Enjoying it all..."while I still can"! (smirk)

Hello there, festive and faithful friends and family!

No news here, which I suppose is good news as my due date isn't officially until 12/27. I went on maternity leave last week and am loving it. For several days I went crazy, running all the last errands and buying all the remaining baby things for the nursery and layette and my hospital bag.

Since then, however, my doctor has told me to take it easy and rest, because during the final weeks it's easy for blood pressure to escalate and mine showed minor signs of doing just that at my last appointment (which was the morning after a doozie of a major errand/shopping/nesting/exertion marathon day, followed unsurprisingly by a bad night's sleep). I was relieved to hear from her, doctor's orders, that I should no longer push past my exhaustion and discomfort in my anxiety to prepare for the baby's arrival. I am now feeling much better; even my ankles and feet, which were looking like a cabbage patch kid's, look normal and unswollen after periods of rest.

So now I'm just enjoying the last gasps of free time, sleep, recreational activities, and time to myself, all of which, according to all of the Harbingers of Doom who love to give advice, is all going straight to hell in a handbasket once we have this child. Our lives as we know them, according to these gloombots, are simply going to end. As the neverending "Get your sleep while you can!"s and "Just you wait!"s continue to pour in, I am honing my Academy Award winning smile and practicing my starring line: "I'll keep that in mind, thanks" as though this is actually somehow helpful (not depressing or insulting) advice that I am thankful to have received. After 6 months of this, I figure I deserve at least 7 Oscars at this point.

Despite the initial dread and anxiety that all of this naysayer feedback aggravated, I really think I've crossed over to the other side. I'm actually really excited now, and I can laugh at all of those Eeyore types who love to tell you all the bad things but who couldn't come close to describing to you the joy of holding your own child in your arms. Of course it helps that we finally have all of the nursery furniture assembled. David did a marvelous job, and the crib and dresser/changing table look absolutely beautiful, despite the fact that the instructions appeared to have been badly translated from Sanskrit and illustrated by M.C. Escher. He has been wonderful helping around the house, carrying things and shoveling the piles of snow here in the upper midwest. He must have shoveled 3 times a day on some days this past week. We now have well over 12 inches on the ground, and the piles along our driveway are at least 3 or 4 feet tall.

Meanwhile, I have been doing loads of baby laundry, intently studying the minute differences between receiving blankets, baby blankets, cloth diapers, burp cloths, lap pads, and washcloths in an effort recognize and categorize them as I fold and organize them in the baby's closet. (Does anyone know what a lap pad is or what you use it for? I asked my brother, also a new parent, and he didn't think he had any of those and had no idea.)

In the spirit of enjoying my life as I know it "while I still can", I have been indulging my reading itch as well as my Netflix account. I finished Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls, which was quite possibly the best book of hers I've ever read. I haven't read a book that riveting in quite a while. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. I was sad when I finished it, because it was such a great escape.

My most recent read was definitely out of my usual genre rotation. It was a debauched romp through the dirty world of Hollywood fame and fortune, following the often tragic and broken life of a stunningly beautiful and brilliant woman on her rise to success. I'm not quite sure what possessed me to buy this book (and don't remember where I was or what I was thinking when I did), but I did find it moderately entertaining - sort of like my guilty pleasure of occasionally buying and reading gossip rags. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Tilly Bagshawe's Adored to anyone who didn't avidly read Cosmo and People on a regular basis, but it was okay. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

I've watched a few great movies lately too, thanks to having finally found the last Netflix movie that had come months ago but had gotten lost in a mound of paperwork. Beauty Shop was a hilarious movie with Queen Latifah as a hairstylist who quits her fancy and tedious salon job (where she is bullied by Kevin Bacon, of all people, who plays a flaming and pompous European salon owner) to open her own in a questionable part of town. I think seeing Kevin with long heavily-styled locks and speaking with a queenish Euro-affected accent was one of the biggest highlights of the movie. Not the best movie on the planet, but definitely fun. I give it 3.5 stars out of 5.

