being an open book

most of my friends would say that i am an open book in most every way and that's 100% true -- almost.  i definitely over-share with my girlfriends and co-workers, but there are things that i do keep private -- like why i started this blog.

so here goes ...

i've always loved kids.  i started babysitting when i was eleven years old.  when i was living in dc and for a stretch of my time here in la, i was a nanny while i was trying to make a go of it with acting.  i love being with kids, because it allows me to step back and see things in a different light, a much simpler one.  i love picking them up from school and hearing about their day, being goofy and asking them whether they're a noodle or a doodle, reading bedtime stories, and tucking them for a good night's sleep. 

for a long time, having kids was just something i always knew would happen if i ever found the guy.  let's be real, that was always my biggest obstacle.  i was single for the majority of my 20s and the first couple of years in my 30s.  i just assumed that if i were lucky enough to find the guy, then the family would come.  i can't tell you how many nights i spent alone crying over being single, or how many weddings i attended solo, sitting at tables with couples gushing over their husbands and wives while i hated every minute of it.  dating is only fun if you are dating the person you are going to eventually partner off with. otherwise, it's torture -- either you have a great time and they never call back, or you are sitting across the table from them wondering why in the world your friend thought that he would be your match, praying this guy doesn't call the next day.

the bottom line is that when you're single there seems to be a very concrete divide between you and the rest of the world, and the worst thing you can say to a single person is:  "when you stop looking, you'll find him."  you might as well say:  "you're doing something wrong.  it's your fault you're single."


the best part of being single is all the time i spent bonding with my girlfriends.

but then something miraculous happened and i actually met him.  and it turned out he was better than i could have imagined, so i fell hard and fast.  we moved in together after six months, got engaged on our one year anniversary and five months later we were married. 

once the wedding and honeymoon were over and we were back to real life, we started trying to get pregnant.  it became clear that we weren't the kind of couple who just (oops!) tried once and got knocked up.  we've been trying for a year and a half and it still hasn't happened.  we have a fancy fertility doctor in star-studded beverly hills (one of our favorite games in the waiting room is "who's that celebrity").  usually on my drive home instead of talking to my sister about how many mature follicles i have, i'm discussing the celebrity i just saw.   we've been through rounds of treatment and the conclusion is we're both healthy, but no luck yet. 

i went to a dark place during all of this because, like i said earlier, i just never thought that making a baby could be so hard.  i mean, i spent my entire 20's trying not to get pregnant.  the next several months involved me being very bitter. why was i so cursed that i wasn't lucky enough to have met jeff earlier?  now i'm in my mid-30s trying desperately to get pregnant and i'm constantly reminded of how when i do get pregnant it will be considered a geriatric pregnancy.  seriously.

my single girlfriends would say "well at least you have someone," and my friends with kids would offer up "be glad you are able to sleep. enjoy it while you can."  but those comments only made me feel more alone in what i was going through.  i am ready, more ready than most of my friends because i have been watching kids for well over two decades.  i know how to diaper a baby, how to get them to giggle when they were cranky, how to tell if they were really sick or just wanted to stay home from school, and i understandd how hard it could be to get a child to sleep.   it is just not fair!

after a very depressing part of last year, i finally came out on the other side (thanks to my therapist e.c. & my dear friend/acupuncturist mu) and decided to be grateful for everything that i do have. i recognize how rare and lucky i am to have met the love of my life, to have an amazing family and fierce friends who love me no matter how crabby i am.  maybe this will take a little longer than i planned and, as my mom would say "that's okay."  i'm not used to things coming easy anyway. 

so from time to time i might write about what we're going through, but most likely you'll just see a lot of what i love.  after all, i don't know how comfortable i am with making this a fertility-only blog.  but, at the same time, i wanted to be truthful to what we're actually going through.

for now, i'll leave you with one bit of advice: if you know someone who is going through fertility issues, for the love of god, don't say "you just need to relax."  it's like saying "it will happen when you're not looking" to a single person.   in both cases just say "that must be hard for you, let's go get an ice cream."



