Childbirth Class

We had our first childbirth class last Wednesday. It is a 4 week series, so we'll have classes on the next 3 Wednesdays. The first class we had introductions and watched a video about breathing techniques and ways to help with back labor. I thought it was interesting and took notes -- I think I was the only person in class that took notes! But, at this point I'd like to keep things as natural as possible, so I figure it won't hurt to have a list of ideas for Aaron to look through to help me through the pain. Don't worry I'm not crazy, I will take drugs if I need to, but I think I'd prefer to avoid them for the most part just because it isn't something I've handled well in the past (then again neither is pain!). There are probably 10-12 other couples in the class and Aaron and I felt really young! There was one other couple that was definitely younger than us, but we thought that everyone else looked to be in their 30s or 40s. I told Aaron that they probably thought that's how old we look, too, so there are probably more people close to our age than we realize. Almost everyone in the class is 4 weeks farther along than us, but one couple is due in mid-December and another is due in late January. At the end of class they had us do a relaxation technique which consisted of Aaron rubbing my back and shoulders while I relaxed. It was awesome and I've been looking forward to going back this week just for the massage!

28 Week Doctor's Visit

Our 28 week appointment was the morning after our trip. I had to take my screening test for gestational diabetes, which meant I had to drink a very sugary drink an hour before the appointment. The drink wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it was only 10 oz. They draw blood exactly an hour after you finish the drink and then give your results at the appointment. The appointment went well, my blood pressure is still great, weight gain is right on track (still more than I want of course!), and the baby is measuring right on for her due date. Her heart rate was right at 144 bpm. The bad news was that I failed the screening test, which means I have to go back to the doctor to do a 3 hour long test. I will get my blood drawn, then drink another sugary drink (I've heard this one tastes a lot worse), then get my blood drawn an hour later, 2 hours later, and 3 hours later. I only failed the screening by one point and only somewhere between 5 and 15% fail the 3 hour test, so my doctor said that the odds are in my favor that there isn't an issue. If there is though, I can make it through it and there are a lot worse things.

NY -- The Journey Home

We had to get around early to catch our flight. The same cab driver that brought us to the hotel took us to the airport. It was a fairly uneventful drive and we drove a bit through Connecticut, which was good because I had wanted to at least go into it to check it off my list of states I've been to and we'd been very close, but hadn't been there. We had planned to eat breakfast at the airport, but they didn't accept credit cards (seriously!). Luckily there was a snack stand that had cheap breakfast sandwiches and we spent the last bit of our cash. The flight from White Plains to Philly was very quick and we had a long three hour layover. We started by going to TGI Fridays for an appetizer and some of the worst service I've ever had. The other waitresses were good and came often to their tables, but we had to ask one of them to get our waitress to come by. She was at least nice, but obviously had better things to be doing. That was probably the worst tip I've ever left! We then walked through the shopping areas and then sat at the terminal until we were hungry for lunch. Aaron of course had to get a Philly Cheesesteak. I had a pretzel and juice smoothie. He loved the cheesesteak (the pretzel was just so-so). We noticed they were about to start boarding while we were wrapping up lunch, so we headed over to get in line to get on the plane. There was a mom with 3 kids, probably 7, 8, and 9 yrs, in front of us in line and they were obnoxious, but I figured the odds of us being by them on the plane were low. Guess what, they were right behind us! The mom had a speech impediment and spoke extremely loud. She made sure to point out loudly that she and her daughter had to sit by the window or else they would get sick...again. Ugh great -- I've had a weaker stomach during pregnancy and Aaron gets airsick, although he always takes dramamine and hadn't had a problem in a long time. The son sitting by her had lost his voice at Disney World and was speaking in a whisper (it actually sounded like he probably had his voice back, but was still talking in a whisper) and her other son realized how fun it was to play with the seat back tray. She kept yelling across the plane at him. It was really annoying! Something else annoying...while we were taking off, I happened to think that the keys to our car that was sitting at the airport were in my purse -- yes, the one that was in the safe in NYC! I couldn't have thought of it before we took off when we could have called someone to be at the airport to meet us! As soon as we landed we tried calling Brad because we knew it was his day off, but he was sick, so we tried Aaron's mom. It worked out great because she lives in Shawnee, which is a lot closer than Brad was and she was happy to come get us. It was such a lifesaver! She took us home and wouldn't even take any gas money. Of course that meant that we had to drive back to the airport that evening to get the car, but it could have been a much more painful experience. We had decided to board Portia during our trip and were missing her terribly and picked her up as soon as we got home. The last time we boarded her she was mad at us for a couple days, but this time she was very happy to see us. While we had her boarded they cleaned her teeth, cut her nails, and did other maintenance things that she's never had done before. I'm sure they did everthing while she was put under, so I doubt she even knows. She was so glad to be home that she hopped on the bed, fluffed up the pillows and crashed! I think that's pretty close to what Aaron and I did, too! :)

