Lately life feels like it has been moving at warp speed but also in slow motion. How is that possible? 

We’ve been so busy this summer and I’ve loved every moment of it, but there are also so many things in the near future that I’m looking forward to and want time to pass quickly for. 

My to-do list is never even remotely close to being finished and everything takes three times as long as I’d like it to, yet I just keep adding things to the list. 

The biggest item on it right now: a new fixer-upper project. 

In April, Johnny and I closed on a 100-year-old house in the Catskill Mountains. Buying a vacation property in the Catskills has been a goal of mine for years, and now it’s finally a reality.

Getting to this point was no small feat. We’ve been searching and saving for years. We made offers on four or five different places, but we just kept getting beat by people going way over the asking price, paying cash, waving the inspection and so on in this crazy market.

Finally, about a year ago, we went under contract on a house we loved. This was it! we thought. We dreamed of how we’d decorate and started making plans to rent it out during ski season. 

We completed the necessary inspections, finished the mountains of mortgage paperwork and were a few weeks out from closing. And then, with no warning, the seller backed out of the deal. It was heartbreaking. We never even found out the reason.

By this spring, we were ready to throw in the towel on our search and revisit it again in a couple years, but I convinced Johnny to try one more time, one more house. Somehow, this time everything came together. Now we’re the very proud owners of our own little place in the mountains. 

Projects! 

The house we bought is a bit of a diamond in the rough. That’s the nice way of saying it needs some work. And of course, we’re doing it all on a budget.

The house has a great layout for vacation renters, but the prior owners weren’t so great about upkeep. The kitchen and bathrooms are from the 70s, maybe earlier, and the house is outfitted top to bottom in varying shades of beige, brown and green.

Consider these the ‘before’ shots:

Living room

Dining room

Kitchen, complete with missing cabinet doors and light switch signs labeled ‘flip twice for ON’

Drafty old windows

Let’s head upstairs!

The previous owners’ kids room, and a fraction of the 1,269 DVDs that came with the house

The dogs have claimed this as their room

This room gets great natural light. I think it will be “our” bedroom when we stay here

The mattress room

Upstairs bath

There are about a hundred projects we’d like to do, but right now our main goal is getting the major, can’t-live-without-it things done so it’s rentable in time for this year’s busy season.

A few of those things are:

Clutter cleanup. When we got the keys to the house, it wasn’t quite a Hoarders situation, but it was close. It was filled with decades worth of the previous owners’ possessions–some hidden gems, but mostly a lot of junk. There were stacks of ratty linens, mattresses shoved into closets, furniture with legs falling off. Our first step was to sort through it all and either salvage, donate or trash it. 

Window replacement. The area gets below-freezing temperatures for weeks at a time, and when I first toured the place there was an icy draft coming in around every one of the wooden, single-pane windows. Replacing them is a necessity to make it comfortable during the depths of the busy ski season. This is where the bulk of our repair budget is going. 

Paint. I know beige is back in home decor, but not like this. A fresh coat of paint on the walls and some of the floors will give the space new life. 

Bathroom facelift. I can live with dated fixtures if they’re still functional, but the upstairs bathroom is particularly depressing in terms of just feeling “icky”. While we don’t have the budget for a total remodel, we’re doing a few cosmetic updates to make it more cheerful.

And that’s the bulk of it. Someday down the road I would love to gut renovate the kitchen and bathrooms, and the deck outside could use some TLC before next summer. 

My dream project is to finish the [currently very creepy] basement and turn it into an awesome hangout space. We’ll get there one day, hopefully.

For now we’re doing what we can, when we can, as fast as we can, which is basically a theme for the rest of my life right now, as well. 

I can’t wait to share some progress pics soon!

The post Buying Our First Investment Property appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Nothing like ending Zara’s first year with a bang. One week before her birthday, we tested positive for Covid. 

We spent the next ten days isolating at home in sub-freezing temperatures with a baby who was sick and fussy but still wanted to get her hands on everything. After that experience, I’m confident we can make it through whatever else 2022 throws at us.

Zara’s first year also ended with a bang in a more literal way. An hour after getting our positive Covid results, in a maneuver that could put Harry and Marv’s Home Alone stunts to shame, I did a full-body wipeout on our icy front steps. 

For a few seconds I just laid there on the snowy ground, unable to move. I was sure I’d broken my tailbone, which was so rich that I couldn’t stop laughing even though I could hardly breathe.

My tailbone, thankfully, wasn’t actually broken, which is proof there is a God and he is merciful. Getting Covid and breaking a major bone in the same day would be some fresh kind of hell. 

Anyway. Before we were struck down with the plague, I started putting together this list of…lessons? Thoughts? Musings on the year that’s behind us.

Now that I’m reading it back it seems like I’m mostly just complaining, but I feel like that’s fair. Making it through the first year of parenthood is hard enough on its own, let alone in a pandemic that just won’t quit.

So complaint-filled as they may be, here are my thoughts. 

5 a.m. is prime party time!

The lack of sleep is the hardest part

I knew becoming a parent would be challenging, but I had no idea how badly I’d struggle with the lack of sleep. I’ve always been someone who needs a solid eight hours to function well, and having that cut in half and broken up into fragments and then trying to get through the day was, to put it plainly, awful. 

Even now that Zara is sleeping better most nights, I still have a ton of anxiety around how much sleep I’m (not) getting. So many nights I just lie there in the dark, waiting to hear her stir.

I know one day we’ll all be sleeping much more soundly and this will be a distant, groggy memory, but right now it’s a phase I wouldn’t mind leaving behind. 

Nothing lasts

In the same breath as lamenting my sleep woes, I remind myself that this too shall pass, just like every other rough patch we’ve had so far. 

There was a stretch around the four-month mark (hi, sleep regression) where I was certain Zara would never sleep more than an hour at a time again and a point at eight months where I was so sick with some nasty respiratory bug that I’d wake up in the morning unsure how I was going to make it through the day. 

Those were tough times, but they only lasted a week or two. I’m trying to get better at remembering this when we’re having a less-than-perfect day or week.

Newborns can’t get bad habits

There is too much stupid information out there on the internet, and I read all of it. 

