Happy Halloween!

I'm popping in for a belly bump update (Halloween edition) before the trick-or-treaters start rolling in...

{21 Weeks}

 

 

It's been quite a while since I was all that into Halloween, but it is the first official holiday of the season, and I do love a good pumpkin carving sesh.

{Carving pumpkins with Mom, just like the old days}

Boom!

Unrelated, I cannot get enough of this dog. She is pretty much perfection on four legs, so I bought her me this festive canine bandana as a special holiday treat.

 

Happy Halloween, witches!

19 Weeks

And this is why I try to do these pictures when Tom is otherwise occupied....

You'd think I'd  have been on alert after that one, but...slow learner, apparently. And now you get to see some outakes that should never see the light of day, but Tom was so pleased with his photobombing skills, that he insisted I share. I had no idea he was there...

 

Until he busted up laughing and revealed himself... Weirdo.

Music, Lately

"Lately" is kind of generous, but we've been to some fun concerts in the past few months, and I want a record to prove to Baby Boy Shackmano that we were cool, fun people before he came along. I mean, I assume that we will continue to be cool, fun people after he's here, but just in case...

Billy Joel at the Hollywood Bowl - I'm not sure that attendance at a Billy Joel concert really supports my claim that we are fun, cool people, but whatever.

 

Wynonna at The Annenberg - again, perhaps not the hippest artist, but free, outdoor concerts are always a good time. Also - I can't lie, The Judds' Greatest Hits album is my jam.

Jay-Z and Beyonce's On The Run tour - ok, I should get some points for this one. Thanks to the fact that Jay-Z's musical director is a Korg artist, Tom was able to get us passes to the On the Run show at the Rose Bowl. This was a spectacle like I have never seen before. 

I never get that worked up about going to shows, but this was pretty awesome. We had all-access wristbands, so we hung out backstage (and on stage!) beforehand, and then watched the show from the floor and side stage. If I weren't afraid of The Beygency, I might have tried to find Queen B's wig room... Forgive the amount of pictures I'm about to drop in here - I was really excited about this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 No Doubt - thanks again to Tom's connections, we got to go to the "friends and family" dress rehearsal for No Doubt's performance at the Global Citizen Festival in New York. The dress rehearsal was at The Forum, and because Tom is the coolest, we also had Forum Club passes where we got to enjoy snacks that included a cake with pictures of the band members on it.

{You will have to take my word for it that that is Gwen Stefani. You should also know that she seems to be aging backwards. Don't Speak!}

Jamestown Revival at Way Over Yonder - if you have not already had the pleasure, go buy this album now. So good. Perfect music for a fall Saturday on the pier in Santa Monica...

 

I shall leave you with this barely discernible photo of Gwynth Paltrow, GOOP herself, on stage with Holly Williams who was opening for Jason Isbell at The Roxy.

LA is weird.

18 Weeks

Dear Baby To Be (Hopefully) Named Later,
As soon as we found out that you were on your way, your dad instituted Wicket as a placeholder for whatever your real name turns out to be, but I can't bring myself to address you as that. I mean, as far as characters from Star Wars go, ewoks were pretty cute, and I think Wicket was the head ewok (maybe?), so there's that, but still... And, actually, I just now went to look for a picture of Wicket, and...not that cute.

Kind of terrifying, in fact. In any event...last week was a big one.

We found out with 100% certainty that you are a boy! Between that and the fact that my belly has really started to pop out, you are becoming more and more real to us every day. Now if we could just agree on an actual name for you... In fact, if you have any thoughts on that matter, I'd really appreciate it if you could send me some sort of trans-placenta mail. That would be incredibly helpful.

I await your input.

Love, 
Me

Bump Progression/Exercise in Narcissism

So because I am a human woman with a Pinterest account, I am familiar with the trend of weekly photos of ones growing belly during pregnancy. Despite the fact that I feel like an ego maniac taking and editing multiple photos of myself every week, here we are...

Imma give Kim Kardashian a run for her money selfie-wise it seems...

This is happening...

{June 30th's discovery}

 Yep. Come early March, we'll be adding a Cusimini to the team!

I took a pregnancy test one Monday morning on a whim, not really thinking much of it since we hadn't technically been "trying." What we'd expected to take six months or more had taken more like six weeks, so my heart did a somersault when I saw that I officially had a passenger on board... I blame Full House for what happened next.

Remember that one episode where Aunt Becky tries to tell Uncle Jesse that she's pregnant by cooking him an elaborate themed meal? No? Well, refresh your memory. Had I rewatched that particular YouTube clip before deciding that I wanted to tell Tom in some clever way, I may have reconsidered since things didn't quite work out the way Aunt Becky wanted them to... (foreshadowing).  Anyway, this was big news, and I didn't want to just unceremoniously throw the pregnancy test at Tom (spoiler alert: also foreshadowing). I wanted a moment.

After double checking that this was, in fact, happening with a second pregnancy test (in the bathroom at Costco, as it happens), I decided that I would order the book Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad and have it gift wrapped and mailed to Tom with same day delivery. So, I ordered the book and waited. While I waited, I googled all the potential ways I had damaged my unborn child with wine and oysters and Advil before I knew I was pregnant. [Pro tip: don't do that.] I don't think I got any actual work done that day as I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that I was really and truly pregnant.

The package was supposed to arrive by 8 o'clock, so when 9:30 rolled around with no delivery, I pretended to go to the bathroom and called Amazon. They said the package was marked as delivered, so it must have been left at the wrong address...blah, blah, blah. At this point, I had been sitting on this knowledge for 12 hours, and I couldn't wait another minute to tell Tom the news, so I grabbed the pregnancy test from where I'd hidden it in my purse, and - you guessed it - tossed it in the general direction of where Tom lay watching TV. It was the definition of unceremonious, and not at all what I envisioned, but good news is good news regardless of the presentation, right?

After spending the next couple of hours talking about all the ways in which our lives were about to change, we had finally started to fall asleep just before midnight when the buzzer for our front gate rang. In a turn of events that I still don't quite understand, it was the delivery guy dropping off the package that had supposedly been delivered hours earlier...

He's been studying up ever since.

More soon, but for now, your first glimpse at Baby Cusimano...