Baby Face

Meet our little miss Pouty Pants! I had a 34 week ultrasound yesterday so they could check her weight, organs, and all kinds of other stuff and we walked away with some pretty amazing pictures. Unlike most other doctor's offices, my new office here does the 3D ultrasounds as their standard practice, so we got an unbelievable look at our little peanut.

The doc said that she has lots of hair, weighs 5 lbs 13 oz, is extremely active (Ugh. Many thanks to my restless hubby for that trait), and is a "world class pouter." She MAY have gotten the pouting thing from me, but really... why point fingers?

It was hard to get a clear picture of her face because she wouldn't move her hands, but we eventually got some good shots. Now we're even more anxious for her arrival!! I have a lot of her clothes washed and the lightweight stroller put together, but we're still waiting on the arrival of the nursery furniture to really whip things into shape.




Here's another picture of her - very squished - face. Clearly she has her Aunt M's beautiful lips and her dad's dark hair. I think I got shut out of the gene pool this time around, but we'll see. It's not surprising, I'm one big recessive gene, so I wasn't expecting a pale little redhead.



As for me, here's how she looks from the outside. I'm still feeling remarkably good for being 35 weeks along. I live a very low key lifestyle that includes a lot of couch time, so I'm sure that's why I'm lucky enough to feel so good, but considering the fact that I thought I'd be on full bed rest due to my back at this point, I'm loving life. And can I mention for the one millionth time how grateful I feel to not be working?? What an unbelievable blessing it is to just focus on our new house and our little one without having to work. Most people are not this lucky and I recognize that fact every single day. Right now I will happily give up new clothes and dinners out and every other luxury to enjoy a peaceful existence with Baby Girl and B.

Berry Yummy Treats

I have two very summery and very deliciously berry recipes to share with you. On Father's Day B's sister made an incredible Blackberry Limeade that inspired me to use up the berries I had in my own refrigerator to concoct something similar. And it was so easy and fast a tasty that you should do the same thing.

For some reason I keep buying lots of fruit at the grocery store and it keeps going bad in much less time than I'm used to (THIS is what happens when you no longer get to shop at Wegmans!) so I've been making all kinds of things that require mushy fruit.

So I took the leftover raspberries and blackberries that I had, blended them with water, strained the seeds, added the juice from the five lemons that were in the fruit bowl and kept adding sugar and water until everything tasted right. Voila! It's heavenly. Not to mention that it's never even occurred to me to turn the fruit on my counter into a summer drink before, so that was kind of exciting as well.

As for the muffins, I've been trying to modify the basic blueberry muffin recipe from How to Cook Everything to make it a little healthier but also taste good and I've finally got it. This was my third batch in about a week, but the second batch went to the neighbors so we could introduce ourselves, so we haven't been eating only muffins.

The new recipe tastes amazing and because they utilize half whole wheat flour and an alternative sugar source, they don't spike your blood sugar the way regular muffins do. You can have one... or three... for a snack and not feel like you just snacked on a disguised cupcake.


Modified Blueberry Muffins

3T melted butter
1C white flour
1C whole wheat flour
1/2C Agave Syrup (comes in a squeeze jar and can be found in the natural foods section of your grocery store)
1/2t salt
3t baking powder
1t cinnamon
1 egg
1C milk


Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl.

Beat together the egg, milk, butter, & Agave syrup in a separate bowl.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir swiftly stopping as SOON as the dry ingredients are moistened. (This step is important in avoiding dense muffins)

Add the blueberries and stir only enough to incorporate.

Put into muffin tins

Optional: I add a little sprinkle of brown sugar on the top of every muffin to give a small, crunchy topper to the muffins. Plus, the muffins themselves are not that sweet and this little bit of sugar is a nice balance in your mouth.

Bake for only 15 minutes, let rest for 5 minutes, remove from pan.