When Zara was still tiny, she wanted to breastfeed all the time. She would’ve nursed every hour if I let her, and many days that’s exactly what we did. 

But because of what I’d read online, mostly from “experts” on Instagram, I was constantly worried I was creating the bad habit of my baby needing to be nursed to be soothed or fall asleep. Ugh, I cringe just thinking back on it because of how wrong it feels. 

I now know that nursing your baby a lot is A) not a bad thing and B) not some unbreakable habit you’re doomed to live with forever if you decide you’d like to stop doing it. Color me enlightened, and damn those Instagram experts. 

We’re not planning on having another baby, but if we did, I feel like I’d be so much more relaxed about a lot of things during the newborn phase. 

Drink water. So much water. 

I’ve already talked about pregnancy dehydration in this post and being thirsty all the time in this post, so you’d think I would have this topic covered, but no, I’m not done talking about how much water I need to drink to not feel like complete garbage. 

I’m on the verge of becoming one of those wife-beater-wearing dudes with trunk-sized arms at the gym who carry around a gallon jug of water wherever they go. I understand your struggle, wife-beater dudes. The thirst is real. 

Fancy diaper pails are useless

We got the Dekor one that’s on all the ‘best baby gear’ lists, and wow. Hats off to the marketing team that convinced the world it’s a winner, because this thing is flimsier than a Times Square umbrella on a rainy day. 

It’s also SO COMPLICATED for no reason. It uses special garbage bags that have to be–no joke–sliced apart from one another with a blade that’s built into the side of the can, which is a genius and very safe feature for exhausted parents in the wee hours of the morning.

I’m filled with rage every time I have to use it. 

If you’re expecting, do yourself a favor and just get a nice, normal garbage can with a tight lid.

Secondhand is where it’s at

You go through clothes and other baby stuff at lightning speed in the first few months. It hurts to think of all the money we could have saved if we’d bought more of Zara’s gear secondhand. 

Some of the pricier items we purchased new, like her swing, only lasted a couple months before she was too big for them, while one of our most-used items, the glider in her nursery, was rescued from the curb in front of a neighbor’s house and has worked out beautifully. 

Facebook Marketplace is a treasure trove of baby items in great condition, and Once Upon A Child has become our go-to for clothing basics like onesies and stuff that we’ll only use for one season, like winter coats. 

I’m proud of what this body has accomplished

My body will never be the same

I had heard a lot of new moms say “my body doesn’t feel like mine” after giving birth, and it’s so accurate, but it’s hard to understand until you go through it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just…different. 

Clothes are different. I haven’t worn 90% of my pre-baby clothes and it’s not just because we’re all cooped up at home. They don’t fit right.

Though I was narcissistically delighted to see my weight return to nearly where it was before having Zara (thanks, breastfeeding), trying to put on my old jeans was a riot. I can’t get them up past my thighs. 

Things are squishy where they were once firm. Things are loose where they were once, ahem, not loose. Climbing the stairs too quickly makes me winded, but I can easily hoist a 25-pound baby over my head and carry her long distances. I can no longer contort my upper body in the proper way to scratch an itch on my own back. 

It’s trippy to feel like the skin you’re living in belongs to someone else, especially in those very vulnerable early days, but I’ve come to love this 2.0 version of my body. More than anything else, I’m in awe of what it has accomplished.

Don’t do anything you can do while the baby is awake while the baby is asleep

I like this one so much better than ‘sleep when the baby sleeps,’ which is ridiculous advice when you haven’t showered in three days, the dogs need a walk and the volume of dirty laundry is no longer even close to being able to fit in the hamper. 

Yes, napping while the baby naps is awesome and has gotten me through many a rough day, but sometimes what you really need is an episode of Real Housewives or a mindless Instagram scroll or, if you’re really feeling like an overachiever, a workout. When the baby’s sleeping, it’s mom time–time for all those things you simply can’t do when you’re monitoring a tiny human (also, I hate the phrase tiny human). 

Each dog counts for ½ a baby

So for the nosy Nellies asking why we’re not having another, it’s because this math means we already have two. 

I have so many more thoughts after one year of parenthood–how we were never meant to do it without a village, how the mental load disparity between men and women gets exponentially bigger after a baby, how Pinterest-perfect moms make my blood boil–but a post covering all that would take me at least another year to write. 

For now, I’ll wrap it up with a few final thoughts. 

This past year with Zara has been the most challenging of my life, but also the most joyful. It’s been like reuniting with someone I’ve known my whole life and simultaneously meeting them for the first time. It’s been full of contradictions, surprises, and moments of pure awe. 

I’m not sad this first year is over. It was full and complete and I’ll treasure it. Instead, I can’t wait for all the things we’ll experience together as a family in the years ahead. 

Happy birthday, my sweet girl!

The post One Year appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Beautiful.

Scary.

Challenging.

Joyful.

Frustrating.

Demanding.

Exhausting.

Awe-inspiring.

Also, thirsty. I have never been so parched in my entire life, and finding the time to fill and drink a glass of water is a struggle. A glass of water with ice feels like a luxury, and no, I’m not being dramatic.

Before I had a baby, I found it hard to understand (or frankly, even believe) when moms would talk about how time-consuming being a parent is, but now I get it. Oh, does my thirsty self get it.

Johnny has been going into the office one day—ONE—each week, and on those days I have Zara either in my arms or within arm’s reach for 12 hours straight.

“Surely you’re not just holding the baby all day!” pre-child me would exclaim.

Listen. You’d be surprised.

If she’s having a fussy day, putting her down provokes a fit of screaming, so I either endure what sounds like a wild banshee shrieking or stick to tasks that can be completed with one hand. A lot of the time this means I get done, well, not much.

I don’t mean to complain. The good days are something else entirely.

On those days we dance (I dance, she wiggles) to our favorite songs—Lady Gaga and Britney are on repeat—and go on walks exploring the neighborhood.

And nothing compares to walking into her nursery first thing in the morning or after a nap and seeing her face break into one of her gummy little smiles. Ugh. They’re simply the best, and thinking about how much this tiny, growing human needs me makes my stomach do somersaults and my heart feel like it’s going to burst.

Motherhood involves a constant weighing of risk versus reward.

