Geek in Heels - Page 96

Apr 20, 2011 • In Aerin, Claire, Personal, Pregnancy

Introducing BebeDeux

Faithful readers would know that I’ve been having some health problems as of late. They would also recall that I had promised to describe these problems in further detail…

Well, the secret’s out of the bag.

I am currently 12 weeks pregnant with Claire’s little sister or brother!

I know the first question that pops into practically everyone’s mind is: were we trying? And the answer to that is no. And I wouldn’t be lying if I were to say that there were moments — there are still moments — when I feel completely overwhelmed and scared. But we believe this pregnancy to be just as much of a blessing as Claire, and are happy to be expanding our little family.

We had our NT scan today and everything looks perfect. BebeDeux (my nickname for the little tyke)’s heartbeat was strong and steady at 172 bpm, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of how Claire looked at her NT scan. However, this pregnancy seems to have brought me more nausea, fatigue, and other unfavorable symptoms (such as insomnia and migraines) than my pregnancy with Claire and I’ve been really hurting as a result. Fortunately, I have wonderful people in my life — such as J, my SIL, and my mother — who have been graciously donating their time and energy in helping me take care of Claire in my fragile state.

Incidentally, BebeDeux’s due date (November 3, 2011) is exactly 13 months from what was Claire’s due date. So if he/she decides to show up a few days early like Claire did, we could very well end up with a Halloween baby!

(Personally, I am hoping for 11/1/11, 11/10/11, or 11/11/11 because then the baby’s birthday would be a binary number!)

I know that the next few years will be quite a rollercoaster as I’m sure that other mothers of “2 under 2” can agree. I would greatly appreciate your prayers and support as we embark on this next chapter of our lives!

P.S. — I have blogged about this pregnancy but have only written a couple of (private) posts thus far. I have since made them public, and if you wish you can view them — in addition to all future posts regarding BebeDeux — at https://www.geekinheels.com/category/bebedeux

Child’s Play: A Book Bed

In the East, it is not uncommon for people to use thin mattresses in lieu of a bed. The mattresses are folded/rolled and stored away during the day to save space. (This is, in fact, how my family slept when we lived in Korea.)

Creative photographer Yusuke Suzuki has taken this concept and transformed it to a short but fun series of photographs. The Book Bed allows you to literally crawl into the pages of a book; the pages act as blankets that you can use to keep yourself warm and cozy at night, while the bed itself can be folded/closed to create more space during the day.

A short web search shows that the Book Bed is not available for sale, but I have no doubt that bookworms everywhere would be coveting it if it were.

Via My Modern Met.

3 Years, A Busy Weekend, and A Winner

Three years ago today, J and I said “I do” in front of 250 of our closest friends and family.

We’ve certainly had our ups and downs along the way, but I wouldn’t trade what we have right now for anything in the world. The amount of love and respect I have for this man has grown exponentially since we first started dating 8 years ago, and he continues to amaze me every day.

It also doesn’t hurt that I still catch him looking at me with the same expression as below:

(photo by Danny Weiss)

Happy anniversary, my love. Here’s to many, many more to come.

* * *

We celebrated our anniversary this past Saturday with a lunch at my favorite steak house and a visit to Discovery Times Square for Harry Potter: The Exhibition. My surf & turf was superb, and the Harry Potter exhibit was worth every penny. It was a bit more crowded than I would have liked, but I was giddy like a little schoolgirl the entire way through and am really regretting not having purchased the audio tour.

J and I had a fantastic anniversary celebration despite the torrential rain which continued throughout the day.

The trouble started when we got home.

My eyes started itching almost as soon as we stepped through the front door. I immediately took off my contacts and washed my face, taking care to remove all eye makeup.

But the itching and tearing continued through the night and I could hardly sleep. By the time the sun rose Sunday morning it even hurt to keep my eyes open. Light sensitivity added to my list of symptoms, and I was so miserable that I was sobbing. I was also scared — I had visions of Claire growing up with a blind mother and J having to take care of a blind wife.

We called J’s brother and luckily my SIL was able to come over to watch Claire while we headed to the ER. After the doctor put some numbing drops into my eyes I finally started to feel better. She checked for scratches on my cornea (there was none) as well as other symptoms of allergic reactions. Because the swelling, tearing, and itching subsided after a series of steroids, antihistamines, and antibacterial eye drops, the doctor concluded that it must be an allergic reaction…but we weren’t sure from what. It could be the circle lenses I had donned the previous day, or the old eye shadow I had applied. The doctor seemed to think that the cause stemmed from the antibiotics I had been taking for the past week as a result of a root canal.

The good news was that I seemed to be responding to the treatment, so the doctor wrote me some prescriptions and sent us home. I spent the rest of the day recovering in bed and I’m happy to say that I’m feeling much better today.

* * *

With all the excitement I had almost forgotten about the Magic Sleepsuit giveaway! Well, better late than never, right? Drum roll please…

The winner of the Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit is…

#51 is commenter Olivia, who had the following to say:

Congratulations, Olivia! I will be emailing you shortly!

