Jane has arrived -

Click here for photos and further details:

http://www.janebreslin.com

March 22, 2007, 7:32am

We have another member of the new baby club! Please put your hands together and welcome little Jordana Isabel Ross, my friend Rachel (Gould) Ross' daughter. Born yesterday morning at 7lb, 11oz, she is clearly a little stunner like her mother already. Here is a link to her first on-camera appearance: http://www.box.net/shared/static/0fbzeka7yf.mov. Guess I am the last belly standing!

Cupcakes for Zander

So these are some of the cupcakes I lovelingly rendered for Zander. They were just basic chocolate with a cream cheese frosting but I went all Martha Stewart on the decorating and monogrammed them. I think this may have been my most successful frosting decor attempt yet. I am learning - who thought it was possible? Also I can't say enough good things about using gel based food coloring instead of the watery tear-drop shaped bottles. Far easier to control how much color goes in, and if it gets on your hand, far easier to get off. The key for nice shapes in the star-tip is to add more powdered sugar than you think is reasonable.



These are the beautiful flowers that Fleurs Bella created for Kate. I just love the little basket shape and the color combinations. What with all the snow on the ground, it's nice to be able to pretend that it is in fact spring already if only while we're indoors.

And this is just a picture of John practicing being a daddy. Not yet, not yet!

Photo mystery partially solved

I received a nice comment from Kim Maffin on my flickr photo set letting me know she'd linked to one of my pregnancy/copaxone pictures (here's the entry: http://www.todmaffin.com/blogs/ms/2007/03/13/change-is-in-the-air/) so that explains some of the traffic. I think someone else linked directly to one of the other pictures but as of now I am still in the dark about how to track those links down. Considering my computer skills are becoming worse and worse by the minute these days I don't think I will ever be able to find it completely. In any event, it was very cool and exciting to see that someone was inspired by the picture, but it was even more exciting that it was Kim since I have been listening to her and her husband Tod's excellent MS Podcast for ages. Yay! Gotta love reciprocity; they've given me a lot of info on trials of different drugs so I'm glad I could return the favor.

We just finished a very nice St. Patrick's Day dinner with both sets of parents at our house replete with the good china and the good tablecloth and adult beverages. I realized that this was the last "grown-up" party I'd be having for a long time, so it was a lot of fun to do. We made the same corned beef recipe we did last year from Bon Appetite, a marmalade-whisky glaze. You can either use pre-cooked corned beef from the deli or just buy it raw from the supermarket and boil it ahead of time for three hours, which is far cheaper. My mom brought some colcannon, and my mother-in-law provided a salad and a green-coconut cake. I made the brown bread and the soda bread with extra raisins. All very excellent and good, and a nice way to celebrate the impending arrival of that large bump in my stomach. Plus I had a teeny glass of Guiness - yum! So ready for bed now, but I'm sure I'll be up at 5:00am again in which case I'll post the photos of the cupcakes I made for Zander on Friday.

Progressive tummy photos

At the risk of appearing entirely too self-absorbed, here are a few photos of me and my sister pregnant. Enjoy them while they last - due to be replaced by baby pictures out the wazoo shortly!

Peru, NY - September 2006 - 3months preggo at this point... will those pants ever fit me again?

Royal Hideaway, Playacar, Mexico - December 5, 2006 Westchester Country Club, Rye, NY - January 28, 2007Village Restaurant, NYC - February 11, 2007
M&D's house, Hartsdale, NY - March 11, 2007

Zander Jackson Stempel - 8lbs. 9oz, March 13, 2007

Isn't he just precious?

I think he looks an awful lot like Grandpa Dave....
Grandma Susan gets to hold her first grandchild in her arms....
Mom is tired but happy....

Join the Movement - Fight MS

John and I went to the lower Westchester MS chapter appreciation dinner last night where we had the pleasure of meeting some great people volunteering to fight MS. There was a terrific speaker, Jack Llewllyn, who has spent the bulk of his career coaching top atheletes to higher performance levels. He was diagnosed with "that damn disease" in 2003, and his speech was very inspirational. More of an attitude approach towards all of life instead of just living with MS, it made me feel great to know that someone else felt the same way I did about how to live with this thing.

The other terrific thing about the dinner was getting to see the fantastic, and I do mean fantastic, new PSA campaign about MS developed by Wieden & Kennedy, aka the people that brought you "Just Do It". Please click on the link here - http://www.jointhemovement.org/ - and check out all the cool stuff being developed for release this year. I really hope that 2007 is the year that the average American finally learns the difference between Muscular Dystrophy and Multiple Sclerosis. The other aspect of the campaign that I loved was the new, orange MS logo. The campaign encourages people to Cross Out MS, and there is an online drawing tool to let you do just that. Give it a shot, it's a lot of fun, and if you're especially proud of your drawing you can submit it for a permanent place on the web. If and when I have some free time to fool around with graphics this summer I'm going to try and make some photos and videos to post on YouTube and Flickr just for the hell of it.

In food related news, I went to lunch in the city with my sister and Dad today and had chocolate fondue at Max Brenner. It was very tasty, but I still think the restaurant is too crowded and too loud, and this was at 3:00pm on a Friday afternoon. Not really worth it, in my opinion.

CUPCAKES!!!!

Sometimes the little voice in your head tells you you need cupcakes. RIGHT... NOW... and those stale grocery store ones aren't going to cut it. When the voice gets too annoying to ignore, you have only one choice: make the little gems.

These are the Amy Sedaris recipe yellow cake cupcakes with a cocoa buttercream frosting that I punched up with a little expresso powder and a dash of sea salt. They are very yummy and I doubt they will last much longer, so if you'd like one, stop by soon!

Flickr Uproar

DSC02788.JPG
Originally uploaded by HeathSeal.

John took a few pictures of me resuming my injections while pregnant because I wanted to post them to the MS group on Flickr. Somehow I now have had over 70 views of one picture in particular. I'm not entirely sure what's going on - maybe someone has reposted them in their blog? - and I'm not computer savvy enough to find out who's linking to them, but hey, if the message gets out that it's ok to have MS and a life, then that's a good thing, right? Unless it's on a blog somewhere labelled, "Freaks of Nature", then it's a bad thing.

Babies extra -

Alexander Antonio Sion

I just realized I never posted pictures of two of my friend's babies. Blame it on pregnancy brain or the never-ending flood of mucus that clogs my brain, but here they are, better late than never.

Frida M. Rico

How Big am I?

I am this big now. I can't see my feet or half of my dog if he sits at my feet. I can't roll over in bed without floundering around like a whale and I can't run. I am very close to being fed up, but I guess I'm not quite there yet. Bleargh...

PS The soup didn't really work the first time and I haven't been able to try again as I am staying chez M&D while the bathroom upstairs is being renovated. Hoping to move home soon though -