Let the baby sleep on your chest and remain trapped on the couch underneath her with no snack, drink, or remote control in sight, or get up and risk waking her from the nap she so desperately needs?

Sleep when the baby sleeps and get a little slice of the shut-eye you so desperately need, or power through and get a shower?

It’s never-ending mental gymnastics.

More than anything, I’ve been blindsided by how much everything else in my life has taken a backseat.

Things that used to seem important—that are important!—simply don’t get done, and I’m not talking about the obvious things like leisurely weekends of sleeping in and brunching. I’m talking basic life maintenance.

I read text messages hours or sometimes days after they arrive. I’ve stopped returning phone calls entirely. Dusting, mopping and deep cleaning of any kind are pretty much nonexistent, and personal hygiene is questionable at best.

I know in the grand scheme of things this phase is just a tiny sliver of our lives and the piles of laundry can wait. I know this. But there’s still a piece of me that can’t help but feel like I’m dropping the ball left, right and center.

I’ll end on a high note with one of the best things about motherhood, one that I was totally unprepared for: how much the people in my life have rallied around me to provide support.

From close friends to old acquaintances, unexpected gifts to words of advice and encouragement, I’ve had no shortage of cheerleaders telling me “this is hard, but you’ve got this.”

It is hard, and whether I’ve in fact got it remains to be seen, but the cheerleaders make me feel like I’m at least giving it my best shot. Getting to spend every day with this chunky little peanut makes it all worth it.

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The post Motherhood appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Case in point: The days are long but the years are short.

Though some of our days certainly seem endless, the last two months have passed in the blink of an eye. Zara Jeanette Dzenitis graced us with her presence on January 15, four days shy of her due date, and our lives will never be the same.

It’s hard to know where to begin writing about the life-altering addition that is a new baby. Should I share the story of her birth? Do people want to read that?

Before I was pregnant, bloggers’ birth stories never interested me. Other people seem to love them, though, and ours was kind of a doozy, so I guess that’s where I’ll start.

It was a Wednesday. With my due date approaching, I had become hyper-vigilant about every little pain and twinge. Was that stomachache the residual effect of last night’s tacos, or the start of labor?

That day, I woke up early in the morning with cramps that I quickly began to suspect were actually contractions. They were coming in waves, but weren’t regular or particularly painful just yet.

“Today might be the day!” I told Johnny excitedly when he woke up.

Ready to pop!

Not sure how quickly things might progress, Johnny called in to work and began (finally!) packing a bag for the hospital. I threw a few last-minute things in my hospital bag and checked in with the dog sitter we’d lined up. Then Johnny started cleaning the house like a madman.

“We want to have a clean house to come home to!” he explained.

It wasn’t the first thing that was on my mind, but when my husband decides to clean the house of his own volition, I don’t ask questions.

Then, we waited. And waited. My contractions weren’t getting longer or closer together. They were painful, but not so bad that I couldn’t still take the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood.

By that evening, things hadn’t progressed any further. We were both getting antsy and a little anxious. I called my doctor’s after-hours line and they said if I was unsure, to go ahead and go to the hospital.

Roger that, I thought. This was it!

We hopped in the car and began the half hour drive to the hospital. About halfway there I decided I was thirsty, so we stopped at a gas station to get something to drink. In retrospect, this is pretty funny to me. If you’ve given birth before, you can probably see where this is going.

We arrived at the hospital. I was examined by a nurse, who promptly announced I was barely dilated. She turned us around and sent us right back home.

“Do you want my honest advice?” the nurse asked.

I nodded. Obvi.

“Don’t come back until you’re screaming in pain.”

Noted.

Disappointed but relieved that nothing was wrong, we headed home and went to bed.

The next day started out similar to the one before, with palpable but bearable contractions. Here we go again, I thought.

I had read that it was possible to experience contractions for days before you actually begin active labor, so I was mentally preparing for that possibility. At the same time, I was ready to get things moving, so I started trying every old wives’ tale I’d heard of to kickstart labor.

I curb walked. I climbed up and down the stairs. I mopped the floor. Slowly but surely, my contractions got stronger as the day went on.

Finally, around 4 p.m., I stood up from bouncing on my exercise ball and it happened: I heard a pop and felt a gush (if you’re squeamish about bodily details, head elsewhere now). My water broke!

Contrary to what the movies would have you believe, most women don’t experience their water breaking spontaneously. Instead, it’s broken by a doctor when they’re in labor. The great thing about it breaking at home, though, is that it’s a guaranteed ticket to be admitted to the hospital. Score! It also kicks your contractions into high gear, so things got intense really quickly.

Remember the nurse’s recommendation for when to come back? Within about half an hour I was at that point, so we scrambled back into the car and made the drive to the hospital for the second time in 24 hours.

This time, the thought of stopping at a gas station was laughable—I was laying down in the back seat screaming into a pillow and pleading with Johnny to run red lights so we could get there faster.

Once we got to the hospital, things moved fast. With my water visibly broken (i.e. a puddle forming at my feet) I was admitted right away. An older nurse introduced herself and began coaching me through my contractions. She had clearly done this a time or two, and she was amazing.

“Focus on your breath,” she told me in a soothing mama-bear voice. “Count slowly from one to ten.”

She showed Johnny how to take the weight off my hips and apply counterpressure to my lower back. He encouraged me and reminded me to breathe.

My goal was to go unmedicated for as long as I could, delivering the baby without pain medication if possible, but I was definitely open to the option of drugs if the pain got to be too much. Spoiler alert: it did.

After about three hours of excruciating contractions, the nurse checked my progress. Based on the pain level and how long we’d been at it, I was sure we had to be close to meeting our girl.

I was wrong. The nurse told me I was only three centimeters dilated. I was crushed. Pushing doesn’t happen until ten centimeters. There was no way I could keep this up for another three hours, let alone into the next morning.

“Okay,” I said to the nurse. “Let’s talk about drugs.”

Rather than going straight for an epidural, which would confine me to the bed, we first opted to try an IV medication that would dull the pain of contractions but would be tapered off before I delivered.

It dulled the pain alright, but it also made me feel totally high. I remember laughing as I held Johnny’s hand, finding the feeling of his fingers in mine hilarious.

