Garden of Words

The February Flowers

The first hints of spring are starting to pop out -- purple and yellow crocus blossoms emerging from the ground; bright yellow daffodils; red buds on bushes.

Because Nikole is on strict orders to do nothing strenuous and I am running in circles with work, we've asked our landscape friend to come by next week and transform our yard.

Pending projects include building a doghouse for Rilo and finishing the picket fence around the vegetable garden to protect it from (you guessed it) Rilo.

Puppy Love and Cat Prison

Rilo is driving me crazy.

Barking earlier and earlier every morning. Fur everywhere. Stinky breath.

But she's so damn cute -- in her pink Thanksgiving boa; curled up with her eviscerated purple bear; playing tug-of-war with Nikole.

Today, I took her to Bryan Park for an hour of walking along trails and wooded roads; we met Tom and Judy with their pups along the trail. I also bought her a cute stuffed cow. She'd ripped it into pieces of fluff and stuffing in under one hour. Fierce little beast.

Harvey, on the other hand, constantly comes to the gate in the sunroom like a prisoner in search of sunlight. He is one sad cat, still.

The Baby Factory: Week 28

It's pretty hard to believe that we're about 75% of the way through Phase One. Only 40 more years to go.

Apparently, our baby is now the size of a Chinese Cabbage (the baby site that emails me every week uses fruit and vegetables for points-of-reference). Nikole's belly is a bit bigger than a cabbage.

The past week was almost uneventful, and then I went out of town for a conference. Historically, that's when something traumatic happens.

This time, it waited until just before the conference ended. I got a phone message from Nikole on Friday afternoon that she had some heart palpitations and dizziness, and that her OB asked her to come into the office to check things out. Given all the trauma we've experienced, I immediately got anxious. It's sort of a new hobby around here.

I was in Washington, DC, and it was raining. We agreed that I'd wait to hear from her before getting on the road. She called me just before 4:00 with relatively good news -- she's anemic! Which is much better than a call saying, "Hey, they're going to take the baby out in five minutes. How soon can you be here?"

So, Nikole is going to OD on iron supplements. I'm trying to convince her to eat raw liver for breakfast.

When I got home, our new urban stroller from Phil and Ted's stroller manufacturing facility had arrived. After much gnashing of teeth, I put it together. My future = putting things together.

On Saturday, we headed over to Angie's house to stock up. Lilah is now 14 months old, which means she has 13 months of clothing she doesn't need anymore. Angie had gallons of baby clothes and way more gear than a sane woman should give another woman, especially a hormonal one.

The nursery is now as cluttered as it was before we cleaned it out to make it a nursery.

Foreshadowing for the rest of my life.

That afternoon, we headed to a workshop with a pediatrician and a nurse to learn about life in the maternity ward. Perhaps the best thing about the discussion was all of the insight I gained about the appropriateness of bribery and praise. Apparently, my role as a new father involves making sure Nikole and TES (Bumble's official initials; her name remains under wraps until post-delivery) get every single thing they want. This involves two options -- twisting the arms of irritated nurses, or asking my new best friends (the nurses) if they wouldn't mind doing us a favor. That's where bribes come in.

I'll be making lots of trips to Starbucks and Ukrops on delivery day.

New Addition

Nikole's brother and sister-in-law welcomed their new son into the world a few weeks early. Joseph Baker Lewis landed in Atlanta on Valentine's Day. Nikole is waiting to hear from her doctor to see if we can travel down to see her first nephew; in a few more months, we'll be able to return the favor and introduce her brother to his first niece.

The Week in Food

It has been a tasty week at the Sarvay household.

For dinner last Sunday, we cooled our heels at 8 1/2, the little sister to Edo's Squid and Mama Zu, waiting for our to-go order. I had pasta with meat sauce and a house salad. Nikole had pasta marinara and lentils. We split the tiramisu. Basic, but delicious. And enough was left for Monday's dinner.

I came home Tuesday night and made dinner for my wife. There's nothing unusual about that.

We had crab cakes, steamed spinach and garlic risotto. There were flowers. We ate at the table. For dessert, we had fresh strawberries on ice cream. It was an early Valentine's Day dinner. I'd pretend that I made it from scratch since my black bean crab cakes are legendary, but they were prefabbed by Ukrop's seafood department.

Thursday night, the official Valentine's holiday, was also training night at Pet Smart for Rilo. She is in love with Geoff, one of our trainers. He gives her treats, the bastard. In lieu of a romantic dinner out, we settled for training -- Rilo learned to touch our hand with her nose on command and to return to a seated heel position. Our command for the latter gets us plenty of chuckles in class -- "Rilo, don't be a punk." Then we went to Panera Bread for soup, salad and sandwiches.

I still wish it was called Pantera Bread.

Last night, we followed the advice of several Richmond foodbloggers and went to the Phoenician restaurant with our friends Tom and Judy. Lebanese food breaks my heart. I melted over the fattoush. Dinner was fabulous.

The Baby Factory: It Takes A Village in Sweden To Build A Room

I remember many years ago being amazed that I could buy a floor lamp and a bookcase for under $100 -- it didn't matter that you actually had to assemble it yourself. I was in college, and poor, and having two nice pieces of furniture really rocked.

I bought the stylish prefab furniture at a little place called La Difference, which had a storefront on Patterson Avenue near Libby. This all happened before IKEA was even a blip on America's prefab radar, and before La Diff sold $10,000 sofas.