Then, upon the recommendation of my brother, who along with me is a huge Will Ferrell fan, I watched Elf. Oh my GOD. If you want to laugh so hard you cry, you need to see this movie. The plot was okay and a little bit schmaltzy in the Christmas movie genre tradition, but Ferrell completely makes the movie. His schtick is just sidesplitting. A perfect Christmas comedy to rent around this time of year. I highly recommend it! I give it 5 stars, all of them going straight to Will.

That's all for now...back to folding baby clothes!! Stay warm and safe, and have a lovely week ahead of you.

Do you hear what I hear?

This week we're doing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This represents my last full week before going on maternity leave. I'll be off until April 1st, at which point I'll come back to play Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. I'm looking forward to being off, but I'm also apprehensive. Will I go insane without the structure and fulfillment of my work, which I generally really enjoy? Yes yes, I know I'm going to be busy; I'm not a flaming idiot who thinks taking care of a newborn is going to be a cinch.

Ah well, no matter what, at least I can look forward to coming back in April. And I'm not taking all of the leave entitled to me, so if I do need more, I can take it. To tell you the truth, I'm not at all sure about anything that's about to happen to us once our son enters our lives, so I'm not really expecting to feel anything until it happens! (Very Zen of me, isn't it? Those Buddhist study and meditation group meetings at my church are coming in handy! **grin**)

So back to the Beethoven. I am thoroughly enjoying it. The soloists - Erika Sunnegardh, Gigi Mitchell-Velasco, Stuart Neill, and Andrea Silvestrelli, are incredible. They're all strong, but they also blend. I often dread that spot in the last movement when all four of them are singing at the tops of their lungs, because sometimes it sounds like four opera divas/divos seeing who can win the game of Survival of the Loudest and Widest Vibrato. Not these soloists. Man. The blend and balance was amazing and shook the entire house last night. I was particularly impressed with the bass, Andrea Silvestrelli, who we had actually heard sing one of the dragons (Fasolt) in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Ring Cycle back in 2005. I don't think I've ever heard a more powerful voice. And of course the MSO Chorus sounds incredible, powerful, and perfectly in tune. I absolutely love performing with them. They're such a fun, energized, passionate group of people. We have two more performances, tonight and tomorrow afternoon.

Anyway, so I was sitting on stage last night, thinking about how many times I've played the 9th. A lot. But somehow it stays fresh. I think as a musician, you bring your most recent life experiences to any performance, no matter how many times you've done the piece before. This time, I'm 9 months pregnant. That, let me tell you, puts an entirely different spin on things, knowing that you're not the only pair of ears in your immediate vicinity listening to all the thunderous beauty happening on stage! I was overcome with happiness thinking about how amazing it was that our little guy was listening to one of the most magnificent, majestic, spectacular pieces ever written, along with his mom who was lucky enough to be a part of it.

And then, I began thinking about all of the great pieces he's been able to hear multiple performances of since his ears were fully developed in his 4th month. That goes all the way back to my summer festival in Breckenridge! I thought it would be really neat to go back and make a list of all the performances of big orchestral pieces he's been able to hear since then:

In Breckenridge:
Copland, Fanfare for the Common Man
Stravinsky, Rite of Spring
Walton, Crown Imperial March
Liszt, Mephisto Waltz
Mozart, Sinfonia Concertante (with mommy as soloist!)
Shostakovitch Cello Concerto No. 1
Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Shostakovitch, Symphony No. 7
Dvorak, Czech Suite
Bizet, Toreador March from Carmen
Dvorak, American Suite
Verdi, Triumphal March from Aida
Saint-Saens, Concerto for Piano
Stravinsky, Scherzo a la Russe
Debussy, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Bernstein, Divertimento for Orchestra
Hummel, Trumpet Concerto
Britten, Variations on a Theme by Purcell (Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra)

(There was also a whole slew of great chamber music we did, way too much to list here.)