It felt good to have some relief from the pain, but I also felt like I was in outer space. That was not how I wanted to experience the birth of our daughter. I asked for the IV to be turned off.

As the pain started to ratchet up again, I made the call.

“I want the epidural.”

“Oh sweetheart,” the nurse said soothingly. “You’ve made a wonderful choice.”

I think she was as relieved as I was as the anesthesiologist administered the drugs.

Epidural = heaven

It was almost midnight at this point, and the next six hours passed in a blissful haze. I dozed in and out of sleep while CNN played on the hospital room TV. The nurse came in every hour or two to check my progress.

Though I had progressed to about seven centimeters overnight, by the early morning things had slowed to a crawl. The nurses changed shifts. While the night nurse had been gentle and low-key, the morning crew was all business. They started tossing around what I considered a dirty word in the context of my birth plan: Pitocin.

Pitocin is a drug that speeds up labor. Great! Except it also comes with an unpleasant side effect: it makes contractions a lot more intense. For several women I know, receiving Pitocin ended in a C-section.

There’s nothing wrong with having a C-section. I know many women voluntarily choose to have one, and I of course wanted to do whatever was best for the baby.

However, I wanted to be able to move around right after delivery without the additional recovery a C-section requires. I wanted to be able to walk my dogs and go up and down the stairs in our house. And I really wanted to experience a vaginal delivery. It was one of the few things in my pregnancy I had strong wishes about, so a recommendation for Pitocin was not what I wanted to hear.

I asked if we could wait a little longer, so that’s what we did. After another couple hours, though, my progress was still stalled. The longer you go after your water breaks without delivering, the more danger there is for infection, so Pitocin it was.

By around 10 a.m. the Pitocin had done its job and I was ten centimeters dilated. It was time to push!

As the nurses helped me get into position, they coached me to push when I felt a contraction. Except there was one problem: I couldn’t feel a thing because of the epidural.

I guess you’re supposed to be able to tell when a contraction is happening and feel the urge to push even with an epidural, but that wasn’t the case for me. I was totally numb below the waist, and my attempts at “pushing” were drawing concerned looks from the nurses. It wasn’t getting us anywhere. They opted to turn the epidural off.

Another important detail is that Zara was in what’s known as occiput posterior position, AKA “sunny side up.” This means that instead of facing my spine like most babies are when they’re born, she was facing my stomach with her head positioned against my tailbone. This explained why my contractions were so painful early on—it’s called back labor, and it feels like an axe is splitting you down your spine.

Now that I was trying to push, this position meant that Zara’s head was essentially running into part of my body instead of pointing where it needed to for her to make her way out. This was adding to the difficulty I was having.

The pain became more intense with each passing contraction as the epidural wore off. Sometimes I would push and the nurses would look excited—she’d moved! Other times they would glance at each other without saying a word—she hadn’t budged.

After three hours of pushing, multiple position changes and a significant amount of pain, I was completely gassed. Zara was stuck, and her sunny side up position was making it nearly impossible to progress those last few inches. On top of that, her blood pressure was dipping with each contraction.

A doctor I’d never met before entered the room. As the nurses filled the doctor in on what was happening, I heard her say the words I’d been dreading: C-section. She tossed it out so casually, like she was recommending I take some Tylenol.

Crying and trying to catch my breath, I looked helplessly at Johnny. He calmly explained to the doctor we wanted to avoid a C-section and asked her to lay out all of our options. I remember hearing scary words like vacuum and forceps and hemorrhage. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

At this point I had been in labor for around 24 hours. I hadn’t come this far to give up on the birth experience I’d envisioned. At the same time, I wanted what was best for the baby and the pain was becoming unbearable. Scratch that, it had been unbearable for a while.

“Just get her out!” I remember crying.

Johnny, bless that man, kept his cool.

“A C-section isn’t what you wanted,” he reminded me gently. “It’s a major surgery.”

The nurses—suddenly there were a ton of them in the room—plead my case to the doctor.

“She’s so close,” they told her. “We think she can get there.”

Between Johnny and the nurses, they managed to convince the doctor to let me keep pushing.

“You can do this,” they told me.

A new doctor rushed into the room, one who had experience turning babies. As I pushed, she used her hand to rotate Zara’s body to the proper position one tiny centimeter at a time.

The nurses surrounded the table as each contraction approached. Johnny supported my back while a nurse held each of my legs. Everyone counted to ten as I pushed. Johnny cheered me on in my ear.

“HARDER!” the head nurse yelled from the foot of the bed. “AGAIN!”

If the first part of labor was nothing like what pop culture would have you believe, this part felt straight out of a movie. I pushed like my life depended on it. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my head from the pressure. I remember thinking, I may die from this and being strangely okay with it.

Then, all at once, people started moving all around the room. Nurses pulled out instruments and laid out plastic sheets and barked instructions at each other.

“What’s going on?” I asked, panicked.

“She’s about to be here!” Johnny told me.

I couldn’t believe it. It was happening after all.

I don’t know how many more pushes it took from there—three or four, maybe—but I’ve never put all of myself into anything so completely in my life.

In an instant she was out and a nurse was handing me her squirmy little body. I cried and gasped and held her to my chest. As I looked in awe at her little features, it was as if I had always known them. Of course that’s what you look like, I thought.

We took turns holding her and I fed her for the first time. She looked up at us with her big eyes, blue like Johnny’s. I was smitten. Another cliché that turned out to be accurate: you forget about the pain almost instantly.

That night in the hospital passed in a blur of nurse visits, blood pressure readings, uncomfortable trips to the bathroom and bad food. Because of Covid we weren’t allowed to set foot outside the room, not even to visit the vending machine, so we both began to feel claustrophobic. We also wanted to get back to our other children, Bo and Tiki. I thought I’d be afraid to leave the hospital with our new baby, but by Saturday afternoon we were more than ready to go home.

Exhausted but oh so happy

We were discharged early Saturday evening. Johnny carefully checked the car seat while an attendant wheeled me out. I rode next to her in the backseat on the way home and at long last we pulled into our driveway. Nothing has ever felt as good as walking in the door of our own house, greeted by our two excited pups, to start our lives as a family of five. Home sweet home.

