Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

Tuesday morning, after a very anxious night of antici- pating the actual arrival of our little one, we headed to the hospital shortly after 5am. The doctors and nurses at Cedars were so wonderful, totally keeping me at ease through- out the whole c-section process, with Tony keeping me in comic relief, of course... we headed into surgery at 7:30am and at 7:58, in the midst of all of the "surgery speak," all of a sudden, we heard a baby's cry, OUR BABY'S CRY! What a beautiful sound...immediately followed by the sweet words, "It's a Boy!"
I was stuck on the operating table, but Tony got to hold him right away and, all at once, I fell in love, first with my beautiful baby boy Luca, and then, all over again, with Tony, watching him hold our baby.
The rest of the day was such a blur, but thankfully, we have lots of wonderful pictures and videos to help us remember the amazing experience. We are so grateful to our families for being there for the birth and for all of our friends and family who came to visit and/or send us their well wishes and prayers.

Click HERE for all of the pictures from Luca's "birthday."

It's A Boy!!!

9 Months and Nesting

My final belly profile shot at 9 months! Time sure has flown by...can't believe TOMORROW is the big day when we finally get to meet this little bump! 7:30am to be precise. Seems so strange to actually know the date and time, but nice to be prepared! And, oh boy, has my nesting instinct kicked in! This morning Tony and I tackled the last of the junk areas of the house, I hauled a trunk load of items to Goodwill, took the dry cleaning to the cleaners, we had the house and carpets cleaned, I got completely caught up on laundry, got a mani/pedi and I officially finished our Honeymoon scrapbook...whew! We enjoyed our "last supper as two" at The Hungry Cat and now we are just figuring out how we will POSSIBLY be able to sleep tonight?!?! Guess we are as ready as we'll ever be...here goes nothing...!

Belly Pics

A few weeks ago, I had a fun little photo shoot with my friend and former-Lancer-now-photographer, Crisanta, to take pics of my belly...so excited that I get to see the finished product while I still have the belly!

Here are just a few of my favorites, but the rest are...HERE

Baby Girl Hansen On The Way!

Grandma Lima jokingly complained that, just two years ago, she was the only one of her friends who didn't have any great grand-children...well, we cousins are sure making up for lost time! First Layne, then Kendra, now Baby Allevato and Baby Girl Hansen are on the way...

Janelle and the aunts threw a beautiful shower for Diana at the Via Verde Country Club and mom snapped this back to back pic of the two of us girls : )

Chubby Cheeks at 38 Weeks

Well, it turns out that our little one is not so little...we went for another ultrasound today and they are estimating that the baby already weighs 9 lbs 5 oz -perhaps I've had a few two many red velvet cupcakes lately?! The good news is that the baby looks very healthy and has cute little chubby cheeks; the bad news is that I will now have to have a c-section, and for someone who dreads the sight of the tiniest needle/prick of blood, this is gonna require a bit of mental preparation...

just gotta keep focused on the prize at the end! Here are some snippets of the 3D/4D parts of the ultrasound - I left out the boring bone and belly measurements and just cropped the face views - you can even see it sucking its thumb in the last one : )

Deja Vu

Why have I posted a picture of Paul my cars? Because it was too funny not to once Paul pointed out "Hey, just like the Senior parking lot at Amat!" I am happy to report that Paul has come aboard Cohen Pivo as part of Operation: Maternity Leave, and after 5 months, he hasn't gone running the other way yet!
Pretty amazing how things can come full circle like this, as 10 years ago we had "twin" business cards for PricewaterhouseCoopers!

36 Weeks...

So much to do and so little time left to do it! This was my first week on maternity leave - well, sort of...still worked a bit, but at least I was only IN the office one day this week, so that is progress! On Tuesday, mom and I got to work on putting the baby's room in order. Here is the "before" pic...

...and here is the "after"...

can't even believe it's the same room! We got all of the clothes washed and sorted and in drawers/ closets, bath stuff in the bathroom, bottles/accessories in the kitchen, and other gadgets and gizmos where they should be in the rest of the house...oh, and sitting in the office, two giant boxes filled with sorted gender specific clothes/decor, one of which will go back to Babies R Us once we know which box we'll actually be using!

This week I also went for my 36 week ultrasound. You can't see much from the video since the baby is now too big to see in one shot, but here it is...

The doctor estimates that the baby is ALREADY 7 pounds 10 ounces, so she is a bit worried about how much bigger he or she is going to get in the next 3 1/2 weeks, so she is going to do another ultrasound in two weeks and decide if it's best to induce. Hopefully, the baby will decide to come out a little early on it's own - but not TOO early! I still have lots to do!

8 Months...Almost There!!!

We've made it to the 8-month mark, hooray! We also just finished our childbirth classes at the hospital - or as Tony referred to it, as traffic school. I think the highlight of the classes was while we were on a break the last week, I took Tony up to see the maternity floor (since he missed the tour the prior week) and we got to experience one family's "moment" when the baby's father came out to the waiting room to tell his parents/inlaws/siblings - "It's a Boy!" I got a little teary while they all hugged each other and made phone calls...can't believe that will be Tony's job in just a few weeks! And from what I have seen and heard, this baby really could be here any day now - then again, I could also be one of those unlucky women who goes two weeks past her due date! While I definitely still have a lot to do before this little one arrives, I would certainly not be disappointed if he or she came a week or two early and I could get out of these last few weeks of discomfort...speaking of having a lot to do, I've been so busy wrapping up work at the office, that the nursery now looks like a Babies R Us exploded in it. Thank goodness I am now officially on maternity leave and mom is coming over tomorrow to help me get organized! Doesn't seem logical that I had 16 months to get ready for a wedding and only 9 for a baby, huh?!

Tea Party at the Peninsula

Michelle, Dena, and Jennifer, aka Tony's Angels in the office (and Michelle's mom!), took me out for tea at The Peninsula in Beverly Hills to celebrate Baby Allevato! Apparently we had so much fun that we forgot to take a picture of all of us, but thankfully, Michelle snapped a shot of the unbelievably delicious spread of scones, sandwiches, desserts, and teas we enjoyed...what a treat!

Congratulations, Matt and Vanessa!

Congratulations to Matt and Vanessa who celebrated their wedding at the Summit House on Saturday!







It was so fun seeing so many St. Louise people there - including deacon Al and Best Man Jason Valles.


Tony came straight from the races, hence the fedora... as a side note, Zenyatta won her 19th race today! Looking forward to watching her go for a perfect "20 for 20" in the Breeders' Cup next month!