The big 3-0 (and +1-0 in a bikini)

    

For the week of my 30th birthday, Anil and I went to Florida. We stayed with my parents at the start and end of our trip and spent the middle of the week on the Gulf Coast. It was intensely sunny and hot, but the water was warm for swimming, which is what we were craving after a dismal start to the summer in Boston weather-wise and the cold oceans of New England beaches. It was so nice to get out of the city, away from work, and just relax for days on end.

Here is a photo of my bikini and bump ensemble. 

This is about 10 pounds into pregnancy, and it was actually liberating to rock the bikini. I could eat whatever I wanted (we sampled three key lime pies over three nights) and not worry about looking slim in my bikini the next day because, hey, I wasn't going to anyway! And yes, I think I was the whitest person on the beach. I got paranoid about getting sun on my face on the second day when I remembered that there's this "mask of pregnancy" thing that lots of women get through sun exposure, basically making the freckles you get from the sun last until a few months after giving birth, and apparently in geometrical patterns. Anil loves my sun-induced freckled so he was all for it, but I slathered on the SPF 55 until I could be an extra on "True Blood." And I still got a tan (though no parallelograms of freckles), which tells you how hot the sun was!

Our first attempt at my birthday dinner didn't go so well, though you'd think this sign out front could signify nothing but a winner:

The Banana Cabana, while fun and kitchy, is not so much the place to take a pregnant woman for her 30th birthday, when she can't sit back and have a beer to laugh when the waitress asks if the woman with a mullet at the table next to us was "breaking the seal". So we did a redo the next night. We went to another island restaurant, but this one was right on the beach. We watched the sun set from our table and ate way too much, all as it should be. Here's a photo of us. I hope you can see Anil's sunglasses tan. 

And last but not least, here is Anil, on our last morning when we finally succumbed to the all-you-can-eat for $5 pancakes and sausage special at the beach cafe next door, trying to match me pound-for-pound in pregnancy weight gain. Fortunately for both of us I'm still winning that race.