So that’s the story of how Zara joined our family. I’m eager to share more about life with a newborn, which is a challenging, fun, scary, frustrating and joy-filled rollercoaster, but that will have to wait for another day.

For now I’ll leave you with a current picture of our little sunshine, who’s two months old and has already grown so much! I’m off to change my one-thousandth diaper, fill my camera roll with more chunky cheeks and bask in all the snuggles while I can.

The post Hello, Baby! appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

We moved! In mid-December we closed on our new house in Beacon, New York.

While Johnny and I are both thrilled about our new town and a house with more space, moving at eight months pregnant was rough. I need to write an entire post about it at some point, because I definitely Googled things like ‘am I insane for moving a month before giving birth?’ beforehand. That said, I’m really glad we went ahead and did it rather than waiting, because we’ve had a few weeks to at least get settled before our lives are turned completely sideways by a baby.

Everyone has been telling me to get as much rest as possible while I can (genius advice, thanks), but between the challenges of sleeping in the third trimester and all of the things I want to accomplish before she arrives, that’s proving to be difficult.

Honestly, I don’t feel much like resting when I have downtime. Aside from straight up laying down with two pillows between my legs, most positions are uncomfortable right now and most days I’d rather cross something off the to-do list than try to force myself to nap. This is funny, because I’m typically a champion napper, but getting things done in preparation for the baby has done more to put my mind at ease than a few extra minutes of sleep will at this point.

The nesting instinct is real

By the way, did you know babies don’t sleep much and I’ll be tired when she gets here? Thank goodness for all of the reminders from everyone I’ve ever met, otherwise I might not have known. The pandemic may have shut down awkward social interactions like unwanted belly touching, but unsolicited advice has been in no short supply.

Physically, I finally understand what expecting women mean when they say “I’m ready to not be pregnant anymore.” It’s a polite way of saying it feels like you’re carrying a bowling ball between your legs, with all of the heaving and stretching and grunting that goes with it. Throw in a heavy dose of acid reflux and peeing every ten minutes and you’ve pretty much got the picture of where I’m at.

Speaking of being ready to no longer be pregnant: booze. I haven’t had much of a craving for alcohol during this pregnancy, but within the last week a margarita alongside some salty tortilla chips and chunky guac suddenly sounds like the best thing on the planet. So, that can go ahead and get here sooner than later.

Mentally, I’m in good shape. While of course I’m anxious about labor and nervous about life with a new baby, the excitement of her impending arrival far outweighs any negative emotions I’m feeling at this point, and I’m so grateful for that.

Friday will be my last day of work before I take a few months off for maternity leave, and it can’t come soon enough. On my to-do list between now and when baby arrives:

• Finish preparing her room. It will be in our tiny third bedroom, which is the perfect size and layout for a nursery. It probably won’t be fully “done” when she gets here because I still need to figure out how I’m going to tackle storage in the small space (wall shelves? Some kind of cubbies? Just keep all her stuff in our room?), but at least the crib is put together. I still need to get the glider and some decorative stuff set up.
• Stock up a few freezer meals. This is one piece of advice I’ve received that’s actually useful. Hello, lasagna, casseroles and crockpot meals!
• This house was in desperate need of a deep cleaning when we moved in, and some rooms we’ve gotten to, others we haven’t. I know that will be the farthest thing from our mind once she gets here, so I’d like to finish most of it in the next couple weeks.

There are a million other smaller things I can think of, but those are the big ones. I’d say we’re in pretty good shape. Now we’re just waiting on you, sweet girl!

The post The Final Countdown appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Things have kicked into a higher gear lately, both with my pregnancy and with life.

I’ve been spoiled with an easy pregnancy so far, but lately I’ve had a few days where things are pretty uncomfortable. My lower back hurts, I’m short of breath, and I have acid reflux. I came down with a gnarly cold this past week and had a few miserable days spent sneezing, blowing my nose, battling a throbbing head and praying it wasn’t Covid. It wasn’t, thank goodness.

While I was sick I also went about five days without doing any yoga or stretching, which I think was a big contributor to the back pain. Daily squats, lunges, pelvic tilts and lots of extended child’s pose have been a life saver, so I’m thankful to be feeling good enough to get back into it again.

Things are finally coming together with our move and we should find out our closing date this week. I haven’t shared much about it because real estate in New York proceeds at a glacial pace and things have been up in the air for months, but if you didn’t already know, we’re moving!

Johnny and I are headed to the Hudson Valley, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows me on Instagram. It’s a place we love and have spent a disproportionate amount of time since we’ve lived in New York, and especially since the start of the pandemic. We’ll be closer to hiking and skiing, able to have more space, and most importantly be within a much more manageable distance of Johnny’s new job.

For the past three months he’s been using a combination of driving, public transit, and private car service to get to and from work. This has meant anywhere from an hour to two hours in transit each way, on top of the madness of election and coronavirus coverage. I’m happy he’ll finally be getting some relief.

Showering Baby D with love via Zoom

Things I’m looking forward to after the baby arrives:

• Snuggling up with her on the couch on snow days
• Introducing her to the dogs
• Taking her hiking
• Taking her for walks to explore our new town’s cute main street
• Seeing Johnny become a dad
• Seeing our parents become grandparents
• Seeing our parents, period
• Sharing the experience with friends who have also recently become new parents
• Being able to eat a full meal without feeling like I’m literally going to burst
• Sharing a bottle of wine with my husband
• Eating a bagel piled high with lox and cream cheese
• Sleeping on my back
• Wearing high waisted jeans
• Skiing

I feel like so much of this year has been spent waiting. Waiting for the next pregnancy milestone. Waiting for the pieces to come together with our move. Waiting for the pandemic to end (LOL). Waiting to see how the election goes.