NY Day 4

On our last day in the city we got up to hit up Times Square once more because Aaron decided he wanted a NY hat. On our way we passed by a watch stand where Aaron found a $5 watch. While we were browsing, 2 cops pulled over and talked to the vendor to see his license. He was working hard to get out of a ticket and doing some serious smooth talking. It worked and the cops told him he had to move and said he could finish up any sales. They were sure to tell us that he wasn't selling anything illegial. I tried to find a watch, too but I didn't find any that I liked. After we found a hat we checked out of the hotel, grabbed a cab and went to Grand Central Station. Our hotel for our last night was closer to the White Plains airport. We were able to get right on a train, unfortunately the a/c was broken. Ugh! It was so horrible. Luckily we had grabbed some cold water bottles on our way out of the hotel and it helped keep us cool. The train ride was probably 30 minutes long, but felt much longer due to the heat! We finally made it to Rye and grabbed a taxi ride to the hotel. The hotel was nice, but looked like it might have peaked as a weekend resort for folks from the city in the late 80s. We decided to use the Nuvi to find somewhere nearby for lunch. As the hotel seemed like a resort, it was outside of town a bit, but it looked like there were some places to eat less than a mile away so we headed out. When we got to the restaurant it didn't look very good and 0.5 miles away there were fast food restaurants, so we continued on. Most of the walk we were the only English speaking people we saw. It looked like a well cared for area, but we did feel like we stuck out a bit. It wasn't terribly hot, but it was extremely humid, so the walk was miserable. We finally made it to Burger King and probably took 2 hours to eat just because we didn't want to have to trek all the way back to the hotel! On our way back the GPS took a different route (I guess it was shorter since we didn't stop by the first restaurant). We went by a park that had a motorcycle toy and I guess we were a little giddy by that point and decided to go for a ride.

When we got closer to the hotel we ran across a beautiful rock wall.

I even decided to do some rock climbing. ;)

When we got back to the hotel we decided to play shuffle board and then Aaron cooled off in the pool and I dipped my feet in and read for a while.
We went back to the room and started packing for our flight the next morning. At that point I realized that we left my purse in the safe at the hotel in the city! Aghhh!! I did have my license, so I could fly home, but my credit card, bank card and $40 cash were all in the purse. I called the hotel right away and they said someone in security said they would check the safe for us and call me back that night. They never called and even though I knew that I could cancel my cards and $40 wasn't that much money, I hardly got any rest that night.

NY Day 3

This morning we took our time getting around and headed to Cental Park, which was just a few blocks north of our hotel. We thought about taking a carriage ride, but decided to see it by foot. We only ended up making it about 1/3 of the way into the park, but there was so much to see in just that little area that we were ok not seeing the rest. We stumbled across a visitor's center on our walk and they directed us to a beautiful area with a fountain and a pond. There were people renting row boats in the pond and we thought about doing it, but the pond was really small and there were a lot of boats, so we decided just to watch. There was a large cafe overlooking the pond and we were hungry, so we stopped to check it out. Unfortunately it was fairly hoity-toity which meant there were only 5 things on the menu and the cheapest was $27.50 (a hamburger). We decided to keep walking and we'd find something that we'd like better. We headed back towards our hotel through the park taking a different path. We ran across another pond, this time it was full of rented mini sailboats -- very picturesque. Aaron saw a family with an RC speed boat, so he watched it. We later saw the sign that said they were forbidden!

