Anniversary week

Our two-year anniversary was this Tuesday and Matt surprised me with dinner at a restaurant I've been wanting to go to for a long time - Mind, Body & Spirits. Not the greatest name for a restaurant; someone even pointed out to me that it sounds more like a spa than a place you'd go to to eat. However, it's an organic restaurant that uses as many local ingredients as possible, maintains a seasonal menu and has a great atmosphere. Not quite spa-like, but relaxing.

The highlight of the meal? Our appetizer of french fries dusted with pink Himalayan salt. Piping hot, crispy but not crunchy, served in a cone of parchment paper. Absolutely delicious.

The rest of the meal was great, too, but I'm beginning to learn that my 33-week pregnant body can only handle so much food at once, so the beginnings of meals are generally the better parts. The fries, plus one and a half of a homemade rootbeer, half of a chicken puttanesca flatbread pizza, and some vanilla bean ice cream totally put me over the edge.

We continued the anniversary celebrations this weekend with a one-night stay at the Westin Book Cadillac Detroit. This is an historic hotel in Detroit that recently went through some major renovations. It was once the tallest building in Detroit and the world's tallest hotels at its completion in 1924.

Since we're not going to be doing too much hotel hopping in the near future, we made the most of our waning days of freedom and lazed around, watched TV, used the fitness center ... and of course made time to eat! We'd been wanting to go to Slows BBQ for a long time, but with threats of four-hour waits at dinnertime, were never sure when to go.

3:30 seemed like a pretty safe time to give it a shot, though, and I guess it was, even though we still had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes! It was worth it though, although, I have to confess, I'm not much of a barbeque connoisseur. I mean, I know when I'm eating really subpar barbeque, but beyond that, don't have much of a palate for what is truly amazing.

Case in point, I went to a baby shower this afternoon for a friend from Texas, so the meal was bbq. And I could have sworn it tasted just as good as Slows.

All in all, a great anniversary week! I feel like I should end this post with something sweet and sappy, something about the baby or our growing love for each other to sum it all up ... but what I really want to say is that I'm just glad I didn't ruin any of our dinners out. I have a tendency to do so whenever there's a lot of buildup for a nice night out. It's like I jinx myself and choose that very moment to let my emotions get out of control. It's quite the slippery slope.

But, perhaps my pregnant hormones have put me very much in balance, because I stayed on my best behavior. Perhaps that was the best anniversary present I could have given Matt.

Registering made easier - but at a price

I fell for giggle.com. I know I said I wasn't about to get sucked into baby registry mania, and I still think I'm keeping my sanity, but I have to admit, giggle.com is enticing. It markets itself as a "new parent store." One that weeds out all of the overwhelming choices and presents you with only the best strollers, car seats, bottles, etc. How nice! Instead of 44 monitors to choose from, you only need to choose from 4!

Of course it only weeds out the priciest items, and I'm realizing is really charging you a premium for doing the work of sorting out the 40 monitors they've decided aren't worth purchasing, and so I'm trying to keep my wits about me as I peruse its offerings. Of course I believe Baby D. deserves only the best, but I also hope he/she learns from an early age that all that glitters (or I suppose giggles in this case) is not gold. It sure is nice to look at, though!

Sometimes jellybeans for breakfast isn't a good thing

When I was little, one of my favorite books was "Jellybeans for Breakfast." I don't remember all the details, but I think the gist of it was what would happen if parents vanished and children could do whatever they wanted to? Well, they could go to the moon for the morning, live in treehouses and drink out of acorn cups and of course eat jellybeans for breakfast!

Today, though, I got confirmation that children don't really know what's good for them and that eating jellybeans for breakfast is disgusting. I had to eat 18 jellybeans in 5 minutes flat at 7:20 this morning, in order to get tested for gestational diabetes. It was either eat the jellybeans or drink some horrid glucose potion that I had been warned was pretty terrible. And I'm sure it is ... it's just that stuffing your mouth full of jellybeans 30 minutes after you wake up probably isn't much better.

