As Kristiana noted earlier, we formerly called our daughter "floppy girl" since she was so completely loose she could almost drip through any small crack between the arms holding her. But that's really changed in the last week or so. She now very intently holds up her head to see what's around her, and she's starting to try to crawl though she's not quite strong enough yet.
We have finally received all the documentation we needed to apply for Chiara's passport, and yesterday we shot the pictures and then ran over to the post office to put in the application. Shooting the pictures was a project in itself, since babies have to conform to the same photo guidelines as everyone else, which basically meant laying her down on a white surface and trying to snap a picture where she's a) facing forward instead of looking to one side or another, b) not flailing her arms or pumping a fist at the camera, c) wearing a suitably mild-mannered expression, and d) wearing head and body at reasonably non-twisty angles in relationship to each other. It's a real trial-and-error process, mostly error, so thank goodness for digital.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Chiara FAQ, by Kristiana
Posted to Kristiana's mailing list yesterday, and now reproduced here.
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Since we get a lot of the same questions from friends and family, we thought we'd prepare the Frequently Asked Questions About Chiara.
Q: So how old is Chiara now?
A: She was four weeks old on Friday, July 11th!
Q: How is she doing?
A: She's doing great! Her height (currently 22.5") is in the 93rd percentile of girls, and her weight (9lbs 3oz) is in the 50s. She is starting to hold up her head when she's on her tummy, and she almost turned over on the doctor's exam table Friday (much to the surprise of the doctor, who said she was very strong -- and that normally she wouldn't be able to do that for weeks)!
Q: How, exactly, is your daughter's name pronounced, exactly?
A: Here, then, is the proper pronunciation of Chiara Alexeika: Key-AH-rah Alex-SAYkah
Q: How did you choose that name, anyway?
A: Here's a brief synopsis.
First, many of our opinions about our daughter were formed during the pregnancy. These impressions included "essentially good-natured" as my pregnancy was a *relatively* easy one; "determined" and "stubborn" as she would not permit me to lie on either side since about 27 weeks (she would kick me repeatedly until I moved to my back); "her own piper" since she was a week late; you get the picture.
In addition, since "Robin" would be taking my last name, rather than Michael's, we wished to include a family-inspired name from Michael's side.
Since both Michael and I read a lot, we had a number of female character names that we had liked for some time. As more personality traits arose, we started winnowing down the options. Going into labor, we had six possible names. By Friday evening after a full day with our daughter, we were both pretty sure who she was.
The name Chiara has roots both Italian and Celtic, though it was the Italian that actually inspired us. When we were in Venice in September 2006, I ran out of books, but managed to find potentially the only bookseller in Venice who carried English-language novels! Two books I chose because they were murder mysteries set in Venice, which we ended up loving because they were so fabulously written. Chaira is the precocious daughter of the detective-inspector Brunetti (the hero of the series), and if you were to read some of these books, I think you'll guess why we chose the name. In brief, she is thoughtful and studious, but also very strong-willed and opinionated.
Alexeika, her middle name, is inspired by another character. This one worked for us because there are already a number of Alex and Alexandra names in Michael's family, and we wanted her to be unique, while still paying tribute to her family. Michael's grandmother Josie was one who had the opinion that children should have family names, and we wanted to be sure to honor that, albeit in our own fashion! Also, I thought at the hospital that she might actually turn out to be a "Lexie," so we gave her a middle name that would allow for that!
Q: So what are you calling her?
A: She's introduced to people as Chiara. What we're *actually* calling her these days doesn't tend to match what's on her birth certificate -- "beautiful girl," "squirmy girl," and "hiccoughy girl" are the most frequent names she's called. She used to be "floppy girl" but she's a bit less floppy these days.
Q: The all-important question -- how is she sleeping, and how are you sleeping?
A: Mom and Dad are pretty tired, but we're coping. Chiara sleeps a lot (she's a good sleeper). We've been relatively fortunate -- she generally sleeps four or five hours at a stretch during the night, and sometimes a couple of hours at a time during the day. But not right now. Right now, she's determined to be amused by her daddy, who is trying his best to meet the challenge.