And thank you to everyone else who entered! The past month has been a HUGE month for this blog (more than 95k unique visitors!) and I owe it to every one of you. I have stated in the past that I do not make money from blogging, and I am still quite happy with the status quo. That being said, if I do hit 100,000 visitors in a month, I do want to do a big giveaway in celebration. So stay tuned, and keep reading!

16 Things You Didn’t Know About Sleep [Infographic]

I have been experiencing horrible insomnia lately. It got a bit better last month when I started taking sleeping pills, but now I almost feel like my body has become immune to them. Can this happen?

Whenever my body is in dire need of sleep it responds with migraines. Needless to say I have not been a happy camper lately.

Coincidentally, I found this interesting inforgraphic about sleep over at haha.nu today. After looking it over — and realizing the crappy state of my own sleep-deprived body and mind — I have no doubt that you will die of sleep deprivation before you die from food deprivation.

P.S. — The Magic Sleepsuit giveaway ends tomorrow! Be sure to comment, Tweet, and “Like” for three chances to win!

Additional [Fictional] Reading for Harry Potter Nerds

J and my 3-year anniversary falls in five days. But since the actual date is a Monday, we will be celebrating this Saturday instead…in true nerd fashion.

That’s right — we will be attending Harry Potter: The Exhibition at Discovery Times Square!

(We also have reservations at my favorite steak house this side of the Hudson. I’m pretty sure it’s run by the NJ Mafia but hot dang their surf & turf is TDF!)

So in celebration of my favorite boy wizard — after all, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 comes out on DVD and Blu-ray on Friday (have you pre-ordered it yet?) — I only saw it appropriate to share with my readers these fictional titles from Harry’s world. Because not every wizard is a hero…some of them are PR people, social media gurus, and marketing professionals for whom these books were penned.

Via Flavorwire.

Pink is for Girls, Blue is for Boys?

Before having Claire I couldn’t understand why some mothers — even the die-hard feminists who eschewed all traditional takes on gender roles — would dress their baby girls in pink, frilly clothes all the time.

And as soon as Claire was born, I discovered why.

It’s because whenever she’s not wearing pink she’s often mistaken for being a boy.

And I’m sure that this is the exact reason most parents dress their baby boys in predominantly blue wardrobes as well.

I have personally never questioned these color associations with gender before. I always assumed that they are what society once deemed appropriate, and so I — along with billions of others — automatically grew up thinking this way.

What’s strange about this assumption is just how new the concept of “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” is. In fact, a 1918 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal stated:

The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

Huh. Who woulda thunk?

Smithsonian Magazine discusses the evolution of color gender associations in further detail in an article featuring University of Maryland clothing historian Jo B. Paoletti, whose new book “Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America” is due out later this year.

The article starts with a photo of former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at age 2½ (see left). At the time the picture was taken — 1884 — social convention dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. FDR’s outfit was considered gender-neutral.

So what exactly happened between then and now to promote certain styles and colors to be gender-specific? There are various reasons, including manufacturer and retailer interpretations and the rise of the feminist movement that continued the rise and fall of this phenomenon.

And as technology advanced (ie, prenatal testing) and consumerism rose, the demand for “boy” and “girl” merchandise also went up.

The article is a fascinating read and I recommend anyone interested in sociology and/or gender studies to take a look.

I personally think it’s hilarious that the entire “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” idea could have gone either way. And it almost seems funny to think that pink was once considered a “more decided and stronger color.” But then again, that’s just 30+ years of society’s influence on me talking.

I can’t help but wonder if the trend will go the opposite way in the near future. Who knows? Maybe my grandchildren will consider pink a more masculine color than blue. And perhaps dressing all young children in dresses — which seems to be a more economical idea when you consider that dresses take longer to grow out of — will once again come into fashion.

And perhaps one day, my father won’t be embarrassed to buy a cute onesie like this for Claire:

This is what happens when a grandparent who doesn’t speak much English buys clothes for your daughter.
And yes, we dress her in it because we personally think it’s hilarious.

Via Boing Boing.

Harvard Entrance Exam from 1869

NYTimes’ “The Choice” blog has an interesting piece titled “Remembering When College Was a Buyer’s Bazaar” which contrasts university admissions policies and practices between the late 1800s to now.

For example, did you know that top universities such as Harvard and Columbia used to advertise for students right up to opening day and offered entrance exams the weekend before classes started to give students every chance of taking and passing them?

And that Harvard even downplayed the difficulty of its entrance exam in advertisements, noting that of the 210 applicants who took its test in June 1869, 185 were admitted?

(Don’t ask me about my own college application process. Suffice it to say, I was deferred, wait-listed, then rejected from my top choice school. Triple rejection. Ouch.)

You can click on over to the article for advertisements from other top schools and other examples of the admissions practices of these days gone by. What really caught my attention was a PDF of the actual sample questions from the July 1869 Harvard entrance exam.

Take a look at the pages below (click to view large).

