babies don't keep

After a busy few weeks, I'm taking this one off from blogging to snuggle my babe and get some more important things done!  Hope you all have a fabulous few days.  

saturday style + whisk bake shop

Saturday afternoon we had nothing much at all to do, so we decided to wander around Cherokee Street for a bit.  We don't spend nearly enough time in that neighborhood, but since I've started working at Nebula while our sitter stays with Claire, I figured it might be in my best interest to scope out all the good coffee & tea joints.  

It was a really gorgeous day in St. Louis - a little overcast, but considering it's August the temperature was amazing.  The perfect day to wear my Sonnet James Quincy dress and carry Claire in our Solly Baby wrap.  Also, I've developed a real love for my Birkenstocks.  Expect to see me wearing them ad infinitum, maybe even with socks come autumn...

Our first stop was Whisk Bakeshop, which is one of my favorite places for a treat & a coffee in St. Louis.  One of the best things about Cherokee is that it's a neighborhood comprised of entirely local enterprises - no chain stores or restaurants down here!  

 I mean, can you even get over those light fixtures??

We usually go to Whisk for the artisan popsicles (strawberry goat cheese anyone?) but since it wasn't so hot on Saturday we swapped that choice for a nanaimo bar.  I couldn't tell you why they called it that, but it was sort of like a way more indulgent Almond Joy.  

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 Claire slept through the entire afternoon, taking about a 3 hour nap in her wrap.  Nothing better than a low-key afternoon exploring our city.  The next time you're down on Cherokee, we definitely recommend making a stop at Whisk!  

the weekender

So, we had a pretty great weekend all around, minus the fact that the weather was ridiculously hot.  It was 100 degrees yesterday (and somehow the today high is only 80....where was that Saturday??)

Here's a few quick snaps from how we spent the best two days of the week! 

Friday night we went grocery shopping, and believe it or not, it was pretty fun.  What, you don't take selfies before you go to the grocery store?  Honestly, I just wanted to document the type of outfit I'm living in lately due to a) breastfeeding access and b) ease of wearing with a baby sling.  

We went out for Mexican on Saturday night, and the World Naked Bike Ride parade rode by the restaurant!  (World Naked Bike Ride is just what it sounds like - a silly and fun parade of *mostly naked* bikers, to promote body positivity.  It's pretty awesome.)  

Among the sea of bikers we spotted a couple people we knew, one of them being my rad friend Jess, and she pulled over to take a picture with Claire!  Gotta keep this kind of thing for posterity in the future, just so Claire knows how progressive and awesome we are/were.    Also, I love the look on her face.  

That morning we went to the farmer's market, where I got a popsicle, Fitz got worn out, and Claire took her morning nap in the sling.  

There was also lots of sleeping....lots.  of.  sleeping.  

Nothing better than catching a sleep smile in a photo.  

date night: ruth's chris downtown st louis

Last week, I mentioned how Darrell & I had our first night out since having Claire.  We went to see one of our favorite local musicians play at Beale on Broadway downtown, and although it was a great evening, it was perhaps a little ambitious.  Staying up until 1 am when you have a newborn?  Kind of difficult.  More difficult?  Waking up with said newborn only an hour after going to sleep.  For our next outing, we needed something more our current speed, so when Alive Magazine invited us to attend a dinner showcasing Ruth's Chris new menu we jumped at the chance.  

I wore heels for the first time in what felt like forever, and carried a purse that doesn't have stroller straps!   

(dress by sonnet james, here)

Despite our excitement, I was a teeny bit apprehensive about going to a steakhouse.  I'm a pescatarian, and I kind of figured that we'd end up making a run through Chipotle after dinner so that I could get a real meal.  Though after one of the complimentary cocktails I had when we arrived, I had pretty much forgotten about food altogether.  

Just kidding, but that drink was really delicious.  (Get the blood orange sunrise!)  They had a ridiculous spread of appetizers for us, and I really should've tried harder to get more of this ahi tuna.  One piece was not enough, I could just eat this for my meal the next time we go, and I probably will.  

I needn't have ever worried about not having enough to eat, the food was AMAZING.  This was Darrell's salad, but they brought me one without the bacon.  I certainly didn't miss it, I'm a total sucker for a classic wedge salad.  

The dining room's view really can't be beat.  I never get tired of looking at the Arch!  

One mention of my dietary preferences, and they brought me a special dish.  This was pasta with an olive oil sauce, broccoli, and peppers, and it was beyond yummy.  

I was pretty motivated to save room for dessert, and thank goodness I did because this was unreal.  I would like to drink a glass of that Creme Anglaise every single day.  

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the night?  We didn't call our sitters (Darrell's brother & his girlfriend) for updates a single time, trusting that the baby was in good hands.  We had a perfect & romantic evening, even staying for one last drink at the bar before we left, and Claire had slightly more relaxed and happy parents to show for it.  