Why the full size bed isn't cutting it anymore

Occupants of our bed at night:

Me
B
Baby Girl
Hank, the body pillow
Miles
Dizzy
JoJo, the monkey

Weekend Project

Not too much progress got made on the house this weekend because there were two big projects to tackle before moving forward - painting the nursery and building a desk. Before you ask, no, the nursery is not any super fun color, it's cream. We're renters and we just wanted to freshen it up a little in there since it was pretty dingy. But don't you worry, thanks to her black crib (which my father lovingly referred to as her Baby Jail) and her hot pink accents, she'll have a lovely nursery... one day.

So the nursery got painted on Saturday while I was out of town at a small baby shower and that made Sunday into Desk Building Day. B got a little wrench thrown into his grad school plans when he found out that the original date he was going to take the GMATs was sold out and he has to take them this Saturday instead. You can get into graduate school with a week's worth of studying, right? Shut up - sure you can!

The problem is that the room we're using as an office/man room/guest room has a very problematic layout. Every wall has an obstacle and therefore there is no room for a bed or a desk. Two walls have doors, one wall has a closet that houses the boiler and cannot be blocked, and one wall has the radiator (with a wooden topper).

We gave up on setting up our extra bed and are just storing the mattress in a closet, but having a desk wasn't a negotiable feature for someone about to start his MBA, so we had to get a little creative. And since this week is Cram Week for the GMATs, we had to get creative right away.

Thankfully my mom just redid her kitchen and had an extra 4' piece of counter top around and thankfully B is surprisingly handy given the fact that he owns exactly one tool - a circular saw. So $35 worth of wood and spray paint later and voila! We have a desk! You'll see that the back of the desk has legs that are only about 8" high so they can sit on the wooden topper to the radiator and the front legs are standard height. You'll also see that B was very excited to be building something even though his resources were limited.

Before/During

After!

Almost 33 Weeks

Here is the latest big belly pic. I'm told that I've gotten bigger just in the last few weeks and it definitely feels that way as the general uncomfortable/awkward factor is steadily increasing (although I've had two people tell me that I still don't look pregnant from the back, so that's encouraging).

I have a serious case of what I've been calling HLS - Heavy Limb Syndrome. It started last weekend as we were on one of our THREE trips to Lowes and I felt like I couldn't move very easily. I sounded like a crazy person as I was trying to explain to B "I don't know, I just feel like my limbs are SO HEAVY. Like, it's making me tired to lift my arm right now and lifting my legs to walk is killing me. It's very weird, I can't explain it. It's like I spent all day yesterday working out." One quick Google search later and I learned that while it's not really called HLS, it is a real symptom and about half of pregnant women get it. They mentioned something about extra blood, but I wasn't really paying attention since they said there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm also starting to notice, as the belly gets more and more prominent and the belly button refuses to be ignored, that the looks from strangers have been steadily increasing. When you're in the second trimester and your bump is adorable and cute and you feel great and you're not waddling yet, everyone looks at you with dewy eyes and a lovingly tilted head. "Ah, a young sweet pregnant lady with her husband - isn't that adorable? What a wonderful time. Sigh..."

The looks change quite a lot when you're this far along. The adults mostly look at you as though they really hope you don't pop or go into labor, thus forcing them to get involved, and the people of college age (both women and men) look at you as though they don't want to stand too close lest they actually CATCH the pregnancy. Lots of sideways glances and suspicious looks.

If I had the courage, and MAN I have never wanted something more, I could have had a BRILLIANT comedic moment last weekend in Macy's. B and I were going to the mall to get a pregnancy sling to support the huge belly and take the pressure off my back (here's a similar one - mine is like the one in the top left picture). We parked the car by Macy's and entered into a firestorm of teens and mothers swirling and whirling around the various makeup counters. Every girl had very impressively solid and fancy hair and they were all taking turns getting their makeup done. We quickly discerned that it was prom night or senior ball, or some other equivalent. So in I waddle into the sea of beautifully coiffed teen girls and more than anything in the world I wanted to grab my belly, put on a wicked grin, and scream out "BE CAREFUL TONIGHT GIRLS!! Hahahahaha...." Argh!! Would have been genius. But while I'm often accused of being too blunt, I'm not quite ballsy enough to pull that off. Not without some alcohol anyway.