Q: You've probably been pretty inundated with visitors. Who's been to see her?
A: Her first visitors in the hospital were Michael's parents and his sister. Since then, the Mazour grandparents have visited several times, Kristiana's mom has spent a couple of days here, and over the fourth of July weekend we had Kristiana's father and stepmother, Michael's sister, Cousin Alexandra, neighbors and work friends, etc. Chiara has also been to visit Apple a couple of times.
Q: I sent you something. Did you get it?
A: Yes we did! Thank you thank you thank you so much for thinking of us! We're so sorry that we have been so bad at sending out acknowledgements and thank-you notes. We plead for forgiveness, as much of the time we have trouble getting out from under our daughter, but we're going to catch up, we promise.
Q: So where can I find more pictures of Chiara?
A: You will find almost-daily photo updates at m-and-k.smugmug.com. Here's one of my my favorites, albeit one that's slightly blurry.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday gadget blogging: how we shoot (and publish) all those baby pictures
(written on Friday but published Saturday because Chiara needed attention before I could press Post)
We've gotten some positive comments on our Chiara photos, and while all the credit for their appeal goes, of course, to our extremely adorable subject, we made some lucky technological choices that have really helped us get (and post) the pictures we're getting.
Eye-Fi wireless camera card
Highly recommended for new parents. You might never see any of our pictures if we didn't have the Eye-Fi card. This is a camera memory card that, for the most part, functions like any other memory card you might put in your camera. But when it's in range of your wireless Internet connection, it will automatically connect, and upload your pictures, both to your home computer and to your selection of online photo-sharing services. It's completely hands-off: within a few minutes after we shoot a picture, it's uploaded, with no extra steps on our part. I can't emphasize enough how much this kind of time-saving helps when you're a new parent. If we had to take the camera down to the computer, connect the cable, run the photo-transfer program, and then upload the pictures, all by hand, I'm sure we wouldn't get around to it very often.
If you're thinking, "gee, sounds great, but I'm not sure I want every picture I take to appear on the Web, instantly and uncensored," there are ways around that. Most photo-sharing sites can be set up so they don't automatically publish your pictures the instant they receive them, but instead wait for your go-ahead. This is how we have SmugMug set up: the day's gallery fills up as we take pictures, but it doesn't get published for public viewing until one of us has gone to the site, reviewed the pictures, and published the gallery (something that takes almost no time when one of us is near a computer, so it's easy to do daily).
Nikon SB-400 bounce flash
This is the key to the nice color quality and even illumination of our Chiara pictures. You just can't take indoor pictures of a child, with the quality we want, without some kind of additional light: they will be visibly dark and unevenly lit, and often they will be completely ruined by motion blur -yours or your child's. You need flash. Every camera has a little built-in flash, but since these fire straight at the subject, they give the scene a very unnatural quality: the subject in the center of the frame is blasted with illumination, while everything around and behind is dark and wrong-looking. What you need is a flash that lights up the whole room, not just the subject, and this is what bounce flash does: it fires up, or sideways, bouncing light off the ceiling and walls so that the scene looks natural.
The SB-400 is the small, very lightweight, relatively inexpensive, bounce flash that mates with our current digital SLR, the Nikon D40. The SB-400 is half the size and half the price of anything comparable that Canon makes, and it works brilliantly well. The SB-400 is so good that, to me, it is a strong argument for getting the Nikon system over the Canon, even though I'm a two-decade Canon EOS user, and very fond of the Canons.
Digital SLR and long zoom lens
As I said above, we're shooting with a Nikon D40 SLR. It has no more megapixels than your typical subcompact camera these days. It may very well have fewer. But each pixel on its sensor is bigger than the ones in smaller cameras, and that makes a big difference. The smaller the pixel on the sensor, the less light it captures, and the more its signal has to be amplified by the camera's electronics - which amplifies noise as well. In other words, the smaller the sensor, the lower its signal to noise ratio. This shows up in photos as unevenness of color - a sort of grainy or even sparkly effect - in areas of the picture that should be smoothly colored. The pictures of Chiara that we've shot with our compact cameras - like a Canon S3 IS that has 6MP just like the D40 - don't look nearly as good, because the skin is just not as smooth and realistic as with the bigger camera. For good baby close-ups, you want the bigger camera.
