the next block to the south, the electricity was out and would be out for some time. His neighbors to the north did not lose electricity. Time continued to pass and the lights were not restored. I began to get anxious about getting the generator started up, but I didn’t want to be pushy. I had the fullest faith in my grandfather and felt I was in very capable hands.
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So, I am reading some e-mails when CS walks into the room with a snack–my bag of Sour Cream & Onion Rice Cakes. He settles down to snack and I look over to him. He is holding one of the rice cakes out for the cat to lick. Ok, that’s weird. But then CS says to Peanut, “What, are you going to lick the whole thing?” Wherein CS then EATS said rice cake. To which I said, “That’s just gross. That’s just gross.” And CS responded, “Whaaat?”

Zo-yipes! And I am reproducing with him! AND he finished the bag without me eating a single rice cake. Errrr.

In 1996, I began visiting with my grandparents once a week for dinner. At one of our dinners, my grandfather showed an interest in what I thought of the taste of the shrimp my grandmother had fried for us that night. I thought he was bragging on Sunshine’s cooking (which was so unlike him and sweet!) but I soon came to realize he was bragging on something entirely different. “Why, they are fabulous!” I exclaimed. Then my grandfather smiled and said triumphantly, “They’re from 1985!” I was aghast and cautioned, “Paw Paw! You shouldn’t keep seafood over ten years!!!” He responded logically, “But they taste they same as the ones we caught last week. Don’t they?” He had me there, dammit. Although I knew this old seafood shouldn’t be eaten–it shouldn’t be edible–I knew as certainly that the deep freeze and my grandfather had a long lasting love affair the likes of me wasn’t going to interfere with as long as his seafood continued to taste good.

After he lulled me into agreeing with him and I continued to enjoy (but not quite as much) my fried shrimp, he stunned me further, “We have some from 1977 out back, too. The tops of the containers are dried out but I just need to hacksaw that part away and I am sure the shrimp at the bottom are good!” Yes, he said “hacksaw.” About shrimp frozen since 1977. And he was serious. Very serious. “Paw Paw!” I protested, “you simply MUST NOT eat those. Throw them away! You have plenty!” He shook his head, shrugged, and dismissed my concern. It wasn’t about the need for those shrimp to provide sustenance to him, it was about his loyal freezer’s great ability to retain food for over 20 years that really meant something to him.

At least one good thing came out of Katrina: At my uncle’s insistence, my grandfather begrudgingly threw away the 1977 shrimp (along with all the other contents of his deep freeze) after the electricity had been cut off for weeks with no estimate of when it’d get turned back on.