So all in all I feel a lot better than I thought I would at this point, and I'm grateful. We also have our last ultrasound in two weeks so I'll have some Baby Girl pictures for you then.

Other than that, there's not much to report. There's a lot to do in the nursery before it's ready. Currently it's just an extra room that needs painting and is holding a lot of boxes and no furniture. We're hoping to make some progress on that front this weekend though. Some day, when there's paint on the walls, curtains on the windows, and assembled furniture, I'll post some pictures. I can't guarantee you that it'll be before the baby is actually here though. We'll see...

Baby Haul

When we were moving into the new house a week ago we were trying to figure out where all of our clothes would go since there is very limited closet space. B sweetly and naively said "well why doesn't one of us just take the closet in the nursery, I mean it's not like she's going to need it." At this point I laughed and said "Honey!! Trust me. She's going to need it."

Below I present to you the haul of baby clothes that I've been sorting through the last few days. I would say about 90% of them are from Feather Nester, Ouiser, or Feather Nester's mom and about 10% of them are brand new and are things we received as gifts. The clothes span from newborn - 12 months, so it's a year of clothing, but STILL.

Yet another reason why it totally rocks to be one of the last people in your circle to have kids. Not only do you get to email them pretty much every day with every pregnancy and baby question you have (uh... endless thank yous to Feather Nester, Ouiser, & Toddler Tamer), but you get to save all kinds of money by not buying clothes.

Wanna know what else saves money? Having a mom who's a labor and delivery nurse and "borrows" the newborn diapers that Pampers gives out free to all the hospitals. That one might be harder to come by though.

Skewering the Chick Flicks

Yesterday I had to confess to my good friend and film lover/writer/major Ben that B and I have an embarrassing desire to see the new movie The Hangover. My reasons for wanting to see it are very complicated and they go something like this: I have a huge crush on Bradley Cooper. Ed Helms, who plays Andy on The Office, really cracks me up.

Until I actually Googled the movie and watched the trailer, I basically didn't even know what the movie was about. After watching the trailer I can see how someone who doesn't have a crush on Bradley Cooper - AKA: My husband - would also want to see it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't expect it to be "good" per se, and it's weird that I even want to see it because B and I average one movie in the theater per year, so why it would be this one, I can't explain.

So once I started my Google search it led to related Googling, as is often the case, and I ran across this spoof video. Last February the movie He's Just Not That Into You came out, and in a ploy to get men to agree to see the movie with their girlfriends the three leading men of the movie made a video detailing the 10 cliches usually seen in chick flicks that are NOT in the movie. And while I definitely enjoy a good chick flick from time to time, I agree that the a LOT of the horrible cliches (spontaneous dance scene, anyone?) need to go.

So for the chick flick lovers out there, here's a funny spoof video for you...

The World According to Miles

This weekend my daddy bought a bird feeder and so far it's VERY. UPSETTING.

What new parents REALLY need

Feather Nester posted this link on her blog yesterday and I thought it was so great that I have to repost it here. It's a blog post originally published in 2001 and reposted in 2008 about all of the ways that friends and family members can be genuinely helpful to new parents. I've actually never lived in the same city as any of my friends or family when they delivered their babies, but if I had I would have treasured this advice. And now that we're on the other end I'm really treasuring the advice!

It gives helpful ideas that you can be proactive about without having to continually ask the new parents "what can I do to help" and it also tells you how to help without causing them extra stress by playing host and hostess. As someone who would never actually ASK a guest to take out the garbage or do a load of laundry or bring over dinner, it's nice to see the ideas in print. I also liked all the parts about "Do xxx, then leave" It's just so realistic. My mom friends have been telling me for years that what they really want is to have alone time to bond with their new baby and have other people take care of the crap work around the house - not just have everyone over to continually grope at your new addition.

