How to make a Mary Poppins nursery.

Part of my excitement when I found out this baby was a girl was that I can FINALLY make use of the Mary Poppins items I have been collecting through the years. I really have way more than any adult person should - including decorative plates, dolls, a lunchbox & thermos, the Mary Poppins game.... obviously all of it won't go in the baby's room, but it's there if she wants it. I still get excited when I envision the carpet bag and parrot umbrella sitting in the corner, as though the perfect nanny just stopped in as the wind changed.

The challenge of course is that any pre-designed baby nursery set obviously doesn't feature Mary Poppins. And I am certainly not the creative one among my friends - but I do have a little bit of a vision for what I want. Parcheesy is going to turn the Mary Poppins flat sheet that I won on eBay in 2000 into curtains, and I picked crib bedding that is blue striped & polka-dotted, as if to look like the Banks children's room. I was also SO excited to find (and win!) this on eBay:

Perfect for a Jolly Holiday!

I am also envisioning multiple wall plaques around the room, each featuring an important phrase from the movie: "Feed the Birds" "A Spoonful of Sugar helps the Medicine Go Down" "Have Cheery Disposition" "Play Games, all Sorts" and of course "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." This may challenge my creativity a bit... but I feel like I can do it.

I also have my Poppins movie posters and showcards... but I don't know if they will fit in. Any other suggestions to make the Mary Poppins room complete?

English Hothouse Cucumber

So at 26 weeks, the official baby length is "about the size of an English Hothouse Cucumber." How many people can actually ascertain what that means? My guess is not very many. I think that as the baby gets bigger, there are fewer and fewer vegetables to compare to so they are getting more and more obscure.

"Ragtime" closed on Saturday. It got great reviews and I got to meet so many awesome people.... but boy is it nice to have my evenings back. Shaun and I got to go out for dinner tonight, and on Monday we even started moving some furniture around to make room for baby. We're still nowhere near ready... but we'll get there.

At this morning's ultrasound, Baby M was asleep for the beginning. And I don't think she appreciated the ultrasound tech pushing around to get her to wake up, as you can see in the 4-D photos she is hiding behind the placenta, with her hand covering her face as if to say "LEAVE ME ALONE!" It seems that she has her hand over her face a lot.

Neither Shaun nor I are morning people, and neither of us appreciate being woken up. It seems that this is in fact an inherited trait.

Maybe because she felt bad for waking up the baby, the tech (Maria) gave me 12 pictures today instead of the usual 3 or 4. Some of them are hard to determine what exactly we're looking at... I particularly like the ones where you can really see her face. Or, the part of her face that isn't obscured by the placenta. She apparently is a cuddler, for she was cuddled up to the placenta the whole time.

Try to see what you can from today's pics:

THIRD Trimester

Somehow, we are in the third trimester. It doesn't seem possible, but we're here. I definitely look very pregnant.... and am definitely garnering unsolicited tummy touches at work. Oh well. I wouldn't mind if people asked. I have also started with the swollen ankles, making my legs resemble Hillary Clinton's. Not exactly pleased about that, but I'm trying to keep my feet elevated because that apparently helps. They have been better this week - this weekend (after wearing heels for 6 hours on Saturday in "Ragtime") it was particularly painful. I should be recovered just in time to do 4 more shows this weekend. Ouch just thinking about it.

This week I have my glucose test, then next week yet another ultrasound. I have to say, I feel spoiled with the number of ultrasounds I get. My friend who is just a couple of years younger than me has only had one so far.... and I'm heading in for my fifth or sixth next week. I would recommend that everyone be of advanced maternal age for the sheer number of bonus tests I get.

We finally got around to registering. I have never had great experiences at Babies R Us so was kind of dreading going there... but going on a Sunday evening was a good plan because the place was pretty much empty. We also did a small registry for stuff Babies R Us didn't have at Shaun's favorite toy store, Magic Beans. My sister provided us with a great list of "here's what you really need" and I've also gotten great advice (and great second-hand stuff!) from my fabulous friends. It made registering slightly less intimidating, and I am glad to have that checked off the list.

We were so excited to find a huge box delivered to us - a handmade rocking horse from my sister's best friend from high school's parents! It's beautiful and I can't wait to have that second room cleaned out so we can start decorating and find a spot for him. That will come in due time.... once Shaun finishes classes for the semester and we can really focus. I told you, this third trimester stuff crept up really quickly!

Not much else to report - she's kicking all the time and definitely makes her presence known. I am cultivating an appreciation for showtunes based on my music choices in the car - I wouldn't have it any other way. And Shaun is really enjoying picking stuff out for her - the "My First Fishbowl" on the Magic Beans registry is a total Daddy pick. (He is also the one who thinks that we'll be making our own baby food. I offer no guarantees.)

Stage Mother

Waaaay back in September, a friend of mine from Disney who now lives in MA posted on his Facebook page that he would be musical directing a production of "Ragtime" in Concord, MA. Having been wanting to get back into doing musical theatre, and loving this particular show, I decided to audition the first week of October. There wasn't really a principal role that I was right for, but I was excited to get cast in the Ensemble and also a few featured roles. I accepted my casting and rehearsals were set to start in January. Now... what happened between October and January?

I emailed Tom (my Disney friend) and Jules (the director) as soon as I had my doctor's appointment confirming the existence of our new addition to basically give them an out if they didn't want a pregnant person in their cast... and also to give myself an out if, having never been pregnant before, I wasn't feeling up to being in a show. They reassured me that they'd work around me if necessary and if I felt up to it, I could still be in the show.

The rehearsal commitment was Tuesday/Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons... so not that time-consuming and I ended up with a few nights off in the  midst of things because I wasn't needed for every rehearsal. Met some really nice people and things moved along swimmingly. The costumers were willing to give outfit me in elastic for my expanding waistline, and it feels good to be on stage again.

Last Saturday was our cue-to-cue rehearsal. It started at 10 am and ended at almost 9 pm. We had Sunday off, but on Monday were full into tech week, with rehearsals running every night until almost midnight. My nice, relaxed schedule was thrown for a loop (coupled by the fact that this has been a busy 2 weeks at work for me, so I couldn't take time off to make up for my lack of sleep). I honestly didn't know how I was going to make it to opening night because I was just really really drained... but we did it! The show had a very successful opening weekend (2 more weekends to go) and the crazy glut of rehearsals has ended so I actually have a few days rehearsal-free when I can actually focus on other things, including poor Shaun who has been such a trooper, what with barely seeing me for the past week.

This was also the week where the baby really started to make her presence known. I don't know if you'd call them "kicks" but it's definitely more than "flutters." She particularly enjoys letting me know she's there after one of my runs up or down the stairs of the Emerson Umbrella theatre (our entire backstage area is downstairs, so I make about 10-15 stair runs each rehearsal/performance). I wonder whether the baby,having developed the ability to hear while I was in the throes of rehearsal, will find songs from "Ragtime" soothing or incredibly irritating once she makes her arrival. I can imagine 10 years from now her hearing wisps of "New Music" or "Wheels of A Dream" and thinking "wow, that sounds vaguely familiar."

So yes, our daughter made her stage debut at a gestational age of 23 weeks. Either she's going to feel right at home in the theatre, or want to run screaming from the place, knowing that this particular activity kept her mother awake much more than usual, particularly this week. But judging from the hand to the forehead in last week's ultrasound pictures, I think this kid might already have a flair for the drama: