Pre-Delivery Advice

I was working on this post awhile ago, but never completed it. As I mentioned in the prior post, our baby has been keeping us quite busy. I was inspired to finish this today for several reasons. We've been trapped in our apartment (besides me going to work), basically, for almost a month, and it's fun to day-dream about the outside world. The cover of today's LA Times magazine is "Paris, Pastry by Pastry," and details many decadent dessert places in Paris. And in general, it's summer time which means travel time. My sister is about to go back to Europe again on a study trip, and the jetset is off to the races for the summer season. I'm envious. I have to admit that one of my biggest fears of parenthood, aside from losing sleep, had to do with how it would affect our traveling. ..

Anyway - people love to give advice or share their experiences about pregnancy and becoming first-time parents. It's one of those topics that people love to talk about - their kids and their experiences. And I really enjoyed hearing it all. In fact, towards the end of the pregnancy, it became a regular topic on all of my business calls. To the extent that I wouldn't be surprised if my colleagues were thinking, "go have your baby already. We have to start every damn conference call small-talking about your upcoming event!" Actually, everyone, from people at Warner to all the companies I deal with have been super supportive, patient, and encouraging. Well, this post is not about all the different pieces of advice. I'm still compiling that for later. This is about one particular piece of advice, which seems obvious.

One of the best pieces of advice we received before having Lina was to go and travel as much as we can. We were encouraged to go on a "babymoon," which was introduced into my vocabulary by some friends. I've been fortunate enough to have traveled to some really cool places for pleasure as well as business. For the last three years, I attended a conference in Cannes, France, in January. Not to be confused with the Cannes Film Festival. I thought, why don't we just make a trip out of it and go to Paris, one of our favorite cities in the world, for "one last hurrah." By the way, I'm writing this post because I was going through our iPhoto collection while trying to rock Lina to sleep earlier today, waxing nostalgic about our young and carefree years!

Anyway, the idea to go to Paris was there, but we were hesitant because Liz was well into the pregnancy, and Europe is not exactly cheap these days. While having brunch one day with our good friends Tim and Grace and their lovely kids in Soho [at Cafe Colonial] this past winter, T&G urged us to just go for it. (Tishia Que first took Liz to Cafe Colonial). They have two awesome kids - Jonah (I have a funny story about guessing his name), and Isaiah (not "Isiah"). Right before they had the first boy, they also went on a "last hurrah" to London. T&G basically said, your life is about to change in a major way - and it's awesome and you'll never want to turn back - but it is going to change. Go, suck up the cost, and enjoy your time together, just the two of us. So we did. And we had a wonderful time. Thanks Tim and Grace for the kick in the pants!

Liz and I are both a bit "anal," so we did scour for deals and did a bit of planning. We discovered a great way to experience Europe while pregnant and also while the euro is kickin' greenback arse. Through a site called Vacation Rentals by Owners, we decided to do a short-term rental of a flat, or an apartment, in Le Marais, one of our favorite districts. This was great for a host of reasons - first of all, it was much more economical than staying at a hotel in Paris. You would all be surprised at the daily rate. It was a deal. We also saved money because there was a washer dryer and a kitchenette in the place. Besides the economic reasons, living in an apartment really helps you to experience real life as the locals do, at least a sliver of it for a short period of time. Every morning, I pretended to be a Frenchman - I would walk to the corner, have an espresso (at the counter, for the cheaper rate) in the corner cafe, then walk into the local bakery and order "un baguette(sp)." We would make our own Jambon baguette every morning, which was both cheap and made us felt like locals. Mmm. I do miss that bread. Speaking of great bread, Fairway Market on the Upper Westside also has fresh French bread, baked hourly. I really miss that too. But that's another topic - things I miss about the Big Apple.

Liz and I had a wonderful time in Paris. I'm grateful that we were able to do it. Since we've been lucky enough to have been to Paris several times, together and separately, there was really no pressure to do anything touristy at all. Liz was 5-6 months pregnant, near the upper limit of being allowed to travel, we really did take it easy. We walked around neighborhoods, checked out cool patisseries and restaurants, and my favorite...enjoying an espresso at numerous cafes around the City of Light and people watching. Oh, and I finally made it to the Musee d'Orsay (free on the first Sunday of the month). The last two times we tried to go, the museum workers were on strike.

Ahhh, Paris...can't wait to take Angelina there!