After that we ended up going through the children's area, which has a zoo and some carnival rides. There was also a restaurant. Well, we thought it was a restaurant, but it was really a grab-and-go cafeteria, but we were so hungry by that time that we decided to go ahead and eat. The food was actually pretty good, we shared a small pizza and a quesadilla. We sat outside and could watch all of the people walking through the park. I don't know if any of you have read (or seen) the Nannie Diaries, but I kept thinking about it as I'd see women walking by with children that obviously weren't theirs.

We went back by the hotel for a nap and then headed back out to go to the Empire State Building. Our hotel had such a great view of the city, we weren't interested to go to the top, but we wanted to go by the building and thought it would be a nice walk to an area we hadn't visited. On our way back we stopped by a Chinese restaurant for dinner and then decided to walk some more and we stumbled across Rockafeller Center. The skating rink was a restaurant and we saw 3 armed (automatic weapons!) police officers. It freaked me out because we had been to many other areas that had to have been extremely high security areas, but we hadn't seen that type of security. When we left, we saw 3 other officers staked out along one side of the rink. Maybe there was a celebrity eating and they had hired police security? Either way it was a little scary!

NY Day 2

We got up in the morning and decided to check out the continential breakfast. We got up to the cafeteria and there was a long line to wait in just to get in, so we decided that we'd rather find somewhere on our walk to the subway station to eat. I still had to finish getting ready, so we went back to the room and I finished up. We decided to go by the cafeteria once more to see if the wait was better and it was, so we snuck in. They just had fruit and breads, but it was enough and tasted good. The view was great and we could see Central Park (from our room, which was a few floors lower and a few rooms further in we couldn't see the park).

After breakfast we headed to Times Square to get on the subway to go to the South Ferry area (Battery Park, Statue of Liberty, WTC). We bought all day passes. The subway was very clean and not crowded at all. We got to the South Ferry and decided to head to the area along the river where we could see the Statue of Liberty. The area along the river was very pretty and the weather was great, so we sat and watched the boats for a while.

Then we headed into Battery Park and walked around a bit and watched some street performers, the mile long line to the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, and lots of pidgeons. It was a fun area and full of so many interesting things. From there, we walked to the World Trade Center site. It was my first day of a lot of walking and I was getting tired pretty quickly, so we stopped a couple times on the way, even though it was a fairly short walk. It was a bit of a bummer that I was so worn out because I don't think I took the time to think about the site and what had happened there and was more focused on wanting to sit down and get a drink. Aaron did get a few good pictures of the progress thus far. While he was doing that, I squatted down for a minute to rest my legs. As soon as I had bent down, a security person hollered and me and told me to stand up. I understood, but man I wanted to rest my legs! We moved on into one of the World Financial buildings, which had a better view than the first place we were out (still no seating though) and Aaron took a few more pictures.

After visiting the WTC site, we walked back down to Battery Park via a different route that was along the river. There were benches every 100 feet or so, so we sat down a few times and watched the river traffic. Aaron even stopped for a long while to watch an Asian family who was fishing in the river. They never caught anything while he was watching, but it looked like fun. I certianly wouldn't eat the fish from that river though! Yuck!

When we got back to the South Ferry area, we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry, which drives right by the Statue of Liberty (we didn't want to wait in the mile-long line to visit it and Ellis Island). The ferry was huge! As we made our way near the SoL, everyone moved to that side of the boat and it was hard to see. But, folks were nice and moved out of the way to let everyone have a view. We moved over the other other side of the boat and could see the Brooklyn Bridge. When we got to Staten Island, they made us disembark and then reimbark. We thought we'd hop off, go through security, wait about 10 minutes for the boat to be cleared, and then get back on. WRONG! We ended up waiting in a huge group of people for about 45 minutes, most who were European (i.e., they stood way closer to a pregnant lady than she wanted them to!). We finally got back on the boat and decided to ride on a different level than we had on our first trip and it was much less crowded, so we had a very nice ride. Here's Little Miss Cain as we went by the SoL. The picture makes it look a lot farther away than it really was.