And we're shooting with a relatively long zoom lens. This lets us fill the frame with Chiara's head - or even her hand - from a few feet away instead of having to crowd right in on her. Besides being a general convenience, that's helpful because it keeps the child from being startled by the sound of the camera firing at close quarters. The lens we use is the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens; in 35mm terms this is roughly equivalent to a 28-300mm zoom. The VR means Vibration Reduction, and is Nikon's term for what Canon calls IS or Image Stabilizing: tiny sensors measure, and try to correct for, camera movement during the moments that your shutter is open. The outcome is less blurry pictures. This stuff really works, and we are crazy about it. Get VR or IS lenses whenever possible; we do.
That's it for the baby-photo-technology post. Use bounce flash, use an SLR and a long lens (with VR/IS if possible), and make uploading from the camera to your computer/website as automatic and painless as you can. And have a great subject - fortunately every baby is one.
We've gotten some positive comments on our Chiara photos, and while all the credit for their appeal goes, of course, to our extremely adorable subject, we made some lucky technological choices that have really helped us get (and post) the pictures we're getting.
Eye-Fi wireless camera card
Highly recommended for new parents. You might never see any of our pictures if we didn't have the Eye-Fi card. This is a camera memory card that, for the most part, functions like any other memory card you might put in your camera. But when it's in range of your wireless Internet connection, it will automatically connect, and upload your pictures, both to your home computer and to your selection of online photo-sharing services. It's completely hands-off: within a few minutes after we shoot a picture, it's uploaded, with no extra steps on our part. I can't emphasize enough how much this kind of time-saving helps when you're a new parent. If we had to take the camera down to the computer, connect the cable, run the photo-transfer program, and then upload the pictures, all by hand, I'm sure we wouldn't get around to it very often.
If you're thinking, "gee, sounds great, but I'm not sure I want every picture I take to appear on the Web, instantly and uncensored," there are ways around that. Most photo-sharing sites can be set up so they don't automatically publish your pictures the instant they receive them, but instead wait for your go-ahead. This is how we have SmugMug set up: the day's gallery fills up as we take pictures, but it doesn't get published for public viewing until one of us has gone to the site, reviewed the pictures, and published the gallery (something that takes almost no time when one of us is near a computer, so it's easy to do daily).
Nikon SB-400 bounce flash
This is the key to the nice color quality and even illumination of our Chiara pictures. You just can't take indoor pictures of a child, with the quality we want, without some kind of additional light: they will be visibly dark and unevenly lit, and often they will be completely ruined by motion blur -yours or your child's. You need flash. Every camera has a little built-in flash, but since these fire straight at the subject, they give the scene a very unnatural quality: the subject in the center of the frame is blasted with illumination, while everything around and behind is dark and wrong-looking. What you need is a flash that lights up the whole room, not just the subject, and this is what bounce flash does: it fires up, or sideways, bouncing light off the ceiling and walls so that the scene looks natural.
The SB-400 is the small, very lightweight, relatively inexpensive, bounce flash that mates with our current digital SLR, the Nikon D40. The SB-400 is half the size and half the price of anything comparable that Canon makes, and it works brilliantly well. The SB-400 is so good that, to me, it is a strong argument for getting the Nikon system over the Canon, even though I'm a two-decade Canon EOS user, and very fond of the Canons.
Digital SLR and long zoom lens
As I said above, we're shooting with a Nikon D40 SLR. It has no more megapixels than your typical subcompact camera these days. It may very well have fewer. But each pixel on its sensor is bigger than the ones in smaller cameras, and that makes a big difference. The smaller the pixel on the sensor, the less light it captures, and the more its signal has to be amplified by the camera's electronics - which amplifies noise as well. In other words, the smaller the sensor, the lower its signal to noise ratio. This shows up in photos as unevenness of color - a sort of grainy or even sparkly effect - in areas of the picture that should be smoothly colored. The pictures of Chiara that we've shot with our compact cameras - like a Canon S3 IS that has 6MP just like the D40 - don't look nearly as good, because the skin is just not as smooth and realistic as with the bigger camera. For good baby close-ups, you want the bigger camera.