With most days looking identical from one to the next for months on end, it’s been hard not to become obsessed with wanting things to change. But now that the year is drawing to a close and it feels like we’re finally turning a corner in a lot of areas, I realize there are also a lot of memories from this weird and wacky time that I want to hold onto:

• The few weeks before we told anyone I was pregnant, sharing the biggest secret ever with only my husband
• How amazing it was when the morning sickness subsided and food finally tasted good again
• Waking up to baby kicks in the middle of the night and quietly sneaking out of bed to have a piece of toast in the dark
• Doing the New York Times spelling bee puzzle on the couch with a cup of coffee
• Getting up before the sun to drive upstate and hike
• The excitement of finding Clorox wipes when they’ve been out of stock everywhere for weeks
• The simple joy of getting together with friends after not seeing anyone for months
• Emailing each other real estate listings, daydreaming about a house with a front porch and a bedroom big enough for a king-size bed
• All of the support, excitement, and love we’ve received about our new addition, even from afar

While I can’t say that I’ll be sad to see 2020 go, I can say with confidence that it’s been the most life-changing year of my life. I know I’m with a lot of other people in feeling like everything is going to change for the better in the next year. I’m excited for what’s ahead.

The post Two Months To Go appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

I’m tired. Both the normal, fall-asleep-at-8-pm tired and physically achy in my body. It’s strange getting winded from such ordinary things, like hanging up laundry or walking up one flight of stairs.

Sleep has also been getting tricky. Most nights I spend tossing and turning back and forth from my left side to my right, trying to stay comfortable. Sometimes I wake up starving at 4 a.m. and can’t go back to sleep after eating something, so I just say screw it and start the day. At least I’m not having to get up to pee every hour like I was a couple months ago. And some nights, like last night, I get a solid eight hours, which I know I should treasure while I still can.

Eating has become a test of willpower. I’m always hungry, but one bite too many or too fast and I’ll be so full and feel sick. I guess that’s what happens when a tiny human is crowding all up on your stomach. I have to force myself to eat smaller meals and chew every bite intentionally, which is a challenge because most food, thankfully, tastes soooo good these days.

I’m nervous about when she’ll arrive. Modern medicine is so advanced that many babies born before 30 weeks survive and go on to be perfectly healthy, which is insane to me. I’m thankful knowing that if something happened and I had to deliver early, there would be a good chance of a positive outcome. And yet, that has somehow made me even more anxious about the possibility of pre-term labor. I pray she just sits tight in there for a good while longer.

I’m nervous about how my relationship with Johnny will change once she arrives. I know he’s going to be an amazing father, but I also know things are going to fundamentally change once we’re mom and dad and no longer just us.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m overjoyed that our family is growing and get giddy when I think about how things will be when it’s “the five of us.” But I’ll miss our lazy weekend mornings sleeping in, packing up the car and going away for the weekend on a moment’s notice, late walks up to our neighborhood bar for a nightcap on a random Wednesday, and all the other carefree things you can do before you have kids.

I’m equally excited, though, about all the new memories we’re going to make with her. I can’t wait to take her hiking, put her in the tiniest bikini and show her the beach next summer, see how she bonds with the dogs, and take her to all the places Johnny and I loved while growing up. I might be crazy, but I’m even looking forward to the tough, sleepless moments I know we’ll have when we’re up together in the middle of the night, just the two of us.

The further along I get, the less nervous I am about actual labor and delivery. I mean, no, that’s a lie, I’m still completely freaked out by it. But before, I was terrified. About how much it will hurt, not knowing what to expect, all the things that could go wrong–everything about it scared me.

Now that I can feel her so much more distinctly, I realize there’s only one way I’ll get to meet her and the excitement about that outweighs most of the fear. I’ve been so amazed at what my body has been able to do in these last six months, and that has made me more confident that I can do this. Knowing that millions upon millions of women have gone through this before me, most of them without the option of amazing drugs, gives me a lot of comfort.

I still have three months left to go in this pregnancy and I’m already thinking about how much I’m going to miss feeling her tumbling around in my stomach, even though by that point I’ll have her in my arms. The moment when I finally collapse on the couch after work is finished and the dishes from dinner are done and she starts up her nightly gymnastics has become my favorite part of the day.

Tiki has been LOVING cuddling up with the bump

Cravings? Food, please. All of it. Baked goods like blueberry muffins and pumpkin bread have been a particular Achilles heel for me. Although it still tastes good, I’ve had to nix pretty much everything spicy because it gives me such bad heartburn now.

Moods? They come and go. I’ve had a few “woe is me” days these last couple weeks, but it’s had more to do with the pandemic and being over it than feeling hormonal. I’m sad I’m not spending these last few childless months seeing the world or cramming in as much time as possible with friends and family, instead spending almost every day at home. Most of the time, though, being in crappy mood just means I’m ready for food or a nap, which I suppose is great experience to relate to the infant I’m about to have.

Exercise? I’m trying. I still take the dogs on two long walks a day, but it’s getting more challenging. I do some light yoga and stretching most days to help with the general aches and pains of pregnancy, and we’ve still been hiking pretty regularly, albeit at a much easier pace than a few months ago.

Nursery? Ha. I’ve been holding off on purchasing most of the big-ticket baby items like a crib and a stroller because our living situation is hopefully going to be changing before baby gets here (more on this soon!), so that’s one big thing hanging over my head to accomplish in the next couple months.

Third trimester, here we go!

The post Three Months To Go appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Once the initial shock of finding out I was pregnant subsided, one of my first thoughts was holy crap. 40 weeks is a long freaking time.

It’s more than three quarters of a year, which is a long time to do anything, not to mention how much can change in that amount of time. Pregnancy itself didn’t scare me; it was more that I was overwhelmed at the sheer number of days that were stretching out in front of me and everything that had to get done—and what I could no longer do—during that time.

Well, I’ve officially reached the halfway point of my pregnancy and I can confidently say that all my apprehensions about how long it would seem have totally gone out the window. The time is flying by.

Once we got past the point of being comfortable sharing the news publicly, it seems that with each passing week I wake up thinking, am I really 18 weeks already? Has it really been 19 weeks? And today, here we are at 21. I’m sure by week 35 when I can no longer touch my toes I’ll be a little more impatient, but right now I’m enjoying every moment of it.

Everyone always says the second trimester is the best of the three, and so far it checks out. I feel good most days—sometimes when I’m on a walk with the dogs, I’ll break into a little sprint to let them get some energy out and have a little jolt when I suddenly remember that, oh yeah, there’s a baby in there and slow our pace back down.