I can't say that I would have previously considered Ruth's Chris as a downtown St. Louis destination, but we'll definitely be back for pre-dinner or concert drinks sometime soon, especially to take advantage of their awesome Happy Hour prices.  

Need a date night of your own?  Ruth's Chris is giving away a Prix Fixe dinner for 4 through Alive Magazine here, to celebrate their downtown location's 5 year birthday!  

*This post is sponsored by Ruth's Chris, but as always the story and opinions are my own!  Thank you for supporting the companies that make this blog possible.  

on tiny laundry and chubby cheeks - claire's first month

You know what is suddenly the most exciting thing in the world?  Laundry.  More specifically, baby laundry.  I get more joy out of folding swaddles & burp clothes, and teeny onesies than most people probably get out of dinner at a gourmet restaurant.  Tiny laundry, that is the stuff dreams are made of, I tell you.  That, and these cheeks, which I’m convinced get a little chubbier by the day.  Chubby cheeks may be my most motivating force in breastfeeding this baby. Claire’s cheeks, thighs, and head seem to be the main recipient of all this milk (so, hopefully she’ll be able to wear one of her million headbands within the week.)

But, here’s the problem with chubby cheeks - chubby cheeks mean Claire is growing up, getting older.  There is a special kind of emotion reserved for the awareness that your child is growing up.  It’s the very definition of bittersweet.  I can’t wait for those first smiles, but I also will miss her floppy little newborn body, how malleable she is in my arms when I cuddle with her.  I’ll miss knowing when she’s happy by the sparkle in her eyes, rather than the shape of her mouth (and yes, you can absolutely tell.)  

I almost cried when I took off the "s" on "weeks" in the first photo.  I was just dragging photoshop layers from picture to picture, rather than recreating them individually to save time, and just taking the "s" off of that first photo made me think "she'll never be just one week old again!"  And she won't.  She's four weeks - 1 month old today.  She looks double the size of the baby in that first poorly lit photo, taken on her dad's first day back at work in a frenzy of trying to get dinner made and hoping she'd nap while we ate it with two hands.  She has a distinctively fluffier head of hair, and the size 0-3 onesie we've got her in for all four photos is actually pretty close to fitting her.  You know, I could wax poetic about how I don't want her to grow up for 3 more pages but I'll stop myself here.  

You get back to your Wednesday, and I'll get back to folding these tiny socks.  

the weekender

If ever a group of people have made the most of a holiday weekend, I think we did!  This 4th of July, we did Fair St. Louis twice & had our first night out without the baby (a harrowing experience)!  

We're out of order, but I had to start with this gem of a photo.  They're sleep twins.  

Okay, now that that's out of the way...

We decided to go out for the first time without Claire on an evening that merited it - my brother in law's girlfriend moved to St. Louis this week, and he had organized a little surprise party for her at a blues club downtown.  My little sister agreed to babysit, but couldn't pick her up until about 10:45!  So that is how we ended up with our baby in a bar.  It was that or miss the surprise!  She was a little trooper - no tears, and she rocked out with her dad for a bit.  Of course, the minute she left we missed her, and essentially forced ourselves to stay and hang out until 1 am.  Not only was that the latest we had stayed up in weeks or months, possibly, it was tooooooo late.  Especially when Claire decided she wanted to be rocked, and rocked, and rocked at 5 am.  

On the 4th, we made up for our sleep deficit (group napping was the order of the day) but we did manage to get it together to go see Bonnie Raitt. Claire even had a snazzy outfit to wear to the fair.....

but in this photo she was destroying it.  This is apparently her poop-explosion face, maybe she was getting us back for making her wear those sunglasses, but within 10 minutes of our arrival she was wearing this instead: 

On a side note, I had a truly adorable dress from Baby Gap in mind outside of these two outfits from  but I inexplicably bought it in 3-6 months?  I was apparently under the delusion while pregnant that I would be having the world's largest baby.  I'll have to come up with a reason for her to wear a blue and white sparkly dress come November.  

People came up to tell us how cute our baby was even though she was wearing a white onesie, and even though she fussed through much of the evening.  She quieted for Bonnie Raitt, because Claire knows what's important (so far she's slept completely through all concerts, brunches, & church.)  

It was a truly gorgeous evening - only about 70 degrees!  Unheard of for a St. Louis summer.  

Having your own baby forces you to make strange faces like this in public: 

Yes Claire, I feel the same way about that previous picture as well.  Judge me all you want - your cuteness inspires some strange behavior.  

claire's birth story

I hemmed and hawed about whether to even write this up for the blog for a few reasons.  First, the universal response to my telling this story to anyone who has ever had a child has been “gag me.”  Second, I did not have the same delivery anyone else has ever had (I am the only mother to have ever birthed my daughter) and man, people sure do seem to think that the way they have babies is the right way.  Did you have an epidural?  GREAT.  Did you give birth au natural at home in your bath tub?  SO HAPPY FOR YOU.