And we're shooting with a relatively long zoom lens. This lets us fill the frame with Chiara's head - or even her hand - from a few feet away instead of having to crowd right in on her. Besides being a general convenience, that's helpful because it keeps the child from being startled by the sound of the camera firing at close quarters. The lens we use is the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens; in 35mm terms this is roughly equivalent to a 28-300mm zoom. The VR means Vibration Reduction, and is Nikon's term for what Canon calls IS or Image Stabilizing: tiny sensors measure, and try to correct for, camera movement during the moments that your shutter is open. The outcome is less blurry pictures. This stuff really works, and we are crazy about it. Get VR or IS lenses whenever possible; we do.
That's it for the baby-photo-technology post. Use bounce flash, use an SLR and a long lens (with VR/IS if possible), and make uploading from the camera to your computer/website as automatic and painless as you can. And have a great subject - fortunately every baby is one.
Friday, July 11, 2008
One-month pediatrician visit
Today we had our one-month pediatrician visit. Strictly speaking (and we asked about this during the visit), a one-month visit would really take place one calendar month after the birth and not just four weeks after the birth as was the case today, but close enough: Chiara's had her one-month checkup.
Everything looks great. She's healthy in every way and developing normally or better. She's grown an inch and a quarter since birth, making her 22.5" now. That's fairly tall: 93rd percentile or so for her age. It's really noticeable in that not all onesies fit her any more: some clearly compress her shoulders when pulled down enough to button at the bottom. Kristiana made a shopping trip yesterday to pick up a batch of long onesies.
Mother and father are doing OK too, though we both could use more sleep.
Everything looks great. She's healthy in every way and developing normally or better. She's grown an inch and a quarter since birth, making her 22.5" now. That's fairly tall: 93rd percentile or so for her age. It's really noticeable in that not all onesies fit her any more: some clearly compress her shoulders when pulled down enough to button at the bottom. Kristiana made a shopping trip yesterday to pick up a batch of long onesies.
Mother and father are doing OK too, though we both could use more sleep.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Chiara Alexeika Kincaid
It's been a month since we posted last, and in the interim we've had a daughter. Chiara Alexeika Kincaid was born June 13th, 2008 (yes, that's Friday the 13th), happy and healthy. Everybody asks weight and length and they were 8 lbs 6 oz and 21.25 inches. That puts her somewhere above the 90th percentile of height, and about median in height-to-weight.
There's a link to lots of photos over on the right.
One of the other things people ask, once they see the pictures, is "does she have red hair?" It's too soon really to know. She has light-colored hair and eyebrows with a little bit of brown that can be slightly coppery in the right light. But I was born blond (and am definitely not so now), and Kristiana was too (and still is), so my best guess is that Chiara will start out with light-colored hair but probably not actually red.
The other question people ask - about her, before they get to the questions for us, like are we getting any sleep - is where her name came from. Well, Kristiana and I each kept our names when we married, and we decided Chiara would be a Kincaid. And Chiara (pronounced with a hard C, like key-ara) is an Italian name (not that either of us is Italian), one we thought was pretty. It met the criteria of being a little unusual without being a completely strange and unheard-of. In fact our local newborn resource center knows of another local Chiara being born just a few weeks behind ours. I hope it's not the start of a trend, because I rather hoped the name would remain a little uncommon. As for Alexeika, there is always an Alex somewhere in my family tree, so this was a way to give a nod to my family as well as Kristiana's, though again with an unusual name.
Chiara will be four weeks old this Friday. We've spent all our waking hours, and many of our sleeping ones, with her, so it feels like much longer. She's as perfect a baby as you could wish for - healthy in every respect, only crying when needful (well, more or less), sleeping pretty well at night (four or five hours at a time until she's hungry again), and nicely alert when she's not sleeping.
