Sigh.

Oh Jason, you wonderful wonderful man!

He did indeed play me a song after I finished reading his post. It is a beautiful song, and I cried and cried. Jason is a very talented songwriter. And a very good husband. Right now he's working super hard, trying to get as much work done as possible in advance of Ivy's arrival. We're incredibly lucky that his work schedule is so flexible—he plans to be home for a few weeks, and then gradually ease back into working from home, and from the office (which is about 5 minutes from our house). He's in the kitchen on a conference call at this very moment and I would just like to say how totally thoroughly proud I am of him and the incredible company and career he's built for himself, and for his fabulous employees—who are also our very good friends. When I first met him White Whale was just him and Alex and this intern-y kid and they did websites for local bakeries and bands. It was legit work, and they'd done some work for Brown and RISD too, but it was still pretty scattershot and random. Almost five years later and he's the head of one of the top higher ed web design companies in the country, with a seriously impressive client list that includes some of the top-ranked universities. He rides his bike to the office, he has conference calls from our kitchen, and sometimes he video-chats in his underwear (shhh, don't tell. He wears a shirt.) He works super hard, and yes, he thinks about work quite a bit—but he's not consumed by it, he doesn't slave away for a boss he hates, in a cubicle he hates, it doesn't rot his soul or rule his world, he loves the people he works with, and he gets to do what he loves to do, which is be really smart and have big awesome ideas. And, he will get to be a very present, very available dad. Which is so, so important.


My sister and I were incredibly lucky to grow up with a dad who got home from work around 3pm (he went to work at 5am)—he was always home after school, and he was involved and active and fun and he definitely left work at work. I'm so grateful for that. And now he's retired and he does triathalons and gardens and explores the bikes trails of San Jose with his cousins and feeds Jay, his pet bluejay. And he's very excited to be a grandpa. So, a belated blog THANK YOU to Doug for being an outstanding father.


And finally, here's a picture from this weekend—from Father's Day, in fact. We went to Jen's (the cute one on the left in the blue dress) baby shower/birthday party/Solstice/Father's Day BBQ in Richmond, and, of course, the preg ladies had to line up for a photo shoot. We are indeed in order of due date, with me definitely leading the pack. From the left we have Jen, mama-to-be of Ginger Crash; Lan, mama-to-be of an as-yet-unnamed boy; Kitty, mama-to-be of Tallulah; Geeta, mama-to-be of Ari; and moi, mama-to-be of Miss Ivy Cat, who, after squirming intensely for the entire duration of this blog post, seems to have fallen asleep. Thanks for that, dear. You were all up in my ribs.