The article is below and the link is HERE.

After the Birth, what a family needs

“Let me know if I can help you in any way when the baby is born.” … “Just let me know if you need a hand.” … “Anything I can do, just give me a call.”

Most pregnant women get these statements from friends and family but shy away from making requests when they are up to their ears in dirty laundry, unmade beds, dust bunnies and countertops crowded with dirty dishes. The myth of “I’m fine, I’m doing great, new motherhood is wonderful, I can cope and my husband is the Rock of Gibraltar” is pervasive in postpartum land. If you’re too shy to ask for help and make straight requests of people, I suggest sending the following list out to your friends and family. These are the things I have found to be missing in every house with a new baby. It’s actually easy and fun for outsiders to remedy these problems for the new parents but there seems to be a lot of confusion about what’s wanted and needed…

1. Buy us toilet paper, milk and beautiful whole grain bread.

2. Buy us a new garbage can with a swing top lid and 6 pairs of black cotton underpants (women’s size____).

3. Make us a big supper salad with feta cheese, black Kalamata olives, toasted almonds, organic green crispy things and a nice homemade dressing on the side. Drop it off and leave right away. Or, buy us frozen lasagna, garlic bread, a bag of salad, a big jug of juice, and maybe some cookies to have for dessert. Drop it off and leave right away.

4. Come over about 2 in the afternoon, hold the baby while I have a hot shower, put me to bed with the baby and then fold all the piles of laundry that have been dumped on the couch, beds or in the room corners. If there’s no laundry to fold yet, do some.

5. Come over at l0 a.m., make me eggs, toast and a 1/2 grapefruit. Clean my fridge and throw out everything you are in doubt about. Don’t ask me about anything; just use your best judgment.

6. Put a sign on my door saying “Dear Friends and Family, Mom and baby need extra rest right now. Please come back in 7 days but phone first. All donations of casserole dinners would be most welcome. Thank you for caring about this family.”

7. Come over in your work clothes and vacuum and dust my house and then leave quietly. It’s tiring for me to chat and have tea with visitors but it will renew my soul to get some rest knowing I will wake up to clean, organized space.

8. Take my older kids for a really fun-filled afternoon to a park, zoo or Science World and feed them healthy food.

9. Come over and give my husband a two hour break so he can go to a coffee shop, pub, hockey rink or some other r & r that will delight him. Fold more laundry.

10. Make me a giant pot of vegetable soup and clean the kitchen completely afterwards. Take a big garbage bag and empty every trash basket in the house and reline with fresh bags.

These are the kindnesses that new families remember and appreciate forever. It’s easy to spend money on gifts but the things that really make a difference are the services for the body and soul described above. Most of your friends and family members don’t know what they can do that won’t be an intrusion. They also can’t devote 40 hours to supporting you but they would be thrilled to devote 4 hours. If you let 10 people help you out for 4 hours, you will have the 40 hours of rested, adult support you really need with a newborn in the house. There’s magic in the little prayer “I need help.”

Notes on the move

Four days on the couch without the ability to walk has made exceedingly grateful for the fact that I have regained a little movement today. Although there was a slight detour in my recovery last night when I gave myself a severe burn on my back with my ice pack. It looks pretty gross, but it's healing well. Despite that, I feel a weensy teensy bit better today. It's never been so satisfying to do light housework.

Also, while having my morning "snack" of an English muffin, a granola bar, and some cinnamon graham crackers, I got to the bottom of the graham cracker box and found... the key to the safe!! Because, of course, where else would it be but in a box in the pantry? Good thing we weren't actually looking for it since we clearly never would have found it. At least, not until the next Pregnant Lady Starts Eating Random Shit From the Pantry Because She Is Too Hungry to Cook episode. So... let's be honest... we would have found it pretty quickly.