As for the other two of us, we're doing fairly well. We're not getting as much sleep as we'd like, but enough to get by, and we have enough of a routine now that getting ordinary "life" stuff done doesn't require superhuman effort any more. Hence this long-delayed blog post. Much more about Chiara - and maybe the occasional other subject - will follow.
There's a link to lots of photos over on the right.
One of the other things people ask, once they see the pictures, is "does she have red hair?" It's too soon really to know. She has light-colored hair and eyebrows with a little bit of brown that can be slightly coppery in the right light. But I was born blond (and am definitely not so now), and Kristiana was too (and still is), so my best guess is that Chiara will start out with light-colored hair but probably not actually red.
The other question people ask - about her, before they get to the questions for us, like are we getting any sleep - is where her name came from. Well, Kristiana and I each kept our names when we married, and we decided Chiara would be a Kincaid. And Chiara (pronounced with a hard C, like key-ara) is an Italian name (not that either of us is Italian), one we thought was pretty. It met the criteria of being a little unusual without being a completely strange and unheard-of. In fact our local newborn resource center knows of another local Chiara being born just a few weeks behind ours. I hope it's not the start of a trend, because I rather hoped the name would remain a little uncommon. As for Alexeika, there is always an Alex somewhere in my family tree, so this was a way to give a nod to my family as well as Kristiana's, though again with an unusual name.
Chiara will be four weeks old this Friday. We've spent all our waking hours, and many of our sleeping ones, with her, so it feels like much longer. She's as perfect a baby as you could wish for - healthy in every respect, only crying when needful (well, more or less), sleeping pretty well at night (four or five hours at a time until she's hungry again), and nicely alert when she's not sleeping.
As for the other two of us, we're doing fairly well. We're not getting as much sleep as we'd like, but enough to get by, and we have enough of a routine now that getting ordinary "life" stuff done doesn't require superhuman effort any more. Hence this long-delayed blog post. Much more about Chiara - and maybe the occasional other subject - will follow.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
There WILL be a baby by the weekend
As you know, we're officially overdue.
From our OB visit on Monday, it's been determined that the baby is still doing fine, but things don't seem to be moving along as the doctors would like. It seems that after 40 weeks, the tendency is for the placenta to start to calcify. Also, less water around the baby can be problematic. In our situation, both are happening. As a result, if Robin doesn't make her appearance on her own this week, we are scheduled to enter the hospital Thursday night to start the process, and be induced on Friday morning.
So. There will be a baby by the weekend.
We're actually rather amused that our baby might be born on Friday the 13th. It almost seems a moral imperative to to go find some Goth babywear, although I think that most of the options at babygoth.com may be more than is strictly necessary to match our level of amusement -- but I will say that their Roswell and Bunny Bones t-shirts are pretty funny (and I think we'll skip the Living Dead Dolls altogether).
I am happy to say, however, that our nursery is finally complete. Here you will *finally* see the new rocking chair, whose textiles just arrived today; the bassinet and changing table you have seen before, all organized and ready for baby changing; and the lovely new curtains for the closet, courtesy of mom-in-law/Grandma-to-be Rosemary, and her friend Gina. I think that the effect is cozy, but organized -- at least it is at the moment!
I guess we're ready....Really ready....Did I mention we were ready?
Kristiana Kincaid
415.990.5123
Sent from my iPhone
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Our Due Date Has Arrived. The Baby Hasn't.
As many of you have been asking, where's the baby already?
We wish we knew, and hope she decides to make her appearance soon.
We had an OB appointment yesterday and it looks like things are moving along properly. Unfortunately, they are also moving along slowly. The OB performed a procedure meant to help the process along, but whether or not it works will require another 48 hours to determine.
No other real news on the homefront -- I've been instructed to walk as much as possible (ow), I slept most of today, and otherwise, generally, I'm doing okay. Michael is running errands, had the house cleaned, and is doing small projects around the house while we still have the wherewithal to complete small projects.
The only other planning-related news we've got to share is about the carseat situation.... I don't think I relayed yet just how much of a learning process it turned out to be.
