Ultrasound Crazy!

I was a little disappointed in the beginning of my pregnancy because I wasn't getting a lot of ultrasounds - which is good, because it meant there were no problems, but made us sad because we wanted to see our little girl as much as possible.

To make up for it, things got better in the second half... we had our 20 week anatomy ultrasound, where we found out [officially] she is in fact a GIRL! The we had to get an emergency ultrasound at 29 weeks to re-evaluate her size. Turns out she is measuring about 5 days smaller than the anticipated due date, which in reality doesn't actually matter because 5 days is not a huge difference once she is ready to come out.

Then we scheduled our 3D/4D ultrasound. Since these are not for diagnostic purposes, we had to set it up ourselves and we had to pay for it. The good news is, we get two appointments just in case she doesn't cooperate. Well we went in for our first one at 31 weeks. She proved she was our little monkey by showing us lots of her feet - which she had right in front of her face. Silly girl. The pictures were not horrible and we spent a glorious 30 minutes watching her move around and be crazy.

Then we set up our second one, because it was free and I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to see her again! We set it for 32 weeks. Same thing all over again, she had her feet right in her face. She is so adorable. Unfortunately this time the machine broke about 20 minutes into our appointment... :( BUT the tech let us schedule another appointment (free of charge) to make up for it! WIN! :)

We set it for two days later, and it turns out this was the best session BY FAR. She still had her feet right in her face, but she showed us her face and how beautiful she already is. We are so excited for her to be here!!!

And, just for good measure our doctor is scheduling us for another ultrasound at 35 weeks just to check on her one more time! :D

Farmer's Market

Today Brent and I ventured to the Mount Pleasant Farmer's Market.

Actually, Mount Pleasant has two Farmer's Markets... a big one on Thursday mornings and a smaller one on Saturday mornings, but since he works almost every Thursday morning we never get a chance to go to that one. Well, we woke up today and decided to go to the Saturday one.

I'm really glad we did! :)

Our goodies included:
-fresh honey crisp apples
-peaches
-4 ears of corn
-3 sweet potatoes
-a zucchini
-a cucumber
-lots of green beans
-an oatmeal cherry cookie :)

As soon as we got home, Brent got ready for work and left. I started thinking of fun ways to use our produce.

First idea: homemade peach tea.
I cut up three of the peaches while brewing regular black tea. Put the peach slices in the jug and filled it with the tea. Extremely simple. Extremely delicious! The peaches gave the tea the perfect sweetness and flavor. Even Brent, who hates sweet tea, loved it! :)

Second idea: green bean mac&cheese.
I have been craving some Velveeta shells and cheese all day, and we just happened to have a box in the pantry. So, I put the noodles in bowling water and chopped up several of our fresh green beans (my attempt at making it healthy) and added them in. The end result was WAY better than I actually expected. The beans stayed crunchy and added the perfect touch to the rich cheese and soft shells. I will definitely be trying this again. :)

Business Venture
I was quite inspired a few weeks ago when it was suggested to me that I try and sell my baked goods at the farmers market. Everytime I go there are at least two or three booths set up with people selling their bread, cookies, cupcakes, etc. AND since I have been so obsessed with baking lately I thought it would be a great idea. Unfortunately, my pessimistic side got the better of me and I decided I would probably never be able to do it. It would probably be super expensive to reserve a spot, I would probably need some sort of business license, or something that would be unattainable for me.

Well, when I saw the baked goods stand today I wondered over and checked out their goods and asked about what they had to do to set up there. She said I just had to go speak with the Parks & Rec department, and that for a Thursday spot it was $20 and a Saturday spot was only $10, obviously this is per week that I set up there. OR I could pay for the whole season in advance and get a discounted price. WHAT? That is seriously ALL I have to do? I am definitely considering doing this next summer... what a great way to make money!

Bake at home. Take Beannette to the park twice a week to sell my baked goods. Make money.

Yes, please.

Brent is all about me getting on this band wagon, and it is definitely under consideration at the moment. :)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Second try at making homemade bread.

Second success! :)

I follow a TON of food/healthy living blogs and recently they have all been posting about PUMPKIN. And it is obviously very fitting with the fall weather we have been experiencing and even the leaves are beginning to change. This inspired me to try some new recipes... involving pumpkin!

I'm not familiar with pumpkin, I have never baked with it before and to be completely honest I didn't used to be a giant fan of pumpkin pie, I think that might be changing this year... so I was a bit skeptical.

I went out and bought some canned pumpkin - finally! There was apparently a huge shortage which caused a bit of delay and found a fun magazine with lots of fall themed recipes.

I picked this recipe because I thought it was an interesting way to integrate pumpkin and chocolate! It was instantly a success. Extremely moist (I hate that word...), with the perfect sweetness. Brent seriously LOVES it, and so do all of his co-workers. :)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Bread
1/2 C butter, softened
1 C granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 C canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
2 C all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 C miniature chocolate chips
1/4 C chopped walnuts (optional - I did not use these)

Glaze
1/2 C powdered sugar
3 tsp milk

1. Heat oven to 350*. Grease bottom only of 9x5 inch loaf pan with shortening or cooking spray.
2. In large bowl, mix: butter, granulated sugar, eggs, and pumpkin with wire whisk. Stir in flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice. Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts. Spread in pan.
3. Bake 55-65 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pan to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 2 hours.
4. In small bowl, stir powdered sