FROM: STELLA

TO: LAURA

1. My husband and I spent most of the last week in Hawaii celebrating my 30th birthday and the halfway mark of my pregnancy! We spent a lot of time at the beach and ate at some great restaurants. It was a much lower key trip that we are used to but it was really fun and great to see a place we’ve never been to before.

   

2. When we returned, we had our 20-week anatomy scan and found out we are having a boy! He’s growing wonderfully and is estimated to weigh about 15 ounces at the moment. That actually changes our due date to be almost a full week earlier. I’ve been having a ton of fun picking out some gender-specific outfits and adding to our registry. These are a few of my favs (1), (2), (3).
3. I’ve been fascinated and terrified by our country’s student loan debt problem since I started (and finished!) paying off my own debt. I greatly enjoyed this semi-recent episode of Freakonomics that covered our $1.5 trillion dollar debt problem in detail.
4. My husband and I are very excited about reading to our baby and have a ton of books on our registry. He also found this cool site that puts your favorite fairy tales to classical music.

FROM: LAURA

TO: STELLA

1. I’ve been at the beach all week in Maine with baby Ernie and my husband, Jacob! It’s been equal parts relaxing and challenging (baby’s first flight! baby’s first vacation!) but I’m so glad we took the leap and traveled this early on in his life. Jacob and I both want to instill a love for travel in our kid(s???) life, so what better way than by introducing it ASAP! We probably overpacked on this trip a bit, but I wanted to be as prepared as possible for all the things we might encounter. Some beach favs for baby include: this baby sunscreen, swimmers, baby beach shelter, and these sunglasses 😎
2. We have walked the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, ME a couple of times while staying here. I’ve been coming here since I was born and it’s definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip.
3. I’ve been reading ‘Maid‘ by Stephanie Land, and loving it. I read ‘Nickel and Dimed‘ by Barbara Ehrenreich (who wrote the forward for ‘Maid‘) when it was written back in 2001 and remember it truly giving me a sense of what the working world could be for some. I definitely used that as inspiration to get my degree and work as hard as I could right out of college to establish a financially secure job. I know I came from a more privileged background than Stephanie, but reading her story still gives me the same sense of “that could be me” that Barbara’s book first did.
4. I was shocked to read this tweet about a woman whose mother-in-law showed up to her wedding in a wedding dress. However, I think the bride put a huge amount of context and compassion into the story behind how that happened, and am very impressed by her consideration and respect.