In Milwaukee: Since we came back to work this fall at the MSO, our little guy has been treated to multiple on-stage experiences of:

Barber, Symphony No. 1
Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 2
Mahler, Symphony No. 5
Williams, Nimbus 2000 from "Harry Potter"
Rossini, Allegro Finale from "William Tell Overture"
Grofe, "On The Trail" from Grand Canyon Suite
Copland, John Henry
Mussorgsky, Promenade (1st mvmt) from "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Williams, E.T. Flying Theme
Berlioz, Roman Carnival Overture
Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 (he heard this one a lot because we took it on tour)
Beethoven, Symphony No. 2
Higdon, Percussion Concerto
Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 4
Beethoven, Symphony No. 4
Waxman, Carmen Fantasie for Violin solo
Hanson, Symphony No. 2
Dvorak, Symphony No. 9 "New World"
Bizet, Suite No. 1 from L'Arlesienne
Ravel, "La Valse"
Lehar, "The Merry Widow" (his first opera, which he slept through along with his mom)
Sibelius, Symphony No. 2
Beethoven, Symphony No. 9
Strauss, Don Juan (which we're reading next week - the last piece I'll play before I go on leave for nearly 4 months!)

Isn't that cool? Some day, I'll be able to look back at this blog's archives and show our guy why he loves (or hates) Tchaikovsky so much. **grin** Hope you're all having a great weekend so far. It's snowing here, and the weather is supposed to get completely nasty later today - more snow, wind, falling temperatures, sleet, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes...ha ha, just kidding. Anyway, I'm glad my commute to work is just 10 minutes! :)

Hope all is well where you are! Stay warm and safe.

It's all Completely Normal!

So has everyone finally emerged from their post-Thanksgiving tryptophan-induced comas?

We had a lovely celebration with symphony friends who take "orphans" (those without family in the vicinity) into their festive home for major holidays. Because El Bambino is now taking up a significant portion of the room previously reserved for my vital organs, I was immediately stuffed, despite the fact that I had had barely anything else to eat prior to the Big Afternoon Meal (appropriately BAM, for short). Call the multi-gazillion dollar diet industry: who needs bariatric surgery when you have what's probably at this point a 7 pound kid sitting on your entire digestive tract?

I brought a sweet potato casserole and a creamed spinach dip, and David made his famed caramel pecan sticky buns (a holiday tradition in his family) and a very impressive-looking apple pie. We had a great time.

We finally finished painting the nursery! I love the yellow we picked. It's a very nice buttery, mellow yellow, warm and inviting. We did two yellow walls and two white ones, all semi-gloss which the paint guru at Lowe's assured me was the easiest to maintain and clean, therefore ideal for a small child's room. We have our crib, which was delivered last week and is still in the box. Which means we still have to put it together. According to some of the people in our class, this is about as much fun (and as easy) as going through a revolving door with 3 pairs of skis over your shoulder. I am not looking forward to it.

We also finished our childbirth education class series. We got a fancy graduation certificate with the hospital's seal and everything. We were so proud. Graduates! We did it! So apparently now, we are fully licensed and allowed to give birth. Does this make me feel better? A little. Am I still scared to death of the complete lack of control and utter pain I'm going to have to go through during delivery? You bet your 36 weeks pregnant bachache I am.

My mother wonders how she ever had kids without taking those classes; they weren't around for me or my sister, but she and my dad took one when my brother came along in the late 70's. At the end of the class she looked at my dad and said, "how in the world did we ever have the first two?!"

I have to admit, the classes were really great. Our teacher, who looked to be about my age but has already had 6 children, was excellent, and I would say that at least 95% of what we learned was completely new to me. David was there for all of the classes and even attended one I couldn't make because I was out of town. The reality of impending parenthood is still daunting, especially now that it's so close and coming straight at me head-on like a speeding freight train. I have never been around a newborn child in my life, and that is nothing short of terrifying. Truth be told, until fairly recently (4 years ago when my adorable little niece Jenna came along), babies looked like little bald aliens to me. Their sheer fragility and utter dependency really freaked me out. Everyone tells you it's different when it's your own child, and hopefully that's true. I sure hope there's some powerful parenting instinct or reflex that kicks in once the kid is out, because aside from taking care of our relatively independent cats, I have absolutely no frame of reference whatsoever for what is about to happen to us.

Which is why the classes, for me, were so helpful.

Anyway, other than that, things here are fine. The discomforts of pregnancy late in the 3rd trimester (only 4 more weeks until D-Day!) are intensifying, but, like every unpleasant, disgusting, exhausting, or bizarre thing that can happen to a pregnant woman at any time, I am learning from our many pregnancy and delivery reference tomes that it's all Completely Normal. Some of us were joking in our childbirth classes that we could make a lot of money writing a book containing every possible bizarre, horrifying, or otherwise disturbing symptom we could imagine, reassuring pregnant women that whatever they were experiencing was Completely Normal. "Oh, so your lower back is throbbing in 5/8 time, while your baby is simultaneously kicking your bladder in 3/4 time, resulting in a stimulating Stravinsky-esque counterrhythm that is keeping you up all hours of the night? And your stretch marks have changed color from simple red stripes to a lovely pattern of army green and fuschia paisley? Oh, well, of course. That amalgamation of symptoms is completely normal at 36.5 weeks pregnancy. Don't you feel so much better now, knowing that your complete discomfort and total lack of control over what's happening to your body is Completely Normal?"

We could make a lot of money.

Work is thankfully relatively low key and a wonderful distraction from the physical and emotional realities of impending motherhood. This is such a blessing. We did one of my favorite pieces of all time last week, Sibelius's 2nd Symphony. It was so blissful. I just adore Sibelius. I used to listen to my favorite recording of it, one of my favorite CD's in my collection, all the time purely for recreational purposes: Yoel Levi and The Cleveland Orchestra, Telarc label. The first movement is enough to just turn you into a big happy pile of goo; about 7 minutes into it or so, the rest of the orchestra drops out and the immense warmth of the entire brass section playing a lush chorale sweeps over you. You can almost feel the clouds opening up and basking you in sunlight.

This week we're doing 3 performances of Beethoven's 9th, and next week I have two reading sessions before I go on maternity leave. Then I'm done and don't go back to work until April 1st. Time to nest, prepare, clean, organize, do mountains of laundry, and otherwise prepare for our little guy's arrival into our home!

Happy holiday season to you all, and may the season be peaceful and joyous for you. XOXO

P.S. Because of the due date being smack dab in the middle of Christmas and New Years, we decided to not send out holiday cards, but will be mailing our annual holiday letter in the same envelope with the birth announcements in January. This will conserve tons of paper, to say nothing of immeasurable amounts of new-parent energy/sanity. :D

33 weeks and counting...

So I'm in the home stretch (not to be confused with stretch marks, which, thanks to the luxurious Body Shop Cocoa Butter Body Butter my awesome sister gave me, have been kept at bay) of my pregnancy! Thank god. Because things are getting uncomfortable.

Oh, it's all normal. I had an appt. with my doc yesterday and she said that the discomfort, shortness of breath, fatigue, and puffiness are all within the scope of an otherwise healthy pregnancy. My belly is sticking out so far now, I can no longer walk without looking like an idiot. I have to waddle like a duck. It's no joke (though I'm sure I look funny). It's just impossible to walk normally and maintain a good sense of balance when your center of gravity is so weird with the baby weight so high up in your belly. And slow...I'm sooo slow these days. That's frustrating, but I keep reminding myself that I have to take it easy.

I blew through my latest James Patterson thriller, which was great (The Fifth Horseman), and have started a delightful - and entirely appropriate! - quality chick-lit romp called Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner. It's a sort of "Sex & The City"-esque portrayal of 4 women living in Philadelphia; except that all 4 women are all married and in the last trimesters of their pregnancies! The timing of my reading this couldn't be more perfect - the stories of their backgrounds, deliveries, prenatal yoga, the challenges of taking care of a newborn, and hilarious stories of the mother in law from hell (who buys her new granddaughter a sequined tank top that says "Hottie"!! Eeew!) etc. are so engrossing and I am just eating it up. I adore this author; she is one of my favorites!

Speaking of entertainment, did any of you see the Bionic Woman this week on NBC? Man, that show is phenomenal!