I hope to be able to read Baby D. my favorite book someday (although I doubt I'll be buying it - it's now out of print and more than $100 on ebay), and you know, I might even let my child gorge him/herself on jellybeans for breakfast one morning - just to learn that sometimes grownups really do know what's best.

Football fields of crib sheets

When it comes to registering for Baby D, I feel totally paralyzed. I went to Buy Buy Baby a few weeks ago, and when I saw a football field length of crib sheets, I started to wish I was giving birth 20 years ago, before the advent of the Internet and snazzy little laser guns that make it possible for any ignorant mom-to-be to build a registry list of 100+ products in eight minutes flat.

Now of course I want to be sure Baby D. has all that he/she needs, and I'm sure that involves crib sheets (although I've heard some newborns do just fine in a dresser drawer on top of some towels), but I'm really starting to wonder if it has to involve a registering as if I were getting married all over again.

And yes, I've heard the advice that you should just bring someone with you who knows what they're doing, who can tell you what you really need, what you really don't need, etc. But isn't every baby different? Every mother I've talked to seems to have a completely different opinion on what kind of stroller worked best for her baby/family, so how do I even know if the mother of my choice is going to line up with my lifestyle and my baby's personality?

I haven't yet come to a decision on what I'm going to do, but I have a feeling I'm going to wind up registering for a few critical items and figure out the rest as a I go along ... after all, isn't it most important for the mom-to-be to remain as relaxed and stressfree as possible? If so, then I'll take a prenatal massage over a laser gun any day!

We closed!

It's official! We closed on our house today, and what a relief that was. You hear horror stories of a buyer losing his job the day of the closing, and not being able to go through with the purchase. And when they were a little late showing up for the closing, well, I tried not to imagine the worst.

They were a really cute, newlywed couple and seemed so enchanted with our house and thoroughly excited to be moving in. We asked them a little about how they picked out our house (I'm not opposed to a little flattery!) and they said they'd looked at about 90 and just stumbled into our open house by chance. Well, it was no mistake and we are still thanking the Lord that this all happened so quickly and easily.

For the past month, I've been tallying up a list in my head of little house quirks/issues that "aren't my problem anymore," especially when I've felt sad about leaving. But I didn't want to post them until the deal was done, because what if the sellers saw them and changed their minds?! Now even I'm a little nervous to write them, maybe because I just can't quite believe we really sold it?!

So stay tuned, maybe I'll gather up the courage to type them out later this week!

A confession

I also feel obliged to confess that about 18 hours after I posted that I'm handling all of these changes and unknowns with uncharacteristic optimism and peace, my "hormones" shifted. What formerly seemed exciting turned into terrifying and our new adventure just didn't seem like much fun anymore, largely because I realized I'm not in the driver's seat and have very little, if any, control over what's going to happen.

So my hopes of being a supernatural pregnant woman with astonishingly balanced hormones have been dashed, or maybe this has nothing to do with hormones and only is a matter of personal responsibility. Who knows ... and interestingly, these shifts have been happening on Fridays, which is why now Matt and I are dubbing Fridays "Freak Fridays" in preparation for my major mood swings.

Good thing we made it to Saturday!

Sold!

In less than a week. I think this might make for some kind of recession real estate record, don't you think?

When I first moved to Berkley and occasionally saw signs for "Berkley Bill" Wahlstrom, I'll admit, I had my doubts. Even if he didn't have a dollar sign slashed through his name, I probably would still have felt better going with Prudential or Coldwell Banker.

But we've learned from friends that Berkley Bill really does know Berkley, and he promised to cut us a good deal on closing costs, so what did we have to lose?

Now we're grappling with the reality that we need to be out of this house in less than a month, and that means weekends and evenings will be occupied with decluttering, packing, packing and packing ... and of course thanking the Lord for the best realtor in the universe.