Fever Dreams and the Dangers of Dehydration

No, it’s not a song off a 2002 Taking Back Sunday album. It’s how I entered the second trimester. OMG, who knew not drinking enough water could cause so many problems?

First there were the headaches. I started waking up with one almost every morning, and although I’m not crazy about taking medicine if I don’t need to, I would end up having to pop two Tylenol just to get some work done.

Then one day the Tylenol didn’t kick in. It was a migraine, worse than any headache I’ve had in my life. Migraine sufferers, I now have a whole new level of sympathy for you, because they’re no joke.

By the evening, I was laying in bed in the dark, head swimming, tears running down my face as I debated whether it was completely silly to think about going to the hospital, while Johnny held a cold washcloth on my face. I forced water down throughout the night and all day the next day and haven’t stopped hydrating since. Thankfully, it seems to be keeping any more migraines at bay.

Then there are the fever dreams. I’m not sure if these are related to being dehydrated or just one of the many weird-things-my-body-is-doing during pregnancy, but they’re wild. A few nights a week I have dreams so vivid and intense that I wake up in the throes of some crazy emotion.

One night it’s panic because I’m in Europe trying to get home to America, but somehow keep missing flight after flight. One night it’s hysterics because Bo was shot in the head with a BB gun. One night it’s despair because a friend has committed some unthinkable betrayal against me. They’re insanely realistic and almost always negative. Even though nothing feels better than waking up from a dream like that, it’s definitely an unsettling way to start the day.

Other than that, I’m thankful to be having a smooth pregnancy so far.

Baby Shopping and Other Fun Stuff

We found out via blood test around week 13 that we’re having a girl! I’m over the moon about it, but for some reason I haven’t been that jazzed about shopping for baby stuff. It’s not that I don’t want to do it—I think it’s just less exciting to look at baby clothes online than it is to touch and hold and fill your cart with cute, tiny things at a physical store, which no one is doing much of these days.

All that changed on a recent road trip to meet up with my parents in Virginia. It was wonderful to see them, but one of my favorite parts of the trip was when we spotted some baby items in the window of an adorable local shop.

You guys, I haven’t seen baby clothes in person since I found out I was pregnant, and something about seeing them on display and knowing that I now have a reason to shop for these was just the sweetest feeling. It was thrilling to pick up a wintery outfit and have thoughts like, this will be perfect for her when it’s snowing out. Her–an actual new human who who we get to meet so soon. Crazy!

We picked out a couple outfits for baby girl and my mom and Mike gave me some gifts they had brought along, so my stockpile is officially started. Next on my list are signing us up for prenatal classes (which will likely be online) and finally starting a registry, which I’ve also been procrastinating.

21 weeks down, 19 more to go. It’s still unbelievable to me that by winter we’ll be a family of five, but I get more excited about it by the day.

The post The Halfway Point appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

A few days after we found out. I remember I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘everything is about to change!’

I normally save my use of exclamation points for when they’re really necessary, and I feel in this case one is warranted. I’m pregnant! Even though I’m already a third of the way into it, it still feels crazy to say the words out loud.

Getting Here

Getting to this point wasn’t easy. In fact, I was floored by how difficult it was, mostly emotionally, but logistically as well.

As a woman, you spend your entire adult life desperately trying not to get pregnant, so you expect that when the time comes and you finally want to, poof! It will happen within days. I literally thought this. I have journal entries from just a couple weeks after I went off the pill musing about whether I was already knocked up.

Even though I’d had lots of friends tell me that in reality, it can take a while, it’s surprisingly difficult to realize that oh, damn, that’s going to be the case for me. It’s mind-bending to try to conceive month after month—and the fact that it’s something you have to actively “try” at is still so bizarre to me—and find out month after month that you’ve failed. For me, a control freak about the direction of my life, the most difficult aspect was it being beyond my control.

For as long as I can remember, when I’ve wanted something, I’ve been able to put in the effort and make it happen. Saving up my chore money to buy a TV for my childhood bedroom. Sending out resume tape after resume tape until a news director called me back. Aggressively bringing up engagement rings and wedding venues for long enough that my now-husband finally popped the question (got him).

But with this, I was totally and utterly at the mercy of nature. I felt like my body, the one I had loved and relied on and sometimes taken for granted, had something wrong with it. It was unexpected and, at times, overwhelming.

Am I getting off track? This is not a sad post. It’s the happiest one I’ve ever written. I share this part because I never talked about trying to conceive on my blog or social media. It was just too personal at the time, but the trying and failing was a very real part of getting pregnant and if you’re in the same boat, you’re not alone. It’s also made me that much more thankful for this amazing gift and all the growing pains that come with it.

How I Found Out

After a few months of negative pregnancy tests, I stopped taking them. The feeling of seeing the single pink line ranges from a slight letdown to an all-out punch in the gut, plus those suckers are expensive. I had one test left in a box in the back of my underwear drawer (we have the smallest bathroom known to man and space in the medicine cabinet is at a premium), and that’s where it sat for the better part of a year.

One week, in the middle of May, I got up and walked from my desk to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I felt lightheaded. By the time I got to the sink, I was winded. It was the weirdest feeling, but in retrospect, I had a gut feeling about what was up.

I went straight to my bedroom drawer, fished around for the straggler test, and took it to the bathroom. Three minutes later I saw two insane pink lines, so bold that it made me feel silly about the months I’d spent squinting at tests looking for invisible second lines that weren’t there.

My favorite part of this story is that Johnny was working from home one room away during all this. He was in the middle of producing a show and I didn’t want to interrupt. The closest thing I can think to compare it to would be like barging into a really high-stakes meeting or walking up to a musician when they’re in the middle of a performance–not a great moment to share big news.

So I had to go back to my desk and pretend to work for another hour while he sat ten feet away finishing his show. It almost killed me. Did I say I’m not good at giving up control? I’m also not good at keeping secrets.

I have so much respect for you ladies who sit on the news for days while coming up with these elaborate, thoughtful schemes to share it with your partner in the perfect way. The news was out of my mouth within seconds of him finishing his work. We both sat there looking at each other like can this really be happening? It was awesome.