* i recognize to most of the people i grew up with, acupuncture sounds like voodoo, but i can't tell you how helpful it has been for me.  i was so relaxed last month, that i forgot to take the pregnancy test.

colicchio & sons

last week i was in new york for work and of course i made dining a priority, as the restaurants in la just don't compare.  jeff joined me for the weekend and i made it our job to pack a lot of meals into those two days.  for now, i'll start with our fancy lunch at colicchio & sons, wine included.

*please note all of the good photos were taken by jeff

{classic voris shot}

{dining in the tap room}

{waiting for my glass of sancerre}

{jeff went with the spring beer flight}

{and he started with the beef tartare with smoked egg vinaigrette and chips}

{i started with the grilled asparagus with lemon sabayon & parmesan}

{then onto the roasted skate with brown butter and market cauliflower}

{jeff went with the fennel sausage, smoked mozzarella and broccoli rabe pizza}

conclusion: it's a lovely place to go for a nice leisurely lunch

dinner party - tita style

over the past several months we have somehow managed to coordinate and sustain an ongoing dinner club with two of my favorite couples.  last night erin & ryan had us over for some delicious southern food.  here's a little sampling of what took place:

ecstatic hostess welcomes us (*please note her adorable apron was a gift from jeff and me.  this is a great gift idea, as you rarely think to shell out the money on an apron. anthropologie has the best ones)

the food was amazing.  i have never heard of peppadews before and for those of you who don't know they are these little deiciously sweet piquante peppers. stuff with them goat cheese and you will thank me.

gorgonzola and balsamic green beans, jalapeno cornbread and dr. pepper ribs

fancy water to hydrate us while we drank several bottles of wine

ryan embraced his role as bartender

everyone was happy

marcia and eric brought cupcake popcorn - yes, cupcake popcorn with sprinkles

i was in denial that i had to go home and pack after dinner and be up at 6 am to leave for my flight

then we played some games. we started out with jeff doing a little mind reading

the crowd was captivated

erin was in shock that jeff guessed her word and read her mind

we took a little break for dessert

then we ended the evening with six hilarious and intense rounds of celebrity. if you've never played it before it's great for a party.  basically, everyone individually writes down ten celebrity names, folds them up and puts them in a bowl.  you break into two teams and you have to get your teammates to guess the celebrity by giving them random clues (you can pretty much do or say anything, except use the person's name).  ryan gets points for being able to describe any character with two phrases. they often started with "big boobs" - answers ranged from kim kardashian to christina aguilera. although ryan also flooded the bowl with lots of jon hamm and kim kardashians.  so everyone just said "hot guy/mad men" and you knew instantly who that was.

it was such a fun evening that i didn't mind getting home at 12:30 and having to pack.

krispy kreme

donuts are one of my many weaknesses.  i mean what is better than treating yourself to dessert in the morning? it feels so decadent to get out of bed on a lazy sunday, bypass the oatmeal and go straight to fluffy fried dough.  am i right?

oddly enough, los angeles has a ton of donut shops.  i mean they are practically on every corner, just down the block from all of the burger joints.  it's not what you'd expect from this super fit southern california city, but it's true.  i guess the logic is if you indulge in too many fatty foods, you can just have it lipoed off, or go on a juice cleanse for a week?

i'm always up to try out a new place, but i'm rarely impressed.  once after hearing matthew weiner talk at a writer's bloc event about his local donut shop, jeff and i hunted down sk donuts and became sunday regulars.  we were so happy to find a place in hancock park that was actually good.  yes, that's the takeaway i got from listening to the creator of mad men speak for a couple of hours -- a great place to go for donuts on the weekend.  i have my priorities.

although there have been some good places (sk and alex donut), i am a north carolina girl after all and my heart will always belong to krispy kreme. lucky for me (or bad for me now that bikini season is right around the corner) there is one right near my office.  their iconic red and green logo peppered with polka dots just makes me happy and there is nothing like the welcome sight of the flashing "hot" sign, signaling fried dough that literally melts in your mouth. whenever the light is on, you simply have to an original glazed!

