Preggo Post #2

Check out Preggo Post #1 here. I meant to write these preggo posts more frequently, but there is just no time! I mean, I guess there's time, I just don't really want to spend it in front of the computer.  But for the sake of journaling this adventure, here are some updates on where we are.

• At the time of writing this, I am 23 weeks plus 3 days pregnant.  That means...

• The countdown blocks were a gift from my friend Allison early on and we have enjoyed changing them each week.  It was pretty scary changing the blue block from a 2 to a 1.  We're more than halfway there...eek!
• I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and everything still looks good.  Baby's heartbeat was 135.
• I left yesterday's appointment with the bottle of Glucola that I have to drink for the next appointment for the gestational diabetes test.  You have no idea how much I'm dreading this test, and staring at the bottle of orange grossness in the fridge is not making it any better.  My nurse told me I should limit by carbs and sugars the week of the test.  Doesn't she know that's all I eat?
• At that appointment, I will also get a shot of immunoglobulin for being Rh Negative.  Not a big deal, but the combination of the glucose test and the shot don't have me jumping up and down excited about that appointment.
• As announced in this gender revealment post, we're expecting a baby girl!
• At the moment, baby girl still does not have a name. We have options but just can't commit. Currently, we are referring to her as Polly (a name my dad suggested that we vetoed) with Ester as her middle name (wait for it...).  That means her fake initials are PEE - fitting, since that's what I have to do a lot.
• Not only does she not have a real name, but Polly also still does not have a nursery or a suitable car to ride in.  We are still on the house hunt and hoping something good happens soon.  We know the car situation will be a fairly easy fix, so we aren't worried about it.
• As far as possessions go, baby girl owns a bath, one book, a coming-home outfit plus another gown, and about 4 outfits she can wear next summer.  So, not much, but that's good since we don't have anywhere to put anything anyway.
• I have just now begun to think about nursery furniture and color scheme.  I have a vague idea of what I want, but it's really hard to figure out since I don't have a nursery room to visualize it all in.
• Haven't registered yet.  Am completely clueless on what all we need.  (Help?)
• I have been feeling the baby move for quite a while.  I felt flutters around the end of April and then, on our anniversary in early May, she gave a noticeable kick that Doc was able to feel too.  She hasn't stopped moving since and seems to be riding really low!
• I hesitate to post these pictures since they're so terrible, but a few people have requested them so here goes.  I take my weekly photo every Sunday afternoon.  Sometimes I don't remember to take it until after I've spent the day working in the yard or building in the shop or something, so they definitely aren't pretty pictures.  I won't post them all, but here are a few that show the bump's progress.

 

 

• Overall, I feel pretty good.  The only major complaint that I have are my restless legs.  I had RLS before getting pregnant, but it seems to be much worse now.  I have been carrying around a prescription from my doctor for about a month now trying to convince myself I don't need it, but I am now thisclose to having it filled.  My legs drive me crazy all the time, and now my twitching and squirming is keeping Doc up all night too.

We are enjoying this journey and can't wait for baby girl to arrive.  There are so many things that have to get done before then, though!  I try not to think about it much because it's enough to make me feel completely overwhelmed.  I just keep telling myself everyday that it'll all work out.  And it will.  I know it will.

Freezer Cooking

I've been meaning to share this with you all for a while now.  A month or so ago, a coworker of mine shared this website about making freezer meals to cook in the crockpot.  She had made a few of the meals and was bringing delicious smelling leftovers everyday for lunch.  So we had her share her secret... Jaima over at Ring Around The Rosies has created a list of meals that can be made way in advance and then stored in the freezer until ready to be eaten.  The best part is that you just take everything from the gallon-sized ziploc bag, dump it into a crockpot, and hours later dinner is served.  Y'all, this is my kind of cooking.

Doc and I had a few friends that we'd been meaning to prepare a meal or two for, and it certainly didn't seem like a bad idea to stock up our own freezer, so we decided to spend an evening making Jaima's creations.  Each recipe listed on her blog makes 2 gallon-sized ziploc bag meals, so we decided to pick a few recipes and double them so we'd make 4 batches of each one.  I let Doc choose which ones and he went to the store for the ingredients.

