A Look Back - July 2024
We began July, continuing Jake’s visit. We woke up early on the 1st and walked Frasier and Elle through Central Park. It was a beautiful summer morning, and Frasier could run around while we snapped photos. It was so lovely to be back out doing the walk we did so often before Jenn got pregnant. Jake was able to experience what a normal weekend morning is like for us.
Later that day, we packed Elle into her car seat and drove a few miles to the Met Cloisters Museum. Outside of having no easy way to get into the museum with a stroller (which required me to lift it), it was the perfect place to take Elle to her first museum. We spent an hour there, walking around the beautiful exhibits and enjoying a warm day. Once we finished buying a few items from the gift shop and having Jake lug the stroller back out to the parking lot, we returned home and enjoyed a Shake Shack lunch.
Later that evening, Jake and I got last-minute reservations to Don Angie. It was just as good as when Jenn and I went in May; we started with cocktails and a charcuterie board before splitting the sourdough pasta and veal. It was another divine dinner that finished a very impressive chocolate dessert before we jumped back on a Citi bike back to the apartment.
Jake left on the morning of July 2nd, and we took Elle to her 1-month appointment. She continues to grow beautifully (in very high percentiles for weight and height) and always does well with Dr. Chu. I will say I underestimated how nervous I would be for these appointments. Given everything Jenn has gone through with her pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, I always want to hear that Elle is doing well, which, thankfully, she is.
Elle at her 1-month appointment
Jenn continued to feel better, introducing different foods into her diet and getting out more and more. I’ll never forget walking Riverside Park with her on July 4th and feeling like the family was finally together. Speaking of the 4th, we celebrated Independence Day as we have many times in New York, staying local, enjoying home-cooked hamburgers, and watching Wimbledon. I had the week off (having planned to have Jake, Amy, and my parents out), so we enjoyed the time together as a family.
We continued to get used to our new normal and tried to find our rhythms. We had initially planned to hire a night nurse to help with Elle during what we expected to be sleepless nights. Thankfully, Elle is a phenomenal sleeper, and we only woke her up at 3 AM to give her a bottle, and even that started to slow down as the month went by. Unfortunately, around the middle of July, Jenn’s c-diff came back. It wasn’t as severe as before, but she couldn’t keep food down again. She went to a few doctors, including talking to one my work put her in touch with, who was on the medical team for several Presidents. It was his advice that we make sure she got the drug Dificid, the latest drug in fighting C-diff that is supposed to be much more effective but also extremely expensive. Fortunately, our insurance covered it, and after about a week of nothing but the BRAT (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) diet, she started to feel better. I had to call off work for over a week and slept on the couch to try and give Jenn the best opportunity to heal and rest. Elle was such an angel; it was almost like she knew what was happening, and taking care of her was a joy. It was the perfect time for her to start smiling more and interacting with her surroundings.
Towards the end of the month, as Jenn finished her medicine, she regained a lot of her strength and energy. She went into full-blown Mom mode, implementing her daily schedules, reading Winnie the Pooh each day with her, and finding every opportunity to find new things for her and Elle to do together. One of my favorite memories of July was when Jenn started to feel so much better that we took our old 3.5-mile walk as a family all the way to 91st Street at the beautiful garden, which was the last scene in the movie You’ve Got Mail. It's always been one of our favorite walks in the city, and to now do it as a family of four with Jenn feeling better again was a beautiful moment.
We hired a daytime Nanny for Elle at the end of July. Her name is Kerry, and she originally was going to be her night nurse, but we’ve decided to bring her on part-time for the next few months to give Jenn a break a few days a week. She’s been amazing so far, taking Elle for walks, reading her stories, and getting her to do a lot of tummy time. If it all works out, we hope to hire Kerry full-time when Jenn returns to work in December. We wrapped up the month with Elle’s 2-month appointment with Dr. Chu, where she got her first round of shots. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Elle scream, and we both hated it. She didn’t enjoy getting her shots and felt crummy for the rest of the day. It’s her worst night's sleep, combined with a low fever. Thankfully, by the time the calendar switched to August, she felt much better.
TV WE WATCHED
I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Bear but with Jake visiting it was the perfect quick show to watch with him. While its still not my favorite show its enjoyable enough even though the third season was a bit all over the place. The shows we really got into this month were the final few episodes of the third season of Bridgerton on Netflix and Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+.
We have been slowly making our way through the second season of House of the Dragon. It’s become our Saturday or Sunday show where we pop some popcorn, give Frasier a bone, and enjoy almost like a movie. We also wrapped up the third season of Hacks which Jenn continues to not like but I find to be fantastic.
BOOKS I READ (OR LISTENED TO)
July was a diverse month of reading that started with two excellent books and ended with two forgettable ones. Let’s get the last two out of the way. The Reading List is a book that you would think I would love. It’s a book about loving books, but it was sappy, not overly well written, and didn’t connect with me. The same could be said with The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, a book whose primary intention is to pull at the heartstrings but never earns it.
I started the month with East of Eden, a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time but was intimidated by. I shouldn’t have been, as it was a very approachable novel that I loved. I would have given it 5* if it had been slightly shorter, but some peripheral stories felt unnecessary. The final book of the month was The Will of The Many, which I gave a perfect score, but the further I get away from it, the more I think it was just shy of that initial score. It is a very entertaining, well-written, and engaging fantasy novel that takes a lot of inspiration from The Hunger Games and Red Rising series. Those are two of my favorites, so that’s not a bad thing, but the more I think back on it, the more I would have loved it to do something different. It's still a great book that I can’t wait to read the sequel to.
MOVIES WE WATCHED
It’s hard to imagine that I only watched one movie this month, and it was literally just more of a background watch than anything. It was early in July when I thought it would be nice to rewatch The Avengers Infinity War. It's a movie that was such a big event when it came out, but I realized that I hadn’t watched it since then but had rewatched the sequel End Game several times. The movie still holds up, and I’ll never forget leaving the theater with Jenn after seeing it for the first time. It was one of those monumental movie-going experiences that I’ll never forget, sort of like when everyone started cheering at “Avengers Assemble” in End Game.
GAMES I'VE BEEN PLAYING
After a 10-year wait, we finally got a new college football game, which has taken up 95% of my video game time this month. I’ve been playing my created Quarterback, who, as of this writing, is in his junior year and thriving. It's an excellent re-entry back into college football and will probably be my go-to game until Madden comes out in mid-August. Outside of that, I’ve played a little of EA Sports PGA Tour, and once a week, Jake and I have gotten a game of Top Spin in.
2024 GOAL TRACKING
Goal #1: Read 35 Books: I read 25 books and am on pace to exceed my year's goal of 35.
Goal #2: Get Weight Under 140: Good start to 2024, still under 140.
Goal #3: 12 Monthly Recaps: 7 for 12 and hopefully no end in sight!