i was in an especially good mood yesterday morning, so i decided to stop off at krispy kreme and order my favorite: a chocolate iced cream filled donut.  it most definitely is a thing that i love and made my day so much better!

impromptu guitar sessions

last night when jeff came home i actually had dinner ready, cleaned the house, and wrapped our niece's ninth birthday present.  getting this much accomplished on a week day happens once every blue moon, or on days when i work from home.  today, i worked from home.  it's amazing what you can do with that hour and a half that you aren't sitting in traffic.

after dinner, he pulled out his guitar, we opened a bottle of wine, grabbed the leftover easter candy and we sang (not while eating the candy).

at first, it started out like the kristen wiig skit on snl, with me saying "don't make me sing!" even though it was my idea.  then i needed help on actually knowing when to come in which then led to many sessions of "okay, tell me when to come in. wait, when do i come in?"
but, eventually i got the hang of it and it was a really fun evening.  way better than sitting on the couch and watching hours of bad tv.

click on the image below to watch the video.  i promise it will make you laugh:

spring break

about a month ago, jeff and i went on a cruise to st martin, st thomas and castaway cay.  jamie, carrie and the girls also went. because of jeff and jamie's work we got to go on this trip a few weeks before the new ship, the disney fantasy, actually launched.  think of it as a final test run for the crew and cast members to make sure everything is just right before they officially open to the public.

before we went i had this sinking feeling that spending days at sea might not be the best way of travel for me.  pretty soon after we arrived (maybe 48 hours later) i succumbed to seasickness and it stayed with me for the rest of the week. no matter what i tried i still felt queasy.  the bonine didn't work.  the sea bands didn't work.  nothing really seemed to help.  i guess it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

that being said, the ship was beautiful, the state rooms were very comfortable (trust me, as i spent the majority of the trip in bed feeling nauseated), and the spa treatments were amazing.  i had an 80 minute hot stone massage looking out onto the open water and they also have these incredible ridiculously warm ceramic beds that you can lay on and read for hours. if you have kids who love disney it is definitely a great travel option.  every parent there seemed to be thrilled to have time alone with their partner while their kids were beyond ecstatic to get to spend copious amounts of time at the oceaneer's club, soaking in all of the disney magic.

thankfully, on the last day i was feeling better and we went kayaking and parasailing while we were in castaway cay.  even though i am terrified of flying, i absolutely love to parasail.  it's so peaceful being way up in the air, soaring ever so slightly through the sky.  if you have never done it i strongly recommend it.  jeff and i actually did a tandem parasail, which meant that i ended up hanging from him like a baby bjourn.  definitely odd, but it was so wonderful to be the only two people way up in the sky for those five minutes.

as always, jeff is our family photographer and does a phenomenal job at capturing all of our travel moments.  so below are a few snapshots from our trip:

in the beginning, everything seemed to be going so well

 
 and then it happened

while stuck in bed, i read a lot

i mean a lot

 

while i was lounging in bed, jeff was relaxing and having a great time. thank god jamie, carrie and the girls were there. (but i should note that he was very concerned about me, but who wants to be stuck with a sickie all day?  i had to push him out of the room, assuring him i was fine.   again, great husband.)

every once in a while i peeked out onto our veranda and got this lovely view

and we had the sweetest housekeeper who insisted that "jessica, you need monkey to cheer you up" when i was having a rough day

we rented a car in st martin

 

and for some reason, this guy's campaign made me happy, so jeff made me happy and took a photo.  after all, he cares. (*i need to follow up and see who won the election)

and running across little moments of beauty like this make you forget about feeling terrible. this is one of my favorite photos jeff took. we were crossing under a bridge on the beach and he stopped to notice this.

i didn't last very long on our day at st thomas, but here's a great view of the island

 

back on the ship, we did have some great meals

and emma and addie were loving every minute

thankfully i was better for our planned adventure day of kayaking and parasailing on castaway cay

and then when i was feeling better, my goofy side came out. (for the record, someone once told me i looked like a seahorse. i had thought it was time to put that to rest.)

i have to admit the morning we arrived at port canaveral, i was super happy to be getting back on land