For our 5 meals, we made Savory Chicken, Teriyaki Chicken, Sausage & Peppers, Mexican Taco Meat, and Meatballs.  We started with the chicken dishes and Doc got to work dividing the chicken breasts up between the ziploc bags.

While he did that, I used a red sharpie to label all the bags.

The Mexican Taco Meat is the only meal that required us to do any pre-cooking.  We just had to brown the ground beef.  For all the others, we just measured and dumped in the ingredients.  As we filled the bags, I realized the red sharpie was a bad idea.  You could no longer read the cooking instructions.  Rats.  You can also see in the picture below that on the bag in the upper right I tried to add a label.  By that time, the bags were too cold/wet for the labels to stick.  Double rats.

The next day I happened to be at Michael's and found these cute tags in their Dollar Bins.

With a hole punch through the top of the bag and a little curling ribbon, boom! Cooking instructions problem solved.

Here are all five meals for one recipient.  Admittedly not the cutest things ever, but what frozen food is pretty?

For the Savory Chicken, you don't add the broccoli until the last 30 minutes, so we put it in a separate bag and attached it with the card.

And because we wanted to do complete meals, we had a few more items to pack into the box.  We added taco shells and cheese for the Mexican Taco Meat, pasta for the Sausage & Peppers, and rice for the other meals.

And with that, our box of 5 meals was complete!

Why you should jump on the freezer cooking train: We spent about $200 and were able to make twenty meals in under two hours.  You can't beat $10 a meal!  And really, I use the figure 20 meals loosely...we filled 20 gallon-sized ziploc bags full but, depending on how many people you're feeding, one bag could be enough for more than one meal.  Who knows how far they could stretch?  Doc and I recently ate the Savory Chicken over rice and there was more than plenty for the two of us and he was able to take a generous portion of leftovers to work the next day for lunch.  Did I even mention that the recipes are good?  The Savory Chicken was quite tasty and we've had a couple friends say the Meatballs are good too.  One called them, and I quote, "slap your momma good."  Might not want to invite your mom over for dinner that night; I'd hate for anyone to get hurt.

So what are you waiting for?  Get to cooking freezing!

Vacay in a Nutshell

Like I said in my last post, we've been at the beach house this week.  It has been wonderful; the weather has been in the high 80s, so definitely hot but not sweltering like it will be this summer.  The peak season here really starts this weekend with the Memorial Day holiday and we can already tell that as it gets close to the weekend, the crowds are getting bigger.  I'm really glad we were able to come before everything got packed! For the first time ever, we brought Lolli with us.  Riding in the car for that long was quite the adventure for her.  She couldn't ever settle down and nap for fear that as soon as she did, we'd arrive at our destination.  That meant a solid 8 hours of her standing in my lap looking out the window.  Good thing we had an audio book to listen to since I couldn't do much else.

First thing on the agenda was definitely to take the dogs to the beach.  Henry had seen the ocean before (see his first visit here) but not Lolli.  I just knew she was going to love it because she loves getting soaking wet outside.  If there's a rain puddle or wet grass anywhere near her, she's definitely going to roll around in it.  She completely surprised me, though, because as much as she was content with the sand, she hated the ocean.  Didn't want to have anything to do with it.

This is her giving me the stink eye after I'd drug her into the edge of a wave to get her feet wet.  She was not happy with me.  (As you can tell from the photo, I was so convinced that she'd love running in the water that I had all her hair shaved off before we left.)

She plopped right down in the sand and seemed to be telling me that she was perfectly fine where she was, thankyouverymuch.

Henry, on the other hand, was much more excited about the ocean this time around.  He loved running into the water and trying to lap it up.  (Henry is like me in that he doesn't have very cute beach hair...)

We were there too, but the only proof I have is our toes in the sand.

While my parents were here, Doc and my dad played golf a couple times which means Mom and I had some shopping dates.  We hit up several different locations and found some good deals but the Outlet Mall - usually one of my favorite parts about coming down here - just wasn't that much fun for me.  Being preggers, I found that none of the stores work for me, it's a whole lotta walking, and the bathrooms are spaced way too far apart.  I know, I know, first world problems.