After the ferry ride, we headed to China Town and Little Italy. The subway stop was right at the point where they meet. China Town was EXACTLY like I pictured it.

There were lots of fruit and fish markets (yes, they smelled horrible) and tons of merchants on the street. You'd walk by someone on the corner and they'd say "Coach purse? Watch? Or DVD! DVD! DVD!" Designer purses aren't my thing, even if they are super cheap, but we did look at some watches for Aaron and had to get some DVDs (more on them later). The watches weren't as cheap as I would have expected, and we passed on them. Aaron later found one at a vendor on the street by our hotel for $5 and it looked nicer than most of what we had seen in China Town. We bought a few I love NY shirts and headed to Little Italy for an early dinner. There were so many places to choose from and the entire area had the wonder aroma of Italian cooking. We finally decided on a restaurant that had a host outside who had been talking to us. We went in and waited and waited and waited. After 10 minutes without service (there were only 2 other people in the restaurant and the waiter wasn't doing anything) we left. Of course as soon as we got up the waiter and host ran over to us, but it was too little too late and we decided to find somewhere else to eat. Boy was I glad we did! We found a place called Benito's II. It was small and quaint and appeard to be "family owned" (if you know what I mean). But, the food was amazing and the staff was super friendly. We both had tortellini, mine with cream sauce and Aaron's with red sauce. We shared and neither of us could decide which was the best.

After eating we headed back to the subway stop to head back to the hotel. My pass wouldn't work, but the guy working buzzed me through and off we went. We got to the station where we needed to transfer lines and my card still wouldn't work. There wasn't anyone working in that area, so we headed above ground and I called customer service. Of course they don't have a 24 hour help line (even though the subways run 24 hours...), so we had to find the nearest station with personnel. Luckily it was only a few blocks away and we didn't mind getting to check out another area of town (this time it was NoHo and SoHo). We didn't get any pictures, but it seemed like it would have been a fun area to explore. We made it to the station and tried my pass again and it still didn't work, so we went to the guy working. They sit behind a huge glass window, which is probably nearly impossible to penetrate and I now know why. :) When we asked him to look at my pass he grabbed it and said "there's nothing wrong with it." I swiped it in front of him and he said it must be the machine, so I said that I had tried it at 2 other stations in multiple machines that many other people were using. He still said it wasn't the card. I asked he could just get us a replacement and he shrugged his shoulders in a very rude way and said no. I went on a bit trying to get him to help us and finally got so mad that I stomped off and threw my card across the station. I don't really have much of a temper, but it was unbelievable how rude he was! I asked Aaron later if he'd ever seen me so mad at someone besides him and he laughed and said no. I went over to the ticket machine and was getting ready to buy another ticket when the woman who had been in line behind us came up to me and gave me her old pass (she had been buying one for the next month and had enough for a couple stops on her current card). It was so nice of her to do and I let her know how appreciative I was. We hopped back on the subway and rode back to our hotel. We stopped by an ice cream shop and then headed back to our room to watch one of the DVDs. We turned it on and I immediately started cracking up! It was everything I thought it would be -- it was obviously taped by someone at a movie theater, the camera was angled crooked, and once during the movie you could see someone stand up in front! Ha! Ha! Yes, I felt bad for buying a bootlegged movie, but it is just one of those things that you have to do if you visit China Town and it was well worth it. So, the movie wasn't nearly as good as we had hoped, but the bootleg factor made up for it.

NY Day 1

Our first full day in New York we got up and hit the continential breakfast and then checked out of the hotel. We hopped in the rental car and powered up the Nuvi and trekked to visit the OCC shop. It was about an hour away and one of the most beautiful drives I've ever been on. Here we are at a scenic rest stop overlooking the Hudson river. Baby too of course!