To start with, we finally got our appointment with the firefighter who went through either a 40- or 80-hour training course for dealing with carseats. Seriously. Scott, with Mountain View Fire Station 4, was impressively knowledgeable about what we could or could not do to implement the carseat bases in the backs of our Volvos. Michael ended up with sore knees from repeatedly repositioning the base in my car, which despite having the Latch system did not have it available in the center rear seat, where baby is safest. That meant that instead of being able to use the nice little latch thingys to pin down the base, instead we had to use the tie-fighter-shaped attachment with the seatbelt. And then we determined that the angle was still too steep for safety, and so the whole thing had to be taken apart and repositioned repeatedly.... well, you get the idea. We had no clue it would be that challenging to install a carseat. In a 2005 Volvo.
Ironically, Michael's Volvo, which predates the Latch system, came with these neat switches right on the seatbelt attachment itself -- when the switch was moved to a certain position, it would snug up and not let go, which meant that his seat base was ready in about 5 minutes. Mine took more like an hour. But at the bottom line -- we have both cars with seat bases solidly in place and ready to provide safe transport for our little one.
Our birth plan is complete; our bags are packed. We'll let you know when we have something more interesting to share.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
It's beginning to look a bit like a nursery
Thanks ever-so-much to coworker Josh Adlin, who came to help us assemble the bassinet on Sunday (FYI - that's Threepwood in the bassinet, not Josh). With Josh, we don't have to worry about compensation -- we just feed him and he's happy.
Threep, on the other hand, helps out for bear hugs. So far we've used him to demonstrate or figure out the car seat, the bassinet, the changing table, and the somewhat confusing (but very comfortable) Baby Bjorn infant carrier. Threep is very helpful because he's just about the size of a newborn, but fortunately without the weight of one.
We're technically in the home stretch now -- Robin's now considered "full term" and could decide to show up any day. I alternate between hoping she shows up soon and hoping that we have time to finish a few more things around the house before she does. My energy is virtually nonexistent these days, so finding the wherewithal to actually *do* the work around the house is challenging. You can see my problem.
When he's not assembling nursery furniture, Michael is keeping busy with the long-awaited Cave Project. He's pulled an amazing number of cables and old equipment out of that room, and now there's just some bookcase rearranging that needs to be completed. His plan is to have enough room for baby to sleep/bounce around in the same room while he works. Being self-employed seems to agree with him!
So we're waiting for the rocking chair (the one they shipped us turned out to have the wrong textiles) to arrive, and I've got curtains to iron/hem (Ikea) whenever I can manage to parse the instructions. We're also waiting to hear back from the nice firefighter at Station 4 who will tell us if we've managed to install our infant car seats correctly. I'm not really optimistic that I have, but I've been wrong before.
Over the next week or so, I'm working through some final training/updates with my team, attending weekly doctor appointments, and going to baby-prep classes. Effective yesterday, I'm officially on maternity leave! Now when I have to collapse in the middle of the afternoon, I don't feel guilty about it...
And that's all the news from Lake Woebegone, at least for the moment.
Kristiana Kincaid
415.990.5123
Sent from my iPhone
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Robin News: Who would have thought diapers would be so complicated?
Today we have come home with a ton of washing to do. Yes, that entire bag is filled with diapers, and diaper paraphenalia.
Who would have thought that diapering.... or rather diapering _systems_ would be so complicated?
We just spent an hour and a half considering cloth diapering options with Sara, our local distributer of Fuzzi Bunz (www.fuzzibunz.com) and other cloth diaper alternatives. Even after spending considerable time on Sara's website and others devoted to The Cloth Diaper, it was still rather overwhelming to find out just how many options are out there. You can have standard cloth diapers with plastic pant covers on the cheap end, "all in one" diapers on the high end (read you don't have to stuff them with extra padding), and "pocket" diapers that are only good for one changing, but have the benefit of being stuffable so that you can ostensibly go for longer periods without changing the diaper. Unless, of course, the baby poops (and as I'm sure you've heard, Everyone Poops), in which case all bets are off, and so is the diaper.