So I’d like to preface our story with this: yes, I had a very easy labor and delivery.  If you didn’t, and you think you will just be annoyed by reading about Claire’s birth well then cruise right on by this post!  Baby pictures below!  And I may not have not given birth the way you think is the right way, or maybe I did.  I’m happy for you, and I’m happy for me.

Phew, now that that’s out of the way, here is the story (and a large amount of incredibly unflattering photos) of how Claire Olivia came into the world last week:

On the day of my 38 week doctor’s appointment, it had been 3 days since I had slept.  I went into that appointment looking like a wreck - I cried before, during, and after the appointment, with Darrell doing everything he could to cheer me up.  I think he’d have bought me a pony if he thought it would’ve brought a smile back to my face.  When my doctor offered to induce labor that weekend, under the reasoning that Claire was measuring awfully large (risk factors: she breaks some bones on the way out, I get more um, damaged, than necessary) I went for it,  and we scheduled me in for Sunday the 8th at 8 pm.  

The nice thing about induction is, you know it’s coming.  We left the house with our bags packed to perfection, our house spotlessly clean, and our laundry baskets empty.  We picked up magazines & snacks at Walgreens on our way to the hospital, having been told by our doctor that the entire process could take 24-48 hours - or not even work at all!  Thankfully Orange Is The New Black had come out last weekend, so we had plenty of entertainment queued up.  

We got to the hospital, checked in, met our nurse and she had me hooked me up to a drip of Pitocin by 9 pm.  Apparently you increase it by “twos,” - two whats, I don’t know - and they can ratchet you up every 30 minutes, up to 20.  We usually go to bed around 9, and had pretty much been told that nothing would really happen until the morning, so I was shocked to be in some serious pain about 3 hours later.  Darrell had fallen asleep, and I woke him up MAD - he was then instructed that he wasn’t allowed to fall asleep unless I did.  I was determined to make it as long as I could without an epidural, not because I didn’t plan on getting one (I had basically heard that with Pitocin, YOU GET THE EPIDURAL) but because I knew that epidurals could potentially slow down labor.  By 3 am though (with the pitocin at about a 10) my contractions were extremely close together and incredibly painful.  I was wishing I had involved drugs an hour earlier.  There were tears.  By this point, I was at about 4 cm.  I asked the nurse if I would be a wimp if I went ahead and got some much-needed relief, and she proclaimed that I had actually done pretty well by comparison to some patients.  

Our anesthesiologist showed up about 30 minutes later, and I didn’t even look at the needles.  I honestly wouldn’t have cared what they looked like anyways.  The hardest part of getting the epidural wasn’t the pain of the insertion, it was sitting through another two contractions completely still.  Honestly, getting my IV hurt worse.

After that, I fell asleep.  Yes, you read that right.  I couldn’t feel a thing and I was exhausted.  I woke up at about 7 am to a “pop,” which I was pretty sure was my water breaking.  I was hesitant to even have Darrell call the nurse - surely not much progress had been made, and he was so tired from the night before - but I figured it was probably best to have them verify it was my water, so I woke him up.  A new nurse came in to check it out, and it was indeed my water.  Also, I was at a 10.  

YES you read that right, I had progressed from 4 to 10 cm in my sleep over the course of about 3 1/2 hours.  The nurse had me do a practice push, and proclaimed me an excellent pusher.  Her estimate was that we would have our baby in less than 20 minutes.  

yeah, epidurals work really well.  i was smiling, 5 minutes before pushing.  

Then we were a bit frantic - Darrell literally asked if he could have permission to brush his teeth.  Claire’s amniotic fluid had meconium in it, so there was suddenly an entire NICU team in our room, plus about 5 nurses.  We were only waiting on my doctor to come in early for her call time - she wasn’t even scheduled until 8 am, and of course never assumed I would deliver so quickly!  

My doctor arrived at around 7:20, and I immediately was being instructed on how to push.  I was very focused - it was strange and kind of awesome to be able to push without fear of pain.  I pretty much gave it all I had each time since they had said I wouldn’t have to do it for too long, and she was born at 7:28 after less than 10 minutes and maybe 7 or 8 pushes.  It was incredibly surreal - I was still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that we would get to meet her so soon.  It was fairly painful to even watch them clean her up and clear her airways of meconium - I was desperate to get my hands on her the minute she was born.  Once Darrell had cut the cord and she had been relatively cleaned up and declared healthy, they laid her on my chest and I immediately started crying.  Claire, on the other hand,  immediately stopped - it was very clear, she knew who I was.  Her eyes seemed huge and they focused hard on my face.  I had no idea that she would be so aware that I was her mother.  Seeing her was amazing, realizing this was the person that had been in there all along.  

why do men get to look so good during this whole process?  

