Week 38: Valentine's Day, A New First Month Nanny, and Dilation

Valentine's Day

We celebrated our last Valentine's Day as a couple of two at Fleming's Steakhouse (and ran into some friends there, who are also expecting!). I keep getting told that we need to savor our last days by eating at nice restaurants and watching movies in theaters so we were more than happy to indulge in that advice from our more seasoned parent friends. Jeff enjoyed a tasty rib eye steak while I had a delightful Chilean sea bass. I am always the weirdo that gets seafood at a steakhouse. Of course, I never say no to a chocolate lava cake. :)

A New First Month Nanny

We found a new nanny for the first month! She was fully willing to share all her medical records with us and get vaccinated, so I'm feeling much better about her. This whole situation has made me feel so vulnerable and makes me wonder how anyone is ever able to find reliable care that they can trust. At least with this first month nanny, she will never be completely alone with our baby so I feel okay that I can supervise and make sure things are getting done the right way.

Dilation

I found out during my checkup this week that I'm 3 cm dilated! My doctor says that she would be very surprised if I went past my due date at this point. I'm excited that I managed to get to 3 cm without having to suffer through any contractions and I'm only 2 cm away from justifying the need for an epidural. We're this much closer to meeting Lucas face to face! :)

Girl's Day Out Recap

Katie's girl's day out was a huge success! She didn't know what we had planned for the day so every time we got into the car, she looked for clues to figure out where we were headed. She admitted to being nervous so we took advantage of that by teasing her that strippers were an integral part of the day's activities (spoiler alert: we lied, they never showed up...hehe).

The bridesmaids plus Katie started the day with brunch at Cafe Borrone. I knew there would be much more gluttony later on in the day so I opted for a delicious, healthy-ish salad with avocado, blood oranges, and walnuts. Most of the time, I get the French dip sandwich or Belgian waffles with berries here.

From there, we picked up the rest of the girls and headed to Dry Bar. I asked for the Cosmo blowout and ended up looking like Shirley Temple...huge fail! The stylist insisted on tighter curls because they would relax throughout the day. That never happened, even though she didn't add any product...oh well. This was still a fun activity though! But you can't really chat with your friends during the styling since it's really loud and they can't guarantee that groups can sit together. 

Afterwards, we headed to La Jolie for pedicures. We were super early, since I added in lots of buffer time between appointments, just in case. You just never know with a large group! Luckily, La Jolie was gracious enough to let us lounge in the front with some champagne and soda until it was our turn. 

Once our feet were properly pedicured, we headed over to Village Pub for dinner. My scallops were fairly light so I had plenty of room for my favorite dessert - their chocolate souffle! Better than Alexander's and Cafe Jacqueline's, in my humble opinion. 

After dinner, we went back to Donna's house for some scrapbooking, gifts, and more dessert. It was super tame but we all had a lot of fun chatting late into the night. :) Katie said she had a great time, despite (or because of?) the lack of scandalous activities. Of course I'm biased, but I'd like to think this was a pretty well-planned day. Catching up with girlfriends while getting pampered is the best - we need to schedule these more often!

Housing Must-Haves

Jeff and I hate watching the show House Hunters because we get too envious of how much they can buy with relatively small budgets! Understandably, the show needs to be relatable for the majority of the country and the high cost of living we deal with in NorCal is not relatable to most of them. On the flip side, I can't relate to most of them because I've only lived in high cost areas my whole life (New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley).

When we think about the type of home we will need for the next 10 years, here are the must-haves:

• Mostly move-in ready - Good contractors are hard to come by in this area. With the housing boom, they're busier than ever and won't necessarily have time for renovations that aren't worth their while. Sometimes a home is perfectly move-in ready but just not quite our style - I'd find a way to deal with it, as long as it wasn't dirty, worn, or falling apart.
• Short commute to work - "Short" is rather relative but ideally less than 30 minutes in rush hour. Life is too short to spend sitting in traffic!
• Good school district - Our parents did everything they could to provide us with great education, and we hope to pass that onto our children.
• Good location - We're light sleepers so we can't live next to major streets, freeways, or under flight paths. Sadly, a lot of the more affordable, newer housing is situated in one of the aforementioned places. 

If we're being truly honest, even our "must-have" list is a stretch for the Bay Area, despite our DINK budget. Jeff and I are constantly discussing which of these items we're willing to forgo. I think the first would be commute length, followed by move-in readiness. I'm so envious of people who live in areas where affordable housing doesn't mean having to make these kind of tradeoffs. We have talked about how if/when kids happen, we will need to have some honest conversations to see if we should stay in the Bay Area or move to a more affordable city. While I'd hate to give up all the amazing things we have here, it's also exciting to think that new changes and adventures still await us. In the meantime, we'll continue to enjoy living it up in NorCal!