After much consideration, we finally settled on a mix of options -- velcro-closing small pocket diapers both for early days and I'm-too-tired-to-find-snaps changes, and Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers for when parents are slightly more awake to deal with snaps, baby gets old enough that she figures out how to disconnect the velcro, and/or baby wants to be colorful. Trust me, these are very vivid diapers -- and -- hurray -- not a pink or orange one in the bunch!
We also went with a handful of highly absorbent hemp liners, which when used in conjunction with the microfiber liners can help to prevent 2am changings in addition to the feeding you're probably doing. Prior to using these or the burping cloths we bought, however, we apparently have to wash them about 6 times to get all of the oils out. So... we've got a lot of washing to do. Good thing we're starting now.
In other news:
We finally cleared out the spare bedroom last weekend, gifting the box spring and frame to some new neighbors and the mattress to Santa Clara County Recycling. Now it's just a matter of shuffling furniture, hanging blackout curtains and drapes, and organizing baby stuff. Or so we hope.
We now have a membership at Day One Center (www.dayonecenter.com), which is essentially a one-stop shop for all baby and parenting needs. One of the trainers at Axis (our gym) does post-natal mom-and-baby classes, and as a new mom herself, she highly recommended it. We have our first class a week from today to find out just how nervous we should be about childbirth. Goody.
The bassinet/crib contraption is due to arrive sometime this week, so I guess we've got some assembly to do in addition to laundry!
That's the news that's mostly fit to print these days. Hope all is well. Robin kicks and squirms hello.
Repeatedly.
Kristiana & Michael
Kristiana Kincaid
415.990.5123
Sent from my iPhone
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Kristiana's father is in town
Quick visit, just for the day. Lunch at Cascal, dinner at Zibbibo, and a nap in between. I'm still sick, so I needed that nap.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Our first baby tool has arrived
Despite the fact that Michael was a bit under the weather, and Robin protested that I was sitting on the floor, we managed to assemble our first-to-arrive key baby tool -- the Stokke Xplory.
You see it here assembled with the "newborn" setup -- that's a pretty sizeable carry cot meant for babies 0-6months. Then we switch to Phase 2, which has a different seat and makes the Xplory look a lot more like a traditional stroller -- except that baby can be facing us OR facing away, AND be at waist height, rather than low like a traditional stroller. No bending awkwardly to lift is always a good thing, IMHO.
So far, the main drawback to the Xplory are mainly that the machinations of those Clever Norwegians will take awhile to understand. Perhaps because we've been sick... but we will have a learning curve here. Of course, I believe that this is true, to a certain extent, with most strollers.
In the plus department, once things ARE assembled and you've figured out how to attach, move, adjust, etc., it's ridiculously easy to do so. The stroller moves extremely smoothly. And the textiles are WONDERFUL against your skin -- incredibly soft. They also include the cute baby blanket, color-coordinated to your textiles....
We're looking forward to having a small person to put in the stroller.
Love,
Kristiana & Michael
Kristiana Kincaid
415.990.5123
Sent from my iPhone
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Destination coffee
And more significantly, destination espresso.
Intelligentsia Coffee has been on my radar for a long time, but I've never managed a visit until now. Several years ago Kristiana and I were in Napa overnight, and my morning wanderings took me to a bakery that also stocked a few gourmet items, among them bags of Intelligentsia Black Cat espresso blend. You didn't have to be a coffee expert - I certainly wasn't - to know that these beans were magic. One squeeze of the bag and one stiff told you. The bakery couldn't pull a decent shot, and I wasn't able to brew anything exceptional from them at home (I didn't have any espresso equipment then), but there was no question that Black Cat was the work of people who truly, truly loved espresso.
Unfortunately Intelligentsia is located in Chicago, a city with lots to offer but which I never seem to find occasion to visit. For a few weeks last year it looked as if 2008's headphone audiophilia conference would be in Chicago, and that would have made a good focal point for a visit, but ultimately it was moved to Florida - the right decision for the meet (the Florida gang have the bench strength to pull it off brilliantly while the Chicago cabal's leadership was, uh, less clearly demonstrated), but making it less interesting to me.