The GPS didn't know the address for the new OCC shop, so we had to call them when we got to Newburgh, but it was easy to find. Here is Aaron standing in front of the building.I didn't mind going there especially since Aaron really want to, but really didn't think I'd enjoy it. I was wrong though. It was neat to see all of their special bikes and we were able to go to a "viewing area" to watch them working on bikes. The only person from the show we saw was Rick. We heard one of the workers tell someone else that everyone was there, but we had looked online and Mikey had an event the next day somewhere a ways away and then I heard one of the sales people talking to one of the mechanics about how Paul, Sr was gone. So, I'm guessing that none of them were there. It was alright though since they have so many bikes on display.
After OCC, we got on the road for NYC. We had planned to go back to White Plains and take a train to Grand Central Station and then a taxi to our hotel, but the lady at the rental car station talked us into taking the car into Manhattan to a drop that was close to our hotel. We left OCC at 3pm so we could make it to the drop by 5pm. It was a little longer than 1 hour drive according to the GPS and we figured we needed to add a bit for traffic. To start it off, I had changed the settings on the GPS to avoid tolls. Bad idea because apparently the only way to get to NYC without tolls is via Cleveland! We thought the GPS was going haywire and spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out where to go. I finally realized what happened and it routed us right to the drop, no worries. We headed on the road and the drive was still very pretty up until about the time we hit New Jersey when it turned into city. About the time we were able to see the NYC skyline we hit traffic. I could tell right away that it was going to push us to the time limit with the car, so I called the rental station to give them a heads up in hopes that we could avoid a fee ($33 per hour for the first 2 hours and then a full rental fee for longer than that). Of course they said, "tough". We figured we could stll make it before 6 and figured we'd just have to eat the fee. Well, 6 rolls around and we had gone 1.5 miles from 5. I kid you not. I don't know if it was normal for Friday evening to go to Manhattan island, but it was horrible. We finally made it to the Lincoln Tunnel at around 6:45 (it was 1.5 miles from where we were at 6). After we got to the tunnel things started moving and we got into Manhattan and quickly found the rental station. It was just before 7 and we were trying to get into the booth to check in before 7 to save some money, but they were busy. Aaron had to move everything out of the car while I waited in line. It finally got to me and I politely asked if they could remove the late fee. The guy working laughed and said no that's not something they can do. He had to take a call right then, so I sat and waited. Well, in my pregnant hormonal state (wink) I started to tear up. Ok, I was pretty upset and was probably really was close to tears out of frustration, but I probably could have hidden it better than I did. While he was on the phone he was finishing up our check-out. He got off the phone and told me the total -- which did not include any late fees. Who hoo! It was so funny because he was so grumpy when I got there, but after that he was all smiles and really friendly. It was really nice and make the beginning of our time in the city a lot better. We headed to our hotel, which was just a few blocks away. We hailed our first taxi, which was pretty exciting. We were staying at the Hilton that was located just south of Central Park and a few blocks east of Times Square. It was a great location and I got a great deal on it. When we got there, we asked them to add Aaron's points to it (he stays at Hilton hotels a lot for business). When the lady was adding it, she said she was going to upgrade us to an executive level, which we think moved us from a lower floor to a higher floor (the 40th! out of 44) and gave us access to the executive lounge which included free continential breakfast and access to wireless internet in that area. We both had some vertigo when we looked out the hotel room!

After we settled in the room, we headed out to find dinner. It was pretty late for me, so I wanted to find something fast. We just wandered aimlessly hoping to stumble across something that looked good. What we didn't realize was that we stumbled into Times Square! It took us walking around a while in that area to realize where we were. We found a pizza shop that our chiropractor had mentioned and tried it out. We carried the food out and walked towards our hotel. We found a nice fountain on the way and stopped and sat on its edge to eat. There were a lot of people walking by, but it also felt like we were alone. The pizza was great and we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel for bed.

I had hoped to update you on our whole trip tonight, but it is way past my bedtime already, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow to learn about the rest of our trip!