Little Lady Big Apple...LITTLE BABY!!

Big announcement, blog readers: that little faint pink line on the right means that life is about to completely change! It's official- I'm having a baby! The little Bean, as my husband fondly has nicknamed it- is due at the end of July. It was so much fun to tell my husband, Dan the news! Although we had been hoping to see that little pink line for a few months, it was still a shock to actually see it for REAL!

I wrapped up a special package with a fancy bow, and surprised him in SoHo as I met him after work. When he first opened it, he had an irritated look on his face, as if to say, "Are you seriously buying BABY stuff already?" But then, I told him to READ what it said!










But, let's back up the story a little bit and I'll take you back to the beginning. A few weeks earlier, I went to Chinatown to my fave hair stylist, Pat, to get my usual highlights. Remember? I've blogged about this little hidden (cheap!) gem before.









I wanted to try something a bit different, since we were coming into fall, so I picked out a highlight color and two low-lights. Here's what the colors were SUPPOSED to look like....









...But for some strange reason, my hair turned out BRIGHT PINK!!










I didn't mind it, but it wasn't very professional for my work, so the stylist said to come back in a few weeks and she would re-do it for free. I couldn't understand why the colors I picked looked NOTHING like what my hair turned out to be! This had never happened before!

When I went back to the stylist, they told me that they had to do an all over lowlight to take out the pink color. Then, they would add the highlights back in. The color for the lowlight was a caramel-blonde color. Still in the blonde family, but dark enough to cover the pink. Again, it went COMPLETELY awry, and HERE'S what I ended up with:










LOOK AT MY EXPRESSION! Not very happy at this moment! I ended up staying at the salon until 9:30pm while they worked and worked to fix it. When I left the salon, it looked MUCH better, like this:










STILL didn't cover up all the pink, though!  I now have a hunch as to why my hair disaster might have happened: I was PREGNANT! Apparently, hormones affect how your hair reacts to the chemicals in hair dye, so they always advise a very thorough strand test. Now you know!

After the pink hair incident, I took a pregnancy test, because Dan was counting down the days every month before I could take a test. I didn't want to test, because I was afraid of being disappointed, but I did anyway. It was NEGATIVE. I showed him, and hoped he would just relax for another month, when we would try again. Of course, he DIDN'T! He still insisted I was pregnant! I told him I didn't have any symptoms, no sickness, nothing. He said, "Oh really? You've eaten cheeseburgers at every meal for the last 3 days! You NEVER eat cheeseburgers!" It was true.

A few days later, I stopped at Tim Hortons on the way to work. Tim Hortons is a Canadian institute: a coffee and donut shop that opened in the 60's in Canada, and JUST started coming to the states recently. We got our first Tim's in NYC just last summer! Anyway, I ordered up a large iced coffee, with cream and sweetener. I took a sip as I was paying and it was HORRIBLE! I asked them if they could make me a fresh one, as this one tasted burnt and very very stale. They apologized, and gave me a fresh new coffee, just brewed, for free. I thanked them, and took my new coffee outside.  I took another drink as I waited at the crosswalk- it was HORRIBLE! Same thing! I tossed the entire coffee in the trash, and was so annoyed. They must have changed their coffee when they came to the U.S.! It's definitely different tasting in Canada!

That day, for lunch, I got a carnitas Chipotle salad, with a side of guacamole. I barely touched the salad, but I ate the WHOLE CONTAINER of guacamole, straight with a SPOON! I couldn't get enough avocados- and bought some more on the way home! The other intense craving I had was for fresh squeezed lemonade. I drank 3 bottles of lemonade that day at work. Insane!

When I got home at the end of the day, I was alone and I figured, "Why not take another test. I know it's going to be negative, but at least Dan will BELIEVE me now!" I took the test...the one that you saw in the picture above. I WAS PREGNANT!

We celebrated Thanksgiving a few days later, and we took these pictures as our first "family" photos. Yup, family of three!

As we waited for the restaurant to open for Thanksgiving dinner, we sat in a little cafe across the street.  I had a yogurt ;)









Looking back, it all makes sense: the hair disaster, the coffee aversion, the cravings for avocados and lemonade...it was all signs that I was PREGNANT! Crazy how you can miss things that are RIGHT THERE! I was so wrapped up with trying to diagnose the "usual" pregnancy symptoms, that I completely missed all these!







Check back tomorrow for more of the continuing story!