If you look to the right, you’ll see that I added a new category to my blog roll, where you will find blogs I read pertaining to children and/or their parents navigating how to parent. Also, Celebrity Baby Blog, because they review some great products (okay, the cute babies don’t hurt either). Check them out, you won’t be disappointed.
I’m a big LOST fan. I’m not a rabid fan who looks for hidden meanings in everything, but I’m a big enough fan to get giddy with girlie giggles when Bill told me yesterday that he saw Naveen Andrews (Sayid) while out and about (sorry, I can’t say where).
My two favorite characters are Sayid and Hurley. I want to be Hurley’s friend and I want to learn how to kick ass like Sayid. Yes, I know they are fictional characters. I also like Hurley’s freckles. They are cute.
I was extremely excited when I found Jorge Garcia’s blog (he plays Hurley). I started reading the blog this morning and realized he seems to be a lot like his character (a funny, sweet guy), and I decided I wanted to be his friend. I’ll settle for reading his blog. I haven’t gotten up-to-date on it, I just started reading, and am working on the 2007 archives (I’m thorough when it comes to blog-reading). I normally reserve my praise (and blogroll addition) for a blog after I’ve finished reading the entire thing, and make a full-fledged committment to keeping on Google Reader. He had me laughing from the beginning, but when Olivia looked at me and said “What are you laughing at, mama?” as I was reading this post, I knew I had a keeper. It feels good to laugh when you’re sleep deprived, thanks Jorge!
Bill loves mushrooms. A lot. I am a big fan myself, but he can out-mushroom me. Anyway, he sends me an email from work letting me know he had found this AMAZING looking recipe and said “This looks good as shit”. Of course, I had to try it.
And let me tell you, it was soooo good. It is definitely on rotation in our house. Bill found the recipe while reading Smitten Kitchen; an absolutely gorgeous food blog that I am now going to blogroll and send to my google reader account. Please try this Chicken and Mushroom Marsala. So freaking delicious. And you know what? Mine actually looked like the picture in the post! I was so happy it came out right the first time. The only difference for me was that I used skinless chicken breasts. It was still fantastic and I don’t think I’ll even worry about making it using breasts with the skin still on. If the idea of gorgeous pictures and wonderful food writing doesn’t appeal to you, or you want a printer-friendly version (as I did) you can find the recipe here at epicurious.com (another great recipe resource).
Don’t worry, the alcohol in the wine is cooked out, so yes, even us pregnant/breastfeeding women (or alcoholics alike) can eat this one ;o)
I served mine with rice and candied carrots. However, I will not be sharing the candied carrots recipe because it was awful. AWFUL. It contained both orange juice and zest and was just way overpowering. I’m going to play around with the recipe, eliminate those variables, and try again. When I perfect my own personalized candied carrot recipe, I promise, I’ll post it :o)
Enjoy and let me know how you liked it!
So, I’ve been REALLY bad and haven’t posted in over ten days.
But I have a really good explanation for this lapse in writing.
I’ve been dealing with a very special type of sickness. They call it “morning sickness” but it affects me all day long, and it is totally draining me of any energy I may have had after taking care of Olivia all day that I would have used for writing. But, it is the most wonderful sickness in the world, because of course, it means I’m going to have another baby!
We waited a teeny bit longer this time to tell everyone (I’m 8 weeks along this time, instead of the 5 weeks I was last time), because we needed the ultrasound confirmation and I had NO clue as to how far along I was. I haven’t had a period since before I became pregnant with Olivia, so I didn’t realize I was ovulating. Don’t hate!
Now, this is not to say the baby wasn’t “planned”, because technically we had planned to start trying as soon as my body had gotten back on track. We assumed this meant I would have had Olivia completely weaned, off of the birth control a few months, had a couple of periods, etc. We assumed we would be fertile again sometime in the beginning of 2008, possibly the spring. Apparently, we are super-fertile, as I stopped taking the birth control (progesterone only, mini-pills I was taking since I was also breastfeeding) in October (a little more than 2 months ago) and I am a little more than 2 months pregnant. Go figure.
So, now, Olivia has been completely weaned (as of last Sunday) and I am 8 1/2 weeks pregnant. It happened a bit sooner than anticipated, but, that just means we’ll have a summer-time baby! My tentative due date is July 20th. My cousin and his wife are pregnant with their second child and their due date is July 7th, which is pretty cool. All of the cousins have a “buddy” close in age to them. Olivia and my cousin’s son are 4 months apart, and now TheDeuce (as Bill sometimes likes to call him/her) will be very close in age to my other cousin’s child. Plus the cousins’ respective other children are 8 months apart.
We saw such a strong heartbeat and I feel so confident this pregnancy will be okay that we decided to go ahead and get the good news out, so people could keep us in their thoughts, prayers, etc. I know anything can happen, but I feel good about this little butterbean.
Everyone says “Oh, maybe you’ll have a boy this time.” As if I was disappointed that I had a girl the first time, or that in order to be “complete” you have to have one of each. At least, that is how it sounds to me. Personally, we don’t care which sex child we have, just so long as the baby is healthy. Yes, it would be pretty cool to have a boy and see what raising a boy would be like, however, the idea of having two little girls just melts your heart also, so it doesn’t matter! Looking back at Olivia’s pictures from when she was a teeny little baby made me realize that it didn’t matter one little bit, because this baby is already so loved. We won’t be finding out the baby’s sex either, because we like a surprise. Sure, it might be cool to know ahead of time, but I feel that finding out when the doctor pulls the baby out is an amazing experience. We didn’t know what Olivia was until she was laying on my stomach and they had to practically pry her little legs open.
One caveat: Unless we can figure out an amazingly awesome girl name, this baby better hope it’s a boy. Right now we have no clue for a girl’s name, and we are just going with the same name we had chosen for a boy the first go-round. I’m searching for one that isn’t too trendy, classic enough without being generic, and something people can pronounce. Also, it can’t be too long. Apparently Bill has an issue with really long names (haha). It should also lend itself to a decent enough nickname. Olivia is usually “Liv” or “Livie”, and Bill usually calls me “Nat”. His family really has a thing with shortening names, because it seems EVERYONE is called something shorter than their given name. Also, I feel like Olivia’s name is just perfect for her, and I want nothing less for our next child.
I guess it isn’t very fair (or right) of me to say that the baby should hope it is a boy, but…I just want the right name, and right now I’m not feeling the love that I felt when I realized I had fallen for the name “Olivia”. I mean, it’s a huge responsibility, naming a person. Sure, if they don’t like their name they can file a change of name when they are of age, but do you know how expensive it is to change your name? Part of my job at the newspaper was to write/run the name change ads, it can cost over $1000. This is just for the ad portion, not counting the court costs, filing costs, etc. Why place the extra burden on the child by naming them something they are unable to live with? I’m sure if we found out the sex of the baby we could alleviate (or perhaps elevate) our name-anxiety, but, it’s fun to wait (really, it is!). I’m sure we’ll find something. We have 7 months. Send your suggestions! I’m not opposed to taking names from others, just make sure it isn’t a name you want to use for your future child. I don’t want to be a “name stealer”. hahaha
Another added bonus of not finding out the sex: we get to test-drive all of the old-wives’ tales. I wish we had done that more thoroughly with Olivia, kept better track of it, because it would have been pretty cool to see which ones panned out and which ones didn’t, and then use the data from my pregnancy with Olivia and the pregnancy of this baby to figure out if any of them were remotely accurate. God, I’m a nerd.
It was really cute when I told my mama we were pregnant again. We had not been able to find plane tickets (see, God works in mysterious ways…he had a reason for me not to fly, methinks!), so I called her up and said “Well, it looks like we won’t be coming for Christmas.” And my mom was like “yeah, I figured as much.” (she sounded so upset!) And then I said, “Because it really isn’t all that good to fly during your first trimester.” And she just started crying (happy tears, of course!).
Now, it is okay to fly in your first trimester, most people agree it won’t necessarily harm the baby, but there may be an increased risk of miscarriage from some reports and studies shown, especially if you will be flying in those tiny little planes with unpressurized cabins (as was the case with at least one leg of our trip), so we decided to err on the side of caution and not fly. We’re planning a trip in late January/early February right now.
My mom says she “wants” another girl. I told her we weren’t having those types of conversations, and if she continued to say stuff like that we wouldn’t have baby-related conversations. I never want my child to think that we (or anyone in the family, for that matter) had preferred one sex over the other. NEVER. Of course she said that she would love either sex the same, and I know she means that, but I still don’t like that line of thinking. I also told her she wasn’t allowed to poo-poo all of my name choices, which was a waste of breath, as she has already complained about one name in particular, calling it an “old lady” name and that she didn’t like it. What does it say about me that it is one of my current top contenders? The more I think about her disliking it, the more I like it. I’m awful, I know. Perhaps that’s the “moodiness” all of the pregnancy sites are talking about. My own passive-aggressive moodiness to be sure, but moodiness.
Looks like I’ll have to rename the blog. I’m thinking “And then there were four…” However, I’m always open to suggestion.
New Blog alert!! I am currently reading The Barmaid Blog archives. I hope to catch up soon. She’s such a talented writer. Maybe one day I will figure out how to sound more put together. One can hope, right?
This is what I have decided to do in regards to my little blog slip yesterday. What does this mean for you? I’m still posting every day for the rest of November, dammit. In fact, I may try to go longer. We’ll see.
This also means that some days you may get craptastic posts. But, such is life. Tonight, however, I’ve decided to start something new. Remember how I said I loved to cook? I’m going to post recipes that I try (or links to recipes), and tell you if they are any good. I’ll try to do it once a week maybe? A big part of my life is cooking and now that I’m a mom, I am TRYING to rely less and less on processed foods and more on using fresh ingredients and making things that are healthier. For the most part. I still love baking my chocolate chip/butterscotch chip cookies.
Today I made pumpkin bread. And it is oh so good. My husband couldn’t get enough of it, my daughter ate it and made “yummy” noises and I am in love with it also. The key is to use fresh pumpkin if you can. Using fresh pumpkin is REALLY not that difficult. You can freeze your fresh pumpkin puree, so you have it on hand in a snap.
All you do is take a pie pumpkin (they usually are called that in the supermarket) and cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and pulp, stick it face down on a baking sheet lined with tin foil (for easy clean-up) cook at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes or until the thing is fork-tender. Scoop the pulp, stick it in a blender or food processor, puree, and voila, you’ve got tons of pumpkin puree to last a while. I have only done two small pumpkins thus far, and I still have a bunch of puree left and I’ve already made: two pies a few weeks ago, pumpkin pancakes last weekend and the bread today! It’s cheaper (if you get your pumpkins on sale!) and your final product is so yummy. It’s not as sweet (or processed) as canned pumpkin.
Anyway, on to the recipe:
Seriously good stuff. I’m going to make more next week for Bill to take to work.
BTW: You should really try out All recipes This site is amazing and I alternate between this one and the Food Network website.
My wonderful husband has also found a new blog I am currently crushing on.
Great writer, awesome recipes & tips. It’s a food-lover’s wet dream. She breaks down the calories and cost of each of the meals, which I love her for :o)
I finally got my copy of Cooking Mama 2, so I am off to play for the evening :o)
Woot!