A view from Twin Peaks, San Francisco

Planning a Girl's Day Out

I mentioned earlier this week that I'm in the midst of planning a celebration for Katie, who's getting married later this year. She didn't want a shower or bachelorette so we had to get around it by designating this as a "Girl's Day Out" that just happened to be before the wedding. :) All kidding aside, I think this is more aligned with what she wanted, as she wasn't interested in the typical bachelorette shenanigans or shower games.

We have approximately 7-8 girls in our group, which I think is just right. A large enough group to feel fun and festive, but not so large that we're unwieldy and impossible to manage. Here's what the tentative schedule looks like:

1:00pm: Blowouts at Dry Bar 
I've been to Dry Bar with a friend before and it was awesome! It's a nice way to feel pampered while bonding with your girlfriends.

(Photo credit: Dry Bar)

3:30pm: Pedicures at La Jolie
One of the other bridesmaids recommended La Jolie. The pictures look lovely - definitely better than the usual places I go to for a quick, cheap pedicure. While those cheaper places are great, they don't quite give off the pampered, relaxed vibe we're trying to spoil Katie with. :)

(Photo credit: La Jolie)

5:30pm: Dinner at Village Pub
Village Pub is one of my favorite restaurants in the area - and the Michelin guide clearly agrees with me. :) The menu frequently changes but luckily, their delicious chocolate souffle with earl grey creme anglais is a pretty consistent staple on their dessert menu. This is a great restaurant for celebrating special occasions.

8:00pm: Cake / tea / gifts / scrapbooking

After dinner, we'll be heading to one of the girl's houses for some scrapbooking so that Katie will have a memento of the day. Truth be told, I have never scrapbooked before so I'm not sure how this will go - thank goodness someone else will be heading up this activity! We're also planning to have some tea with burnt almond cake (her favorite!) as we "shower" her with gifts to end the day. Even though she didn't want a typical shower, I wasn't going to stop her generous friends from buying her gifts. I'm thinking about getting her the awesome cake pop and donut hole maker that I got from our White Elephant - she actually brought the gift but admitted that she considered keeping it for herself! So I won't win any points for effort or originality...but at least I remembered? :)

There were tons of other good ideas we all came  up with for the day:

• Hot tub rooms: I've heard good things about the Palo Alto Watercourse Way and the rates are super reasonable. Unfortunately, we have a pregnant mom in our group and some others that aren't crazy about hot tubs.
• Group cooking classes: We tried looking for a reputable cooking class that wasn't super expensive - unfortunately, these don't seem to exist! I'm just not interested in paying $100+ to cook one meal - at that price, I'd much rather have someone else do all the cooking and cleaning for me. We did get some reasonable quotes for group cooking lessons on thumbtack.com but we weren't sure if the instructors were any good. Plus, most of these instructors don't provide the venue and none of us have houses with kitchens that are big enough for 8 of us to cook in at the same time. 
• Pole dancing class: I've heard lots of good things about these types of classes. Katie has already done that before but if she hadn't, I would have looked into this some more.
• Group yoga class: Katie enjoys yoga so this could have been a fun option. It's too bad one of our favorite yoga instructors is out on maternity leave right now! I imagine we could have practiced outdoors in the park somewhere if we couldn't find an indoor space large enough.

I'm super excited that we were able to throw this together within 3 days! Crossing my fingers that everything turns out well.

Food recap dessert edition: ShareTea, Village Pub, and more

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big dessert fan! I'm always trying to balance out my health goals with my sweet tooth. I don't always succeed but I am trying to get better about saving up my calories for the desserts that I find really worth it. Here are a few that fall into that category:

ShareTea
I'll start with the dessert that is basically my fifth food group and probably deserves a post all on its own - bubble tea! I don't call it boba because I find that disrespectful to women. Plus, I usually skip the pearls to limit my carb intake. I was ecstatic when ShareTea opened up in San Mateo last year - it's one of the few authentic Taiwanese chains in the Bay Area. My absolute favorite flavor there is the passion fruit grapefruit orange green tea. Other notable items - grapefruit green tea, black tea creama, and classic milk tea. Their drinks tend to be really sweet so I always ask for less sugar. I've had friends tease me for being like the person that thinks ordering diet coke will counteract the super sized Big Mac value meal I'm inhaling with it. *Sigh*...every little bit helps?

Village Pub
The Village Pub is a delicious Michelin-rated restaurant in Woodside. I've never had a bad meal here and I absolutely love their chocolate souffle with earl grey creme anglais. This is one of my favorite chocolate souffles of all time!

Paris Baguette
Paris Baguette has amazing chiffon cakes that are light, fluffy, and not too sweet (a big pet peeve of most Asian dessert palates!). My pick is always blueberry flavor. Here is the cake we got for Jeff's birthday this year. Don't worry it wasn't just the two of us - we shared with a group of great friends. :)

Lei Garden
Lei Garden in Cupertino is my favorite dimsum place in the South Bay these days. The usual dimsum staples are great here but it's their creative dishes that make them stand out. Below is a sesame mochi tart with a pineapple bun crust topping that's a must-have every time we come here.