Oy.

The burst of nesting energy has fizzled out and I am anchored into my house. LB continues to sleep in and gain weight, and as each day passes my capacity to move around diminishes more and more. I’ve gotten to the point where errands are out (Shuie and Yonah did the grocery shopping this morning) and my itinerary has become pathetically empty. In desperation, I have called a slew of friends to come and visit me and it looks like we have three on the roster for today.

Tomorrow night is a full moon, which is prime baby time. I was born on a full moon myself, so here’s hoping something exciting happens.

Of my few choice obsessions, perhaps the dearest to my heart is my love affair with Kate Winslet. I should clarify that I am not one of those people to jump on the “Kate Rules” bandwagon that has gained momentum in the past couple of years. Heaven forbid. Anyone close to me will attest that I have been a bona-fide, die hard fan for almost fifteen years now. I could go on and on about how amazing she is in all of her movies, how genuine a person she is, and how freakin’ gorgeous she is, but I’ll save you the nausea and instead just say that Kate and I have a very special relationship; she just doesn’t about it. Yet.

Anyway, my girl Kate has jumped on the “food activism” bandwagon by narrating this short German documentary about the atrocious treatment of ducks to make foie gras, keeping them confined and force-feeding them starch and fat to enlarge their livers. The awfulness is on par with all the mistreatment of animals I’ve been reading (and writing) about here in the States. While Foie Gras consumption is not exactly what I’d call a huge problem in America — we’ve got enough of a headache dealing with Chicken McNuggets — in France it’s as ever-present as, well, cigarette smoke and the stink-eye (and I mean that in the best way). I’ve actually been to the Foie Gras capital of the world, a tiny little town called Sarlat, where off the main square there are cute little copper statues of a mommy duck and a couple of her ducklings trailing behind. I guess adding the force-feeding tube wouldn’t have worked so much, aesthetically.

So, among the many reasons I have to be in love with Kate, now I have one more. Not only can she raise two kids and consistently turn out Oscar-worthy performances, Kate Winslet is saving the world, one duck at a time.

All I have to say is, God Bless Jamie Oliver.

I finally got around to watching his show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”, in which he spends 3 months in Huntington, West Virginia (the most unhealthy town in the U.S., according to the Center for Disease Control) and attempts to teach people how to eat properly. After a smashing success getting schools in England to trash the processed food and start feeding kids fresh stuff, Jamie wants to spread the message on this side of the pond. I was SO relieved to see something like this going on; having been a teacher myself, I have seen the kind of crap kids are being fed in schools — I use the word “crap” specifically, since much of it can’t technically be categorized as “food” — and even the kind of crap that PARENTS are sending in the lunch boxes. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: No one, especially kids, should eat anything florescent. So, hooray for celebrities that are actually using their star power to help humanity. Now to cut through all the USDA’s red tape…

My due date has come and gone and LB is still sleeping in. I still have another couple of weeks until I’m considered “post-term” so I’m not too concerned, but I am so freakin’ pregnant I should lease myself out to one of those “wide load” trucking companies. So that I don’t obsess about this baby not coming, I’ve been obsessively cleaning and baking, fearful that I’ll go into labor with a messy house and nothing to eat. The problem with that is, I live with two men, one of whom it 20 months old and trails messes wherever he goes. The other plows through my muffins like he’s trying to break a record for highest number of muffins eaten in a 15-minute period. Ah well, at least it’s keeping me busy…

Since I will be transforming into the “Dairy Queen” pretty soon, I am looking for book recommendations to keep me occupied while LB is in chow mode. Send ‘em along if you’ve got ‘em.

If Yonah had any hankering to become some kind of water-based superhero, those aspirations were drowned by our visit to our friend Shari’s the other day. I love visiting Shari for a number of reasons. Besides her company, of course, she has three fantastic kids in their early teens who are happy to entertain Yonah, leaving Shari and I to chat like actual grown-ups. She also has a big, beautiful house in Osterville, a neighborhood I drive through with my mouth literally hanging open. I have never seen such gorgeous homes; they make me giddy, like a bottle of champagne uncorked in my belly.

This, by the way, is an aspect of what I like to call “House Envy”, the female counterpart to Freud’s pathological “Envy” unique to the male sex, relating to a certain part of their anatomy. While men constantly compare their physical attributes, women tend to compete more in the arena of marble countertops and stainless steel appliances.

Anyway, in the back of Shari’s house is a sprawling yard and an olympic-sized pool, which these days is still covered with a winter tarp. After throwing the dirt from her garden onto the patio, Yonah took a keen interest in the big green “thing” on the ground. He took a tentative step onto it (with me running up closely behind), and then another, at which point the tarp dipped down and up sprung a HUGE puddle of water. Yonah was soaked! He was also a little shaken up, but was over it in about 30 seconds, after I had scooped him up, brought him inside and stripped him. He got to spend the next couple of hours running around in an oversized T-shirt while his clothes went through the dryer. Although all ended happily, I’m pretty sure Yonah won’t be trying out for the swim team anytime soon.

So I guess I’m going to be pregnant for the rest of my life.

I really thought this weekend was going to be it. I figured I’d go into labor over Shabbos and we’d call everyone Saturday night and say, “Surprise! Baby’s Here!”. Not so much.

I know I’m only officially 39 weeks but I’m getting antsy. I suppose this is a good sign — according to my Aunt Renee, the more miserable you are, the closer you are to giving birth — but it’s still a drag waiting for this kid to show up. I think LB and I need to have a little talk about “consideration for others”. I mean, it’s just discourteous, like hitting the snooze button over and over again while the rest of the family is waiting in the car.

We are looking at another not-so-manic, newborn-free Monday and Yonah and I don’t have much going on, aside from trashing the living room, although that’s subject to change since Yonah is getting really tired of picking up after me. We’ll probably take a walk, weather permitting, hit the library for some new books and not eat batteries.

Pray for me, people. I need some patience and serenity today. In two weeks or less when LB is here, I will long for this lull time like a drowning person longs for oxygen, so I’m going to try to enjoy it.

It is a rare occasion indeed that I will sit down and watch television. I used to be a total TV addict, but after working in L.A., every time I turn on the tube I always think of the network execs who sit around the boardroom table, batting around ideas for shows. Based on the crap I see produced, it’s clear that they must think I, and the rest of America, are complete idiots. This makes me angry, so I don’t watch T.V. anymore.

However, there is one show that, despite my antipathy, I always enjoy watching: Iron Chef. I’ve been watching the show since its early days in Japan, but a couple of years ago the Food Network picked it up and made their own version for American audiences. For those of you who haven’t seen the show, two accomplished chefs are presented with a secret ingredient and then have an hour to create a multi-course meal featuring that that ingredient in every dish (example: grapes). Being someone who loves cooking, I love watching the chefs at work; the things they come up with are absolutely amazing. Being a food addict, the show is what I affectionately term “Food Porn”. Considering the multitude of foods I am unable to eat, an hour in front of “Iron Chef” is a good as a hit of crack. But that’s just me.

Anyway, Shuie and I watched the American version of the show last night and it was just as mouth-watering as ever. But while I was indulging in food fantasies I was also cracking up at how dramatic they make the show. Spotlights, dramatic music, intense close-ups and spirited commentary (think the last two minutes of a basketball game); it makes you feel like the person who loses is going to be taken outside the studio and shot. By the end, I wanted to rename the show, “Cook for your LIFE!”.

This, by the way, is the essence of American entertainment. Everything is the biggest DRAMA. I can’t help but wonder if maybe that’s why a significant number of women are terrified of giving birth; you watch an episode of “A Baby Story” and it looks like they’re in the middle of a war zone. Turn on the news and they’ll tell you a kitchen fire is really a massive meteor coming to destroy the planet. I don’t know about you, but I find real life dramatic enough; I don’t need manufactured drama to make me crazier than I already am.

That said, it’s time to make Shabbos dinner.

When I was fourteen and the throes of my first real celebrity crush (Leonardo DiCaprio in “Romeo and Juliet”), I asked my mother who got her heart doing jumping jacks when she was my age. She didn’t have to think twice. “Paul McCartney,” she said, smiling to herself. Thus was a love affair with The Beatles passed from one generation to the next.

Mom bought me a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (her favorite of their albums), and after I’d listened to it enough times to stamp in on my DNA, I moved on to explore the rest of their music. My favorite of their albums is “Abbey Road” (though “Revolver” is a very close second); it was their last together as a band and, I think, their most epic. “Golden Slumbers” is one of the most beautiful songs on the album, and one of my all-time favorite Beatles tunes. So, as an homage to Mom, I decided to record it. Happy Listening!