There is no chance in hell that I would have passed the Latin and Greek portions of the test. After all:

Harvard’s literature from the 1869-70 school year noted that incoming freshmen were expected to know how to write in Latin and Greek “with the accents” and needed to demonstrate knowledge of “the whole of Virgil,” Caesar’s Commentaries, and Felton’s Greek Reader or comparable texts.

The geography and history section doesn’t seem so bad — aside from question V: “Leonidas, Pausanias, Lysander.” Errr…what exactly are they asking? — I’m pretty confident that I would have done well on this section if I were to have taken the test straight out of high school.

The math section really surprised me, because…well, I suck at math and I haven’t touched anything aside from basic arithmetic since the age of 18. But I was able to figure out all the questions without hesitation. I was actually pretty proud of my aging brain.

How would you have done on this entrance exam from 1869? Is there anything that surprises you about the test?

Magic Sleepsuit Giveaway!

Remember the Magic Sleepsuit? Let’s see if this helps refresh your memory:

Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit was invented by Maureen Howard, a pediatric physical therapist and a mother of four. It was designed for babies who are approximately 3 months of age and have been swaddled, but are beginning to grow out of that stage. The Magic Sleepsuit provides babies with the cozy and secure sleep environment that they became so accustomed to with swaddling. It aids in making a positive transition into that spacious crib, and promotes back sleeping which all mothers know is the best sleep position for reducing the risk of SIDS.

We first purchased the Magic Sleepsuit when Claire was going through her “four-month wakeful” period — only napping 30 minutes at a time and waking up 5x a night. Not only were J and I exhausted, Claire was plain miserable and I was willing to try anything to help my daughter sleep better.

The first time we used the Magic Sleepsuit Claire took a 1.5 hour nap — her longest in weeks! — and she only woke up twice that night. We thought the first day was just a fluke, but for the next few days she continued to sleep better than she had for weeks and I could only credit the Sleepsuit.

I have talked about the Magic Sleepsuit in my sleep-training post and stated how it helped us wean Claire from swaddling, and how it has become an essential part of our bedtime routine as we used it as a sleep-training tool.

I have also listed the Magic Sleepsuit in my favorite baby items post because we truly believe that it helps Claire sleep better and for longer periods of time.

Well, I’ve got some fantastic news for my readers (and their friends):

Maureen has graciously offered to give one reader a FREE Magic Sleepsuit!

Even if you don’t have a baby or are not pregnant, I would highly recommend that you enter anyway, because I’m sure that you can find someone who will find the Magic Sleepsuit (a $39.95 value) super useful.

You can enter the giveaway in three different ways:

Leave a comment to this post telling us who the Sleepsuit will be for
Tweet (and leave a comment here saying you did so) the following: I just entered to win a Magic Sleepsuit — www.magicsleepsuit.com — and you can too! http://bit.ly/e9ZDvb
“Like” this post using the Facebook “Like” button at the bottom (and leave a comment here saying you did so)

Each method will grant you one separate entry, so you can increase your chances of winning by using all three methods of entry.

Please leave a valid email address (which will not be published or shared) when filling out the comment form so that I can contact you if you win.

The giveaway will end this Friday, April 15th, 2011 at 12:00pm EST. The winner will be chosen by a random number generator and be notified via email, at which point he/she will have the option of choosing the color and size of the Sleepsuit. The giveaway is valid only for U.S. residents.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!

“You know when you’re ready.”

This funny ad for the Canon 40D was published in Digital Photographer magazine back in 2008.

…Sometimes, I fear that J is thinking the same thing when he looks at me.

Via PetaPixel.

Real-Life Snail Mail

This is too stinkin’ cute not to post.

Vicki Isley and Paul Smith, researchers at UK’s Bournemouth University, have decided to take the term “snail mail” literally and created an email delivery service called Real Snail Mail.

Real Snail Mail is a web service that uses live snails to deliver email. The delivery could take years; as a matter of fact the average delivery time is 615 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes and 27 seconds.

How does it work? According to their website:

Our snails are equipped with a miniaturised electronic circuit and antenna, enabling them to be assigned messages. Your message is collected from a despatch centre at one end of their enclosure. Once associated with the tiny electronic chip on the snail’s shell your message will be carried around until the snail chances by the drop off point. Here more hardware collects your message and forwards it to its final destination.

Animal activists need not worry about the snails, as they apparently live in “Five Star Accommodations.” Each snail even has a profile, and you can see two of them below:

I would love to try the service myself, but I had some trouble figuring out how to do so via their website. Can anyone help?

Via Bit Rebels.

Introducing BebeDeux

You may also like:

Child’s Play: A Book Bed

You may also like:

3 Years, A Busy Weekend, and A Winner

You may also like:

16 Things You Didn’t Know About Sleep [Infographic]

You may also like:

Additional [Fictional] Reading for Harry Potter Nerds

You may also like:

Pink is for Girls, Blue is for Boys?

You may also like:

Harvard Entrance Exam from 1869

You may also like:

Magic Sleepsuit Giveaway!

You may also like:

“You know when you’re ready.”

You may also like:

Real-Life Snail Mail

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