The notion that I would eventually outgrow IKEA, as I meandered out of my apartment-living days and into life as a homeowner, crossed my mind several times in recent years. But then Nikole and I would spent weeks on end visiting Ethan Allen and La Diff and Haynes and come home empty-handed, and frustrated by the lack of style or the high cost of style in the world of furniture.

My home is now an homage to Sweden.

About a month ago, Nikole and I headed up the highway to IKEA to buy a crib, a rocking chair and some other assorted furniture -- mostly for the baby's room. We returned to Richmond with a Jeep filled with Swedish furniture, and she returned with her mom two weeks later and came home with more -- two dressers, various organizers, legs for her new desk.

Last Sunday, I assembled most of the baby's furniture. On Monday, I put the crib together. Yesterday, I woke up at 6:00 and went to work in her office/workroom. By the time she woke, it was a whole new room.

The Baby Factory: Week 27

Nikole has been remiss in keeping the world up-to-date with the baby manufacturing extravaganza taking place with her last update coming on the heels of our early February appointment. She returned on Friday for another of her biweekly exploratory sessions with the high-risk pregnancy doctor (the amusing and amusingly named Dr. Rod Love) and her regular OB.

Since I was working and couldn't easily wriggle my way out of a meeting and her mom was in Atlanta welcoming our new nephew into the world, Nikole asked my mom if she'd go with her. (Given the ups-and-downs of our pregnancies-to-date, we're pretty skittish about solo jaunts to the high-risk guy.)

We figured it would be safe; most of Nikole's ultrasounds take place on the belly. Most of them.

I wouldn't go so far as to call my mom a prude. I would suggest that she'd just as soon not know all of the medical and biological details involved in our pregnancy. Her favorite phrase -- apparently repeated several times during Nikole's appointment -- is, "In my day, we just got pregnant and had a baby!"

How could I not be amused that my mother vicariously experienced her first vaginal ultrasound on Friday?

The baby is doing fine, which we sort of knew since she kicks up a pretty constant storm these days. Dr. Murray has asked Nikole to do daily kick counts -- Bumble should kick at least five times, twice a day. The superstars already wrapping those up first thing in the morning; all the other kicks are just bonus shots to the ribs, hips and bladder.

Nikole's placenta continues to play tag with her cervix, so it looks more and more likely that we'll be scheduling a cesarean in late April or early May. I'm pushing for a May Day delivery, so Bumble can dance around the Maypole for her birthdays and I can drive old Soviet-era tanks down the street.

BREEZE A LITTLE BREEZE

I feel like I've been running all weekend, which everyone around me suggests is good practice for when the stork finally delivers young Miss Sarvay down our chimney.

Rilo woke me early Saturday -- she's also part of the conspiracy -- so I headed over to the William Byrd Barber Shop for a little weekend grooming. Nikole woke and ate breakfast, and then we headed to Williamsburg for what turned into a ridiculous amount of shopping for clothes at the outlets. We then headed into Colonial Williamsburg to meet Matt and Kristen for lunch at the Cheese Shop. We landed back in Richmond late in the afternoon, so I grabbed Rilo and took her for an hour jaunt through Bellevue while the sun was still filtering through the trees.

When I got home, we headed to the grocery store and then I made dinner -- corn cakes with black beans and orange-cayenne marinated chicken. Then we sorted clothes, and then washed and folder two loads. I unwound with David Halberstam's absurdly dense book about the Korean War, The Coldest Winter, and Jay Walljasper's Great Neighborhood Book: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Placemaking.

Sunday morning -- more laundry. And we finished our taxes. According to TurboTax, we paid 9.9% in taxes this year -- on my full-time job and Nikole's jewelry business -- which strikes me as completely absurd and stupid. By which I mean that I would be completely satisfied paying three times that, especially if we had a government that was rebuilding our decaying infrastructure; investing in research and technology; and reducing our nation's immense carbon footprint. I guess that's asking too much these days.

We ended the morning with errands. We picked up new smoke detectors and assorted plumbing items; paper for the printer; the new Virginia Quarterly Review; cat litter and cat food; and birthday cards.

After lunch, it was time to build furniture accumulated from two trips to IKEA. As usual, I tried operating without directions and twice found myself back-tracking through boneheaded mistakes. Hours later, the baby's room boasts two new dressers and a rocking chair. Later this week I'll tackle the crib.

Rilo got another long walk in this afternoon. It was still sunny, but blustery.

We ended the day at 8 1/2, the Strawberry Street take-out companion to Richmond's Edo's Squid. We walked out a bit poorer, but loaded down with two pasta dishes, a salad, lentil soup and tiramisu.

The Baby Factory: Week 25

Nikole has a good update on our latest visit to the baby doctors -- we now get to have back-to-back visits with Dr. Rod Love (our high-risk OB) and Dr. Murray (Nikole's regular OB) every few weeks. The good news about that is that we get two perspectives on every question we ask!

And while everything is going well with Bumble -- she's weighing in at a monster 1 pound and 11 ounces -- Nikole and I are quickly becoming nervous wrecks. Still, or again. Its hard to say.

But we now have a crib (with organic mattress) and rocking chair, have our eye on a stylish stroller and are trying to decide on a dresser that is the right height and width to double as a changing station. Once we get all of that set up, we'll be one step closer to being less crazy.