Baby, You Rock

Last night B walked in the door from work panting. And since we don't live on top of a mountain, I knew something was up. As it turned out, as soon as he got out of the car he looked across the street (a very busy 2 lane road) and saw a little girl on an out of control tricycle bombing down a hill into traffic and a frantic mom with a baby attempting (and failing) to catch her. So he dropped his stuff, sprinted across the street and stopped the runaway tricycle.

After recounting the story he started telling me about his first day of work and a funny incident that happened during his HR meeting. The story concluded with "... I was like Elle Woods on her first day of law school!"

Then an hour later we feasted on a salad, whole wheat spaghetti and some amazing homemade sauce we took out of the freezer.

Saving the lives of children, making Legally Blond references, and living up to our Italian roots with killer sauce - I have a rock star of a husband.

Welcome to the Capital District

Well, we made it! All of our stuff got here safely and swiftly thanks to Atlas Moving Company. Who would have thought that 2 people, 2 cats, and their little not-quite-here-yet baby could rock a full size tractor trailer so hard? I was picturing the 14' U-Haul that arrives when you perform a do-it-yourself move and stack your boxes 25' high. Apparently they're more careful than that when you're paying them. We got that big fat truck all to ourselves, got to block traffic in two different towns, and had any of the boxes marked Fragile single stacked so that nothing would harm them.

B also got to be known as "BOSS" for a solid two days as that was the head moving guy's name for him. I was cracking up the irony of the fact that B actually knew nothing at all about the boxes, the move, the moving company, etc., as I have been handling that for the past 9 months, but it satisfied my urge to not talk to strangers, so it was fine by me.

Thank god for my obsessive labels though. Those people are SERIOUS when they roll stack after stack of boxes into your house and you have to shout out where every box goes without the benefit of them actually stopping the hand truck. Also, don't think that boxes labeled "Bathroom" or "Master Bedroom" will negate your need to do this. Those men work hard and fast and have NO TIME for your labels. So I stood at the edge of the garage watching the next batch of boxes roll up the long driveway and tried to magically and frantically remember what I packed in That Box That Had The Torn Wine Label on the Side. Then they would roll up and it would be a frantic dash of "Uhhh.... KitchenBathroomGarageOffice!" God forbid we had to make them turn the box so we could see the label. I could feel them thinking "WOMAN! You've got a lot of shit for 2 people and we need to get back to Syracuse before dinner - MAKE A DECISION!" So - moral of the story - label those boxes within an inch of their lives if you plan on paying someone to move you.

So now the stuff is HERE, but the unpacking of it is an altogether different story. That'll take a while. And really, it wouldn't have taken that long - thanks to the labels! - but I'm sorry to say that my back is OUT. I mean big time out. The kind of OUT where I cry a little when I have to pee because it means I'll have to get off the couch. It hasn't been this bad since before I got pregnant and my physiatrist said "well... I can either give you the muscle relaxers and you can stop trying to get pregnant, or you can use heat and ice and keep trying." Both of us were at the appointment (since I didn't have the ability to stand upright at that point) and we figured that since I wouldn't be able to take muscle relaxers the entire time I was pregnant or breast feeding anyway, why start now!

I'm actually not even sure why it happened because there wasn't an "incident" per se. Some combination of pushing myself too hard during the move (although it really didn't feel that way) and pregnancy hormones. This is the exact moment in the pregnancy where you get an increase in the hormones that relax your ligaments - the same hormones and wiggly ligaments that make my exact problem worse.

So who knows why it happened but my annoyance at the problem is trumping the overwhelming pain. Do you know how FRUSTRATING it is to have a house of boxes and a baby on the way and NOT be able to let your new Type A personality unleash organizational FURY on those boxes?!! Sitting on the couch for 9 hours a day during those first trimester pukey days was great, but trust me when I tell you that it's the last thing I want to be doing right now.

I'm hoping that a few days or a week of rest will actually help the situation and this isn't the beginning of that "probably bed rest towards the end of pregnancy" that my specialists warned me about. In fact, I'm deciding right now that it's not because the reality is that I have too much shit to do.