We made two more patio chairs to go with the set here so we'd have 4 chairs instead of two.  With the extra chairs we were able to all eat dinner out on the patio one night while listening to a storm move in.  It was my favorite kind of meal - hot dogs from the grill, chip and dip, and fresh fruit. :)

On Mom and Dad's last night here, we went out to eat at La Crema in Rosemary Beach.   They specialize in tapas and chocolate and it's all so, so good.

I really hate this picture of me but it's the only one we took together the whole time we were there.

After they left, Doc and I spent a full day out on the beach and both turned into lobsters.  Re-apply your sunscreen, people!  We had a date night that night at Pier Park in Panama City Beach.  We ended up sitting out on the patio at Margaritaville for dinner.  The sun was setting as our dinner began and Doc tried to capture it behind me, but his phone didn't pick up all the pretty colors in the sky.

That's really about it.  We spent the last day under the shade hiding from the sun and cleaning up the house.  The next scheduled trip we have to come down here is when I'm on maternity leave.  I have a feeling I'll get my camera out a lot more on that trip!

Dance To The Music

We're on vacation!  (I was going to start with an apology for my absence but it seems like every post these days starts like that so...) Specifically, we're at the beach house.  We arrived Saturday afternoon and my parents joined us for the first half of the week.  Due to some issues with billing addresses, we realized our cable and internet had been cut off.  Luckily, we discovered that before we left town to come here and could attempt to remedy the sitch.  Unluckily, the technician couldn't come to our house until late Monday morning.  That means we had no cable or internet for the first 48 hours here.

So we had to entertain ourselves.  No biggie, right?  Here's a quick story of how we did that on Day One.

We took the dogs on a long walk on the beach (pictures coming - Lolli hated the ocean) before coming back to hang out on the screened-in patio.  We play a lot of Spades (the card game) in our family so Doc broke out the deck of cards for a friendly competition.  It was the most bizarre game of Spades I've ever been involved in.  If you're familiar with the game, I'll tell you this: at least one person went Low in each of the first 5 rounds and at least one team was set (either from Low, not catching enough tricks, or too many sandbags) in every one of those rounds.  We normally play to 500 but since we weren't even in the positive after 5 rounds, we played to 150.  (Full disclosure:  Mom and Dad beat me and Doc in the final round.)

After the game we walked to the Mexican restaurant that is just a couple of blocks away.  Our waiter gave me a hard time when I ordered a virgin daiquiri but backed off when I showed him my belly.  "Ok, Princess.  I'll make it pretty for you."  At least he got my title right.  Mom had a pineapple margarita that, halfway through the meal, had her reclining in her seat saying "Oh man, I could just lie down right here and go to sleep!"  This is important to remember for the rest of this story...

After dinner, it was Dad's idea to go on a little bike ride.  We could hear live music coming from Rosemary so I suggested we go check it out and see what was going on.  Our house is in Seacrest but practically backs right up to Rosemary.  Thanks to a fence line that runs between the two, though, you have to go back out to the main street to get there.  No cutting through the neighborhood.

So we drug the bikes out and, after airing up the tires, hopped on them to go for a ride.  Mom and Dad got the bikes that Anna and Wyatt used the last time we were here so they were riding a little low.  We didn't think to adjust the seats before leaving.

When we got to Rosemary we didn't see anything going on at all.  I mean, there were lots of people milling about like any other night, but definitely no live music anywhere.  But we were already there so we rode through the back neighborhood.  Doc was in the lead as we passed cruised around the residential streets.  We passed a big group of girls having a bachelorette party and lots of people out on their patios.  Occasionally we'd come to a street with no porch lights on so we'd have to ride through the dark.

Finally, I heard the live music again.  "It's that way!" I shouted to Doc so he could lead us to the music.  The closer we got, the louder the music got, and we soon realized we were approaching a wedding reception.  There was a block of open space (a park maybe?) in the middle of the neighborhood where white tents and twinkle lights and tables had been set up.  It was a fancy reception, one where the tables were draped with white table cloths and wait staff walked around in black suits while the little kids ran around barefooted on the plush green grass in their Vineyard Vines clothing.  A live band was playing from a stage and a dance floor had been constructed right in front of it.  The reception was in full swing with the bulk of the guests out on the dance floor, surrounding the bride and groom and jumping up and down to the music.

One side of the block had a row of bushes bordering it.  It was those bushes that we were riding behind as we approached the big event.  As we neared the corner, I slowed down behind Doc.  I was nervous about intruding on the reception but, like he said, it was a public street.  We were about to be riding along side the dance floor of the reception where we'd have no more bushes to hide behind.  My mom ended up passing me around the corner so my Dad and I brought up the rear.

Dance To The Music.

That was the song that was playing as we rode by the dance floor.  It's also the song that was playing when my mom drove her bike into the grass and crashed right into a pole.  She hugged the pole.  As in, she physically had to wrap both of her arms around the pole to keep from face planting in front of the whole reception.

Once past the reception, I had to pull my bike off to the side because I could. not. stop laughing.  I was sure I was either going to lose my dinner or wet my pants.  Thankfully, aside from the tears rolling down my cheeks, I managed to keep everything in.

Needless to say, we're having lots of fun.  More later!

Mother's Day Recap

Our family is so large these days that pretty much every holiday event doubles as someone's birthday party.  This year, Mother's Day fell on my brother Nick's birthday, and Jett (his son) had a birthday two days earlier.  That means that Sunday's lunch was a big ol' celebration! I had every intention of editing these photos before posting, but knew I'd just drag my feet on getting that done and the blog would go without posts for another week.  So I'm posting them as-is.  An active blog is better than a once-in-a-blue-moon post with good pictures, right??

Let's get to it.  Remember how my niece Bren used to NEVER smile for my camera?  Well the times, they are a'changin'.  This little chicken is a cheesin' fool these days.  She took a picture with everyone!

I'm one day in on my quest to take more pictures of my mother, and so far, so good!

Beth hosted us all for the big event and she had a big, delicious spread!  We stuffed ourselves silly.  My brother Ben and his wife Erin were a little later to arrive...Ben won't take a serious picture for me even after I threaten to put it on the internet.  This is the best I could get and his darn glasses have an awful reflection!

Ben and Erin brought baby Ramer with them (and Parker too!) so we all had to kiss all over him.

To Bren, babies are just like puppies.  They're fun to hold...

...and even more fun to pet!

Bren recently asked her mama if she could put a baby girl in her belly.  Beth, I think these two may be up for a little sibling...

Beth (pictured below with her sister Shea) finally told Jett that it could be present-opening time.

There were lots of presents to open so it was hard to keep up.  I'm not really sure I know what everyone got.

I know Nick opened a box full of outdoors t-shirts because I helped pick them out.

Jett has gotten pretty into fishing lately so we gave him an official fishing vest.  He's the cutest little fisherman I know!

Nick's big gift from all of us was a Yeti cooler.   I don't really know what all they hype about it is but he seemed pretty excited.  Something about it can keep your beer cold for a really long time and it's bear proof (as if that's been a problem in the past?).  While we oohed and ahhed over the cooler, two 3-year-olds moved into it's empty box.

Ramer got down on the floor to play too but he wasn't up to showing me his new scootin' moves.

It wouldn't be a birthday party without cake and candles.

The two birthday boys waiting for us to sing to them.

While we were singing, I think there was some strategizing going on about who would blow out which candles.

Whatever their plan was, it worked!  They got 'em all!

Once, back when we were little and were visiting my grandmother, she had just finished baking a cake and icing it for us to have as dessert later in the day.  When she came back to the kitchen after a few minutes, she found that a piece had been cut out of the dead center of the cake.  That was courtesy of my brother Nick, and he still hasn't grown out of his need for the center piece.  God bless Beth for putting up with his idiosyncrasies.

Parker was first in line for ice cream.

I told him he couldn't have any until he smiled for my camera.

Beth served cake with ice cream and whipped cream in edible waffle cone bowls.  I may have eaten every last bite of mine!

Shortly after cake we said our goodbyes and headed to the car.  I couldn't resist snapping a last picture of these two cuties.

They were way too into their conversation and playing with the sand to even look up at me.  I wish I could've stayed and listened to them for a while...three-year-old conversations are pretty entertaining!

That was the fun part of our Mother's Day.  The rest of it involved a trip to Walmart (ugh) and me deciding at 7:30 (without having eaten dinner) that I should trim back all of our bushes.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I guess that made it both a fun and productive Sunday!