Baby’s first hike (but actually probably number four or five)

One Trimester Down, Two To Go

It’s crazy that the first trimester is already behind me, although you kind of get a fast-forward pass because you’re already several weeks along by the time you find out. This was one of many pregnancy-related things that I didn’t know, and I’m sure there will be about a zillion more.

Anyway, I didn’t have too long to feel first-time pregnancy nerves because within a week, the nausea knocked me on my ass. Oh my gosh, women are not joking about morning sickness. Not that I ever thought they were joking, but I admit I kind of wondered how bad could it really be? Um, bad, and mine wasn’t even an extreme case.

The best way I can describe it is like waking up with a horrendous hangover every single day, one that lasts all day long. A bagel with lots of cream cheese might take the edge off for an hour or two, or it might make you wish you’d never see another bagel again for the rest of your life. Every food choice was a roll of the dice. Sour candies and vitamin B6 were my saviors.

At week nine we heard the heartbeat for the first time and it was the most wild and magical thing in the world. By week ten the nausea had started to subside, praise be. Since then I’ve generally felt pretty good, albeit exhausted by 8 o’clock each night. Johnny has been a doll giving me (almost) no grief for my cravings, bouts of irritability and nights when we have to stop the movie 20 minutes in because I’m nodding off.

I don’t look all that pregnant yet with clothes on, but I definitely feel it. I’m starving all the time and wake up every few hours in the night to pee (surprise, every pregnancy cliché you’ve ever heard is true).

The next few weeks should bring some big changes, including, hopefully, feeling the baby kick for the first time and starting to look more like I’m pregnant and less like I just ate a truckload of tacos—although at any given moment this is probably also true.

For those who know us personally (and many who don’t!), thank you for all the kind messages. Sharing the news with family and friends was one of the best things I’ve ever experienced, and the love we’ve gotten from everyone since making it public has been beyond words. We love you guys and can’t wait for what’s next.

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The post The Best News Ever appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

At a–wait for it–RESTAURANT

It’s been a weird few months. Is that the understatement of the century or what?

The last time I published a post, we were all cracking jokes about what we’d do with our lives now that we couldn’t go walk around Target and Zoom happy hours were still a novelty rather than the norm.

As of last week, when Johnny and I ventured out to eat for the first time since New York went into lockdown, it had been 87 days since I had been to a restaurant. It’s superficial, but it’s also a really good marker between ‘then’ and ‘now.’

While I definitely missed the ease and comfort of lounging in a booth while a server attends to my every need, the world has moved on to bigger, more pressing problems. I haven’t had a lot to say about it because, well, I just don’t have a lot to say about it.

Take the Coronavirus. While doctors and nurses were pleading for PPE and bodies were being loaded onto trucks in the middle of New York City streets, I was lucky enough to be comfortably quarantined at home. I didn’t bake sourdough bread. I didn’t make any TikToks, although I did get a kick out of that flip-the-switch challenge that everyone was doing for a while.

Essentially, I just kept doing what I’d been doing—working from home, hanging out with my dogs (we got a second dog!) and not returning phone calls, but with a whole lot more hand washing mixed in. It’s a privilege to not be on the front lines, but it doesn’t make for very fascinating social commentary.

Then Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd and protests erupted all over the country. I was appalled, and the conversation happening on social media and in sound bites on the news made it clear that I had a lot to learn about the deeper issues at play.

I downloaded books. I read essays by Black thought leaders and activists. I researched Black-owned businesses, signed petitions, reposted things I found helpful and read up on other ways to support the movement. I’m learning more every day. More on this in a future post, because it has been massively eye-opening. But again, it’s not a conversation that I, a middle-class white woman from the suburbs, feel like I have a ton of new insight to add to.

So I’ve been listening. I’ve been taking a step back from frivolous posts about what I’m making for dinner (spoiler alert: probably something in the microwave). I haven’t been doing much of anything creative at all, unless you count the jigsaw puzzle that absorbed pizza and wine spills on my coffee table for three weeks before I finally finished it. I’ve been trying to stay away from all the carbs, but the carbs are winning.

I’m usually a pretty motivated person, always looking for my next project or something new to try. But lately that’s been the farthest thing from my mind. I decided to Google whether this was normal, and it took me down a rabbit hole of learning about how chaotic times take up a large amount of our mental capacity, leaving little for other things like creative pursuits.

Yes—that’s it exactly. My mental energy has just felt zapped.

So I’ve been leaning into it, as they say. I’ve been resisting the urge to always be doing something or saying something or posting something, and I’m letting go of the guilt that comes with not doing much. Sometimes it feels good to not be striving.

I think it was someone on a podcast that said, how would you treat your best friend right now? You probably wouldn’t beat them up for not feeling *inspired* or not making some profound statement on the state of the world or for not doing the most during a time when it feels like there are a thousand things we should all be doing to improve this dumpster fire of a situation we’re living in.

You’d tell them to take it easy, to take care of themselves. If that’s how you’d treat your best friend—and presumably, most of us would—that’s how you should also treat yourself. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

As for what I’ve actually been doing all day? For starters, I’ve been working a ton. Thankfully, I had a few clients who decided to use the Covid-related downtime to buckle down on big internal projects, which has kept my plate full with content writing projects.

The business my mom and I run together, a fitness website for seniors, is also doing well. We’ve seen a surge in traffic as people look online for alternatives to going to the gym.

I’ve been bonding with our new pup Tiki, who we adopted in April. She likes Johnny and me well enough, but she worships Bo. Seeing her tail nearly wag off her body when he gets up every morning is enough to renew my faith in humanity.

Bo with the president of his fan club

I’ve been saving money. Turns out all you need to do to hit your budget goals every month is stay at home and not go anywhere except to the grocery store and back. Add that to my list of budgeting hacks.

I’ve been reading, although I must admit getting through any one book has been a challenge.

I’ve caught up with friends I haven’t talked to in a while and gotten wine drunk on more than a few Zoom hangouts.

I’ve been sitting in a lawn chair in our backyard, soaking in the sunshine that’s finally made its way to New York. These past few months, it really has been all about the little things.

How are you holding up, and what are you doing with your time these days? Leave me a comment and let me know.

The post Not Striving appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.