The baby is doing very well and so am I, despite the routine discomforts. My blood pressure is still normal - 122/74 - for which I am eternally grateful (thanks, mom, for the good genes!). And the baby, bless his sweet little heart, still kicks and nudges and flutters often. He's started to do these somersaults that make me feel like I have a chicken rotisserie going on in my stomach. It's truly a bizarre sensation. Yesterday the doctor said his growth rate, heartbeat, and movements all sound perfectly healthy and normal, and that's what really matters.

I'll close this post with a hilarious story of recently going through airport security. I had my horn with me, of course, and it was going through the conveyor belt to get checked out. I always watch the airport staff when this is going on. This guy stops the conveyor, squints his eyes, backs up the conveyer belt again and stops it again, and looks more closely at the monitor. He looks over to his colleague, and says, "hey John, c'mere." John walks over. The guy points at the monitor. "What the hell is that?"

At which point I lose it laughing. John looks at me and asks, "is it a trumpet?" I am impressed that he even knows that it's a musical instrument and tell him it's a french horn. (It's really just called a horn in the orchestral world but most people don't know that, so you have to say "french" to make sure they know which horn specifically.) The guy behind me in line is cracking up and gives me the thumbs up and with a huge smile on his face, says, "Awesome!"

Anyway, I hope this blog post finds you all happy and healthy and enjoying a gorgeous fall day. The weather here is chilly but sunny, and the leaves are still gorgeous shades of gingery-turmeric gold and other shades of wine, burgundy, and tangerine. Just beautiful. Write back and tell me what you have planned for the weekend!

Less TV, more books and piano please

When we renovated what was previously the music studio to become the baby's room, we moved the upstairs TV down into basement storage, simply because we have a fairly small house and couldn't figure out where else to put it on the main floor. (We have a large TV in the finished rec room downstairs, so it's not like we're anti-TV or anything.)

So now, I am still watching TV, but it's very conscious, intentional watching instead of just having it on for white noise/filler like I used to before. Now I watch less than 3 hours of TV per week. I tape Law & Order SVU, The Bionic Woman, and The Women's Murder Club (based on a series of James Patterson mystery novels, which I have read and loved). Those last two shows are new this season and are fabulous. And because I tape them, I can fast forward through the ads and it only takes about 2.25 hours to watch them.

So what this means is that I have more time and brainspace to read and practice the piano!Lately I have had so much practicing to do on the horn that I haven't had much time for piano, but in a few weeks when things die down completely I am going to get the Beethoven back out. I've been working on his Eb sonata, Les Adieux, No. 26. I just love it, even though it's taking me a while to learn (horn player here, not really a pianist except for fun). It's so joyful and effervescent. Around this time of year, I also love practicing the Vince Guaraldi classics from the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Christmas specials; they're just so refreshing, both classic and original at the same time. By the way, have I even mentioned to you lately how much I love our piano? It's been nearly a year since we had it delivered, and I cannot tell you how much I have just adored having it on our home.

I always read before I go to bed, because it helps untangle/unwind my brain and send me off. I finished Jodi Picoult's Vanishing Acts, which was quite good quality "chick lit". I then tore into the historical fiction category of my reading genre rotation, choosing Kevin Baker's Paradise Alley. It was a very detailed and in depth portrayal of the draft riots in NYC during the Civil War. I didn't expect it to be as riveting and engrossing as it was, but I'm telling you, with all of the incredibly varied characters and social commentary, I was completely sucked in. I also learned a lot about the historical events surrounding that particular place in history. Marvelous.

So after finishing that one, which though good was quite long, I've moved on to my third favorite fiction type: the murder mystery. There's nothing like a good James Patterson novel to get the pages turning, and I'm reading his 5th book in his "Women's Murder Club" series called The Fifth Horseman. It's even more fun reading it now that I'm also watching the ABC show "Women's Murder Club" (see above) that this series inspired!

Please write to let me know what you're reading/watching these days. I always love your recommendations and find them very inspiring! And yes, I know, I'll enjoy all this reading and TV time now while I still can! Because my life as I know it, and all of my free time (all 2.25 hours of TV per week and 20 minutes of reading per night before bed), is going to END when I have a child! (Timpani rolls loudly and plays Funeral March Ostinato of Doom...)