It’s been a while, but I somehow managed to get a little time to myself to record some music the other day. This song is an original called, “Lap of an Angel”. I actually wrote it a while back, right after I found out I was pregnant with Yonah. It’s based on a passage in the Talmud that talks about when a child is in the womb. As they grow, an angel teaches them the entire Torah, and in turn the truth about the world. Right before the baby is born, the angel taps it right above the lips and they forget everything (hence the little groove between your nose and lips). The baby spends its life re-discovering the truth it already knows.

I find this story empowering because it reminds me that everything I need to know I already have somewhere inside; all I need to do is turn down the noise long enough to be able to hear it. It also lends me some humility as a parent, knowing that my kid(s) probably have a lot more to teach me than I have to teach them. Enjoy!

There is a phase of pregnancy that typically occurs in the final weeks before the birth known as “nesting”. During this time, the expectant mother enjoys a burst of energy which she uses to prepare her home for the new baby. Considering that I’ve spent the last few days cleaning out the house, vaccuming and mopping floors, flipping load after load of laundry, putting together the bassinet and arranging baby clothes, stocking up on birth supplies and doing prep cooking and shopping for the weeks, post-baby, when I’m out of commission, I think we can safely conclude that I am, in fact, nesting.

That said, after a vigorous mopping of almost the entire upstairs, L.B. has decided to hunker down in my pelvis, making me feel like a steamship that just released anchor. So, I’m taking a little breather while Yonah wanders around, chattering like a monkey in a constant stream of toddlerized monologue. For the most part, he sounds like a meeting of the U.N. without the interpreter speaking underneath, but once in a while he’ll throw in some choice English phrases: “Mama”, “Tata” (Shuie), “Mina” (Sima Ellie), “Wadee” (water), “Peh-too” (pretzel), “Oh, Wow!”, “Uh-Oh”, “A, B, C, A, B, C” and my personal favorite… “Eight, Nine, Ten…Yay!”. Who needs TV when you’ve got Yonah?

My midwives Becca and Amanda are coming by today to do an official “homebirth visit”, even though they’ve both been here already and we’ve pretty much covered all the basics. The plan at this point is for me to labor in the tub for as long as I want, though in the throes of it I may decide I’m more comfortable someplace else. The interesting thing about planning a homebirth is that there are so many unknowns: how and where I’ll handle labor, where the baby will actually be born, how the first few days will be, etc. While I don’t actually want a hospital birth, one thing I will say for their set-up is that you pretty much know what to expect. In my case, I’ll plan as much as I can and the rest I’ll have to let go until it’s time.

One thing floating around my busy brain is whether or not I would be able to spend six hours a week this June taking one of the most formidable of nursing prerequisites, Statistics, at Cape Cod Community College. While I would like to get it out of the way, whenever I think of it I remember what Elana, my tutor in Israel, told me about mothers with young children: for the few years they are in the thick of raising their little people, mothers’ I.Q.s go down significantly, but go up again when the kids are a little bit older. Knowing myself now, compared to two years ago, I have no doubt that that’s true. With that in mind I envision myself sitting in this statistics class, staring absently into space, leaking milk and drooling while the teacher from Charlie Brown drones incomprehensibly in the background. Not the most auspicious beginning for a new career. Luckily, I have until May 28th to decide, so we’ll see if I’m remotely close to having my bearings gathered by then.

I’m afraid to get out of my chair lest LB suddenly decide to make a quick entrance, but I must if I don’t want Yonah to have a meltdown for not reading him “Hop on Pop” for the umpteenth time today. And so, amongst a symphony of screaming, I leave you…

If you happen to be a muffin lover, chances are you’d love hanging around my house. Muffins happen to be my personal specialty and they are so freakin’ easy it’s a joke. I try to substitute honey for sugar and applesauce for oil or margarine to make them a little healthier; that way, I don’t feel like I’m training my kid for sugar-fiendom. Here is a foolproof Banana Muffin recipe that my husband, my sister and my son — “Moo Muppin, Mama” — put in special requests for on a regular basis.

Killer Banana Muffins:
3 or 4 Large bananas, mashed (the more bananas the moister, so I use 4)
1/2-3/4 cup white sugar or honey (depends on how sweet you like them)
1 slightly beaten egg
1/3 cup melted margarine, butter or applesauce
1 teaspoon baking soda1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt1
1/2 cups flour (I use Whole Wheat or Spelt)
OPTIONAL ADD-INS:
3/4 c chocolate chips
2/3 c. peanut butter

Mix the mashed banana, sugar, egg and margarine together. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour. Mix wet and dry ingredients all together. Pour into greased muffin tins, and bake in 350 degrees oven for approximately 20 minutes. Let cool and watch your life transform.