So I didn't know when I would make it to Intelligentsia. Then, Intelligentsia came to California. Just one, in LA.
The recently-opened shop is on Sunset, in the hipster-heavy stretch known as Silverlake. It's where to shop for 50's retropolitan furnishings and decor. And it's where my friend Maggie lives. In fact, Intelligentsia is right next door to the cheese shop we've walked to together on more than one previous visit.
Maggie is a best friend from business school, and I'm down here this weekend because a small dinner she was having with another b-school best friend grew by another b-school best friend, and then another, so that I could not stay away, not with Robin on the way and future opportunities for travel looking pretty distant. So I flew in on Saturday and will fly home tonight. In between, we're sandwiching some database design for Maggie's business, some IT support for Maggie's computers at home, cooking dinner, the party itself, some IT support for two of Jon's computers, meeting up with a friend from online over in Santa Monica, a visit to the new wing of LACMA, a couple of superb lunches, and of course visits to Intelligentsia. Good espresso is certainly a suitable power source for a weekend like this.
At my routine haunt Caffe del Doge in Palo Alto, each espresso comes with a brown sugar cube. At Barefoot, my weekend destination in Santa Clara, a tiny almond cookie. A favorite Italian deli off Piccadilly Circus serves espresso with a twist of lemon peel - this is a favorite for me - and Flying Goat in Healdsburg tucks a little cube of chocolate onto the saucer. Intelligentsia gives you a shotglass of sparkling water, pulled from a soda-fountain style tap on the counter. I wasn't expecting this, but it's a nice chaser after a shot.
As for the shot itself, Intelligentsia's is now my personal reference: the best I've ever had. It is small, thick, and heavily laden with true crema (not just foam) just like the ones from Barefoot - but I honestly like Intelligentsia's blend better than any of Barefoot's.
Sorry, I'm going on in too much detail. To sum up, wow. It was just fantastic stuff. I'd tried to limit my expectations on the way over, sure that a big mental buildup would lead to disappointment. There was no need.
Post-espresso we returned to the house and got started with party prep. Friends began arriving at five or six, and the socializing (http://www.flickr.com/photos/11709446@N00/sets/72157604212147028/) continued until just about midnight.
I'm a morning person and almost always wake up pretty early no matter what time I get to bed. So before Maggie was even up, I was on my way back to Intelligentsia for my morning shot. Two shots, actually, which will surely cost me some sleep tonight, but I don't know when I'll be in LA again.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Robin Waves Hello
Hello Friends and Family -
Mom-to-be is still sick with the flu, so today turned out to be Doctor Visits Day. I saw my GP to get antibiotics, then did my gestational diabetes/glucose test, then managed to get in a checkup and ultrasound of Robin. After this ultrasound, we're still thinking "she" -- so here "she" is looking out at you. She waved, too.
Besides the fact that I'm sick, Robin is doing fine - moving a lot (!!), with a strong heartbeat. She's apparently not large for her stage of development, 29 weeks (which is borne out by my lack of baby weight), so hurray. Mom, on the other hand, is really wishing for some antihistamines. Antibiotics will have to do.
Now that we're back in the US after a three-week trip to the UK and Ireland (Apple business trip, for the most part), Michael and I have (finally) started shopping for baby paraphernalia, which is overwhelming simply because there's so much of it to keep track of. We've lost our first couple of Craigslist postings and EBay auctions for some of the key items we want/need (we've decided on crib, stroller, and changing table by fabulous Norwegian company Stokke, www.stokkeusa.com), but we're keeping our eyes open for the next opportunity. Funny how two months (well, eleven weeks) really doesn't seem like much time to plan, but it's what we've got left, so we'll make the best of it. Recommendations for the things new parents simply can't live without will be much appreciated, so send those suggestions our way.
That's the news from Mountain View, where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children (born and unborn) are above average. Now I'm....we're going back to bed.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Saturday, March 08, 2008
The roaring fires
Scattered around Virgin's lounge at Heathrow are only video - but they go a surprising way towards making the modernist environment feel cozy and homey.
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