My New Obsession: The Rainforest Jumperoo

My latest obsessive search is for a gently used Fisher Price Rainforest Jumperoo for Violet. She tried it out at a friend’s home and LOVED it! It is really loud; gaudily decorated and clashes with all of our décor, but it has the ability to keep little babies occupied for up to an hour. An hour that then can be used doing and folding laundry; dishes; preparing dinner or cleaning up the house. I am on Craig’s List every day, continually refreshing my search screen in hopes that someone in the five boroughs, preferably in Manhattan, will post for sale such an item. I had one within my fingertips for purchase, but lost it because I couldn’t get myself out to Williamsburg quick enough. I am now watching four jumperoos for sale on Ebay with hopes that I can snag one for under $50. I just have this desire for Violet to have one. She probably could care less if she has a jumperoo or not, and finds her hand more interesting, entertaining and fun to chew on. I wonder if this is how my mom felt when she did everything she could to get me a Cabbage Patch doll. The family anecdote is that it involved meeting a gentleman in a parking lot on an early Saturday morning. She was given a garbage bag that had an "authentic" Cabbage Patch doll without the box or the birth certificate that accompanied them. No questions were asked and all transactions were made in cash. I think I played with that doll for about ten minutes before I lost interest. Physically having the doll was not as exhilarating or fun as wanting to have the doll and imagining what it would be like to have it. I also wonder whatever happened to Xavier Roberts, the creator of Cabbage Patch dolls. He was everywhere for fifteen minutes and then gone.

I think this is only the beginning of the search for the items that you think your child must have or that they will beg and beg and beg to have. In a year I could obsessively be looking for an American Girl doll that looks just like Violet or a Hello Kitty item she just has to have that is only available in Japan.

Bellelameg is Back!

Not to be confused with the bellelameg baby blog, I am resurrecting the original bellelameg blog and it will be more of a mommy blog. Or at least a space where I can write about more mom and life related things. I feel like keeping the bellelameg baby blog purely for writings on Violet, which was its original intention. Though, I am about two months behind in entries--in realtime she is turning four months old tomorrow, hopefully I can get it up to date real fast. I am going to try and make an effort to update this blog on a more regular basis as well. But as I am learning, juggling baby, work, life and everything else, often results in a tired and cranky Meg who just doesn't know where all of the hours, minutes and seconds go. Anyway, I'm welcoming myself back.

Thrifty Daddy

Husband of Bellelameg has started his own blog: Thrifty Daddy. Check it out when you get a chance.

bellelameg baby blog

J. and I decided to start a separate blog to share the news about our upcoming project known as Straesser 2.0 or baby legume, whose expected date of arrival is December 10th. We are excited, nervous, excited and well nervous. At bellelameg baby blog, we'll be posting pictures and other news regarding baby legume. So check it out when you get a chance to.

4th of July Weekend

It's been quite a while since I've written anything for bellelameg. I've been enduring extreme tiredness for the last four months, that found me sleeping whenever the opportunity was available. I am finally getting back my energy and not feeling so sleep deprived and in about four and a half months, J. and I will get to meet the one who will make us a family of three, plus Jericho.

So over the 4th of July weekend, I met up with some friends for brunch and to see Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls public art installation. The waterfalls are located on the East River and are made from scaffolding. The water used comes from the river and is filtered through pools to assure that fish and aquatic life are not pumped through the falls. In addition, according to the website, the falls are run on 100% green power. The best place to see the waterfalls is at the South Street Seaport. You can see all four of the waterfalls from the pier. Here is one of the pictures I took with my camera phone.
This is the waterfall at the Brooklyn Bridge--the best picture my camera phone was able to take. From the South Street Seaport, we walked to the Battery Maritime Building to see David Brynes' "Playing the Building." The infrastructure of the building is used to create sound that is played through an organ. Below is Stacey and Matt discussing the building:
Side view of the organ.
A broad view of the organ and the building.
The sounds are activated through vibration, wind and striking of heat pipes, water pipes, metal beams and pillars. Everyone who visits has an opportunity to play the building. The line was a little too long for us and we all had a craving for Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, so we made our way back uptown. Playing the Building is up until August 24th.

Pictures Found on My Cell Phone

I recently discovered that I haven't deleted pictures from my cell phone for the last eight months. Going through the pictures I kind of relived some of the past adventures J. and I have gone on and other events in our lives. The majority were taken prior to our getting a new digital camera, yet, there are a few that are from after that point in time. It's so much easier to whip out your cell phone and take a picture, then remembering to bring your camera with you where ever you go. Or at least that is how it is for me. Here are some the images that I found, in no particular order.
J. and I went to PS. 1's 2007 Warm Up. We ended up going on the opening weekend and got there around 2pm. We were some of the first people to arrive, so the entire setting was quite pristine and untouched. The project was titled Liquid Sky and was designed by Ball-Nogues and was a canopy of tinted mylar petals. Here is a closer picture of the mylar petals:
We actually ended up spending the entire day in Long Island City and ended up having dinner at a pretty decent seafood shack right near where you catch the water taxis.

One Saturday in July, J. and I decided that we wanted to explore Roosevelt Island. Neither of had ever been there and we also wanted to ride the tram. The ride was fun, but short. Once out on the Island we walked from one end to other, which is really easy to do in less than an hour. Saw the crazy currents that collide at the north point of the Island, forming a whirlpool and momentarily thought about the possibility of moving to Roosevelt Island. Then we remembered the movie Dark Water with Jennifer Connelly; how our friends would probably visit us once a year simply for the novelty of coming to Roosevelt Island; that there was only one grocery store and a Chinese food restaurant and the architecture was mostly 1960s urban utopian style and kind of grim and we quickly forgot about that notion. At the south end of the Island are the ruins of the smallpox hospital. Roosevelt Island was known in the 19th century as Welfare Island and housed several hospitals, asylums and correctional institutions. Recently a portion of the smallpox hospital ruins collapsed. I'm trying to reformat the picture of the small pox hospital ruins we took. Instead here is a view of Manhattan from Roosevelt Island:
My problem is that I think I need photoshop in order to fix the pictures I downloaded from my cell phone. Very frustrating.

Tax Day & Protesting in New York City

I had to go to the mid town Post Office on tax day. J. and I filed online so I wasn't there to mail our taxes, but to pick up some priority shipping boxes for mailing some stuff we sold on Ebay. There were huge lines of people waiting to get their tax returns stamped "April 15" but what caught my eye was when I was leaving were the protesters on 8th Avenue. There were protest performers against the war; Grannies Against the War; people protesting taxes as actually "war taxes" and people in general protesting the federal income tax. The banners say "Whose Money?" "How much longer?" "In Whose Name?" It was definitely fascinating to compare the two scenes. Outside people were engaging in their first amendment right to assemblage, while inside people were willingly following the sixteenth amendment by paying their federal income taxes. It was like watching the Constitution in action.