We were allowed two hours in the delivery room before we were moved to recovery, and we made the most of them.  Claire nursed almost immediately, and she was/is good at it (I know how fortunate we are.)  We spent those two hours just trying to memorize the moment, googly eyed over how beautiful she is, kissing each other and truthfully, still in complete awe of how lucky our delivery had been.  Darrell only got last week off of work, and we knew there was potential that I could be in the hospital until Thursday.  We ended up checking out on Tuesday morning since we were rooming in with Claire to breastfeed on demand anyways, so there was no reason to stay.  

 So that’s our whole story, the 12 hours that it took to change our entire life.  I’d do them all over again, any day.  I remember looking at Darrell the first time I fed her and just thought to myself that I’d like to jump him right then and there to have another (clearly not an option) but I really felt that way.  That cocktail of new mom hormones really makes you forget the entire pregnancy & delivery, literally 30 minutes after it’s over.  And as I write this she’s laid out flat asleep on my lap post-nursing session, and I intend to let her stay there for a while.  I could probably stand to get dressed, or help Darrell with dinner, or finish vacuuming, but babies don’t keep, you know?  

the first week in pictures

Can't get enough peonies - not that we need more flowers in this house, but I still couldn't help but pick some up when we bravely ventured out of the house to Trader Joe's on Thursday. 

Constantly needed baby supplies - a sling for when she's inconsolably fussy and my nursing pillow.  

Darrell is fairly unwilling to put her down at all - when I suggested starting tummy time, he asked if she could just do it on his chest.  (Does that work?!)  

My favorite view for nursing - I have a rocking chair in her nursery for privacy, but I prefer to sit on our bed next to the french doors, curtains just slightly open so I can feel the gorgeous summer breeze we've had all week.  

A parenting concession - we had planned on her sleeping in her crib, but of course even with only a 700 square foot apartment she seemed too far away.  We had our 4moms breeze set up with the bassinet halfway through the first night.  We're potentially planning to have her moved to the crib by three weeks....but I'll keep you updated on how well that goes.  

Darrell is a prolific napper, I really need to improve my skills.  

I cannot seem to get enough fruit.  The peaches are already gone and half of the nectarines.  We let the dishes go a little bit longer than usual (but we're a tad OCD, so they did get done eventually) and the coffee pot started to get a workout again after a long caffeine-free pregnancy.  I can't decide why I enjoyed the coffee more - the pleasure of being able to have it, or because it kept me buoyant throughout the day after a long night of baby-feeding.  

This is our fancy Pottery Barn crib, currently being used as a changing table.  Our friend Emily painted the sweet "C" art.  I have lofty goals to hang it tomorrow morning (my first day home alone with Claire.)  

Our little table of baby "necessities," currently overrun with flowers.  We haven't touched a single one of these items - as it turns out people were right.  Babies don't need much beyond a boob, lots of love, and a place to sleep.  

If I'm feeling extra nice, I'll take Claire into her nursery to feed her in the rocking chair at night rather than doing it in bed next to Darrell.  I keep this light on near the door so that I don't go toppling over in a tired stupor with our infant in my arms.  Also, MORE FLOWERS.  

Saturday morning we went for a walk (only a few blocks away) to a fancy neighborhood's street-wide yard sale.  We came home with nothing, but got a lot of "is that a baby in there!?" from folks wondering about the sling!  I don't think baby-wearing is a big practice in St. Louis.  We have yet to pull out our stroller, and I can't imagine why we would - the sling is easily Claire's favorite place, besides napping on her Daddy's chest.  

Saturday afternoon, a group of my girlfriends came over to see Claire and it was easily a highlight of my weekend - I could've listened to them gush over her for hours!  

I had to end on this photo of Darrell and Claire napping this morning.  The World Cup started on Thursday, and these two have been peas in a pod watching soccer and sleeping.  It honestly (surprising!)  makes me hope she loves sports as much as her daddy so that they can continue this forever.  I think it would be hard to decide what the best aspect of our "new" family has been so far - bonding with Claire as mother and daughter or watching Darrell instantly become her dad.  I had heard stories about men not feeling as instantly connected to their children as their wives did, but I can truly say that sometimes I see it already; she will be her daddy's girl.  This morning while we were getting her ready for brunch, Darrell said that he had never changed a diaper before she was born, and I can honestly say that I had no idea, 6 days into her life.  His confidence in his ability to care for her and do right by her has amazed me since she arrived, and he's been my rock when I was feeling scared.  I was nervous about Monday being my first day alone with Claire when he goes back to work, until he looked at me when I voiced my concerns and just said "babe, you're going to kill it.  You really are" and I just knew that if he thought I could, I would.