Merry Christmas

We hope you all had a great Christmas. We had a great one. I got an awesome gift from Gerald and my family, more in a separate post.

Hello World

Mona Sophia Friedland was born on November 26, 2010 at 1:26pm in San Francisco CA with a weight of 7 lbs 3 oz (3260g) and length of 21.5 inches (52 cm).



The first contraction I had at 2pm on Thanksgiving. But at the beginning I wasn't sure if this is the real deal, so we continued watching the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade, which we had recorded that morning. After that I was pretty sure it started, so we called our doula Conny to let her know that we will need her soon. We decided to spend the time like every Thanksgiving, which means going to our little movie theater watch a movie and have a pizza.
We watched Burlesque. It was the perfect movie, easy to follow even when you are in pain.
After the movie it was time to call Conny again and tell her to come by. Around midnight we decided to drive to the hospital. There was no traffic so my biggest fear having the baby on the Bay bridge didn't come true.
Also the hospital was very quite, we got a huge room which even had a jacuzzi tub. From that moment on my memory is a little bit blurry, but I spend my time in this room somehow and then gave birth at 1:26pm to a healthy super cute little girl. I did all natural, meaning no pain medication or intervention.
Gerald and Conny were the whole time with me and helped a lot.
The rest of the day Mona slept almost all the time:



But every now and then she was awake:



The second day was busy with a lot of feeding. I guess that's how it will be for the next weeks.
In the evening we had our celebration dinner in the hospital: Filet Mignon:



Right now it's 2:26am and I'm feeding her with one hand and typing this post with the other hand on my phone.
Here's a last picture:

Maternity leave

I'm in the third week of my maternity leave. And more then ready for our little girl. It's only 8 days until the due date, but we really hope she decides to come early.

On my first day home I met with my friend Allison. She's doing professional photos of people. We took a lot of photos and they worked out great. You can see all of them on our website.


I was also busy preparing the nursery, washing all the baby cloth, etc. I think the wall stickers are really cute.



I also met with friends and yesterday I went back to the office, to be in the staff photos, they took for the holiday card. It was nice to see everybody.

And the rest of the time I'm relaxing :-)

Halloween

A little bit late, but finally here is my Halloween entry.
Like I told you in the last blog entry Gerald went to Italy the week before Halloween, so I had a lot of time to carve some pumpkins. Here are the results:



The Friday was my last day at work before my maternity leave and also a Halloween party in our office. I dressed up as a white cat which had a fish bowl in her hands:



Margaret, our office manager, had decorate the kitchen with spider webs, pumpkins and homemade spider, mumie and ghost cupcakes.



Saturday evening I went to a Halloween party at Rob's and Emily's place. The theme of the party was black and white ghouls. My cat wasn't very ghoulish but at least white. I had to leave the party at 10pm to pick up gerald from the airport. People looked a little bit strange at me, I guess because of the costume ?!?



Sunday was really Halloween and we prepared during the day for all the trick and treaters.
We didn't have as many kids coming over this year as last year, probably because of the World Series.

Pumpkin carving ideas?

It's already October, which means at the end of the month is Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year. And I love to carve pumpkins. This year the last 9 days before Halloween Gerald will be in Italy, which means I have a lot of time for my pumpkins. I think I will carve 3 different ones. But I need some inspiration. Any ideas? Here are some pictures of the pumpkins I made in the last years.

Birthday weekend

I started the weekend early by taking a day off. But I still had to get up early because I picked up Gerald from the airport.
When we got home we unpacked his luggage and then we had a nap. Gerald was so jetlagged and I'm tired all the time. The rest of the day was very slow but so nice just spending some time together.
Saturday we had to get up early again because we had a newborn care class in the morning and a infant CPR class in the afternoon.
We learned how to put on a diaper and how to swaddle a baby. I have to say Gerald did a pretty good job, this is his swaddle doll.


Sunday was my 30th birthday, I had decided that I don't want a big party because I'm just not in the mood for it.
But I was very happy that Gerald organized a very nice breakfast for me with music, flowers, decoration and a cake with 5 candles. He only lit 4 candles so it showed a 30 in the binary system.
After 3 hours of video conferencing with our families and lunch at CPK we went to Ikea. Gerald was very patient while I checked out all of the show rooms to get ideas for the baby's room, the au pair bedroom and our new bedroom.
The next day was Gerald's birthday. I decorated his birthday table with gummy bears and I stole his candle idea, but I had to lit only 1 of 6 candles.

At 12 we had our second 4D ultrasound and this time we focused on facial expressions. We have a few pictures showing her smiling

The "stuff" on the right is a knee, a foot, and a hand. Here is a video of all the 137 pictures we got. We also got a 25 minutes video of the whole ultrasound session.
After that we had lunch at Olive Garden and went back home, just in time for me to meet with a friend who had a baby 2.5 weeks ago. I held him for a while, what a cute little boy. And he was so soft. Babies are such a miracle.
Only 7 weeks 2 days (+/- 2 weeks) to go.

Weekend without hubby

The weekend started early again with a baby shower for me at the office. It wasn't a traditional baby shower, it was more of a get together, have some drinks and food and presents for me :-)
I got a tiara to wear saying "Mother to be".



And here are all the presents


Friday afternoon Gerald came back from his trip to Pittsburg. We spend the evening preparing his next trip to Japan which started Saturday morning.
After French Toast breakfast at the airport and saying good-bye again I met with a friend in San Mateo. We walked through downtown San Mateo did some shopping and lunch together and walked back to her place. It was a very hot day and I was so tired that I had to take a nap in her guest room. After that I drove back to Berkeley for a birthday/housewarming party. It was a fun party half of the people were coworkers of Gerald. I even stayed for another hour after everybody else had left and talked with the hosts about pregnancy and babies, because they are also expecting.
Sunday morning I met with Emily. We went to the Aquarium by the bay. It's a little aquarium but still fun.

After that we went downtown and did some shopping: baby clothes, maternity clothes, thank you cards, ...
Back at home I tried to fix Gerald's bike which had a flat, but I wasn't able to unscrew the screws and get the wheel out, I'm to weak. That's too bad it would have been a nice birthday surprise. He's in Tokyo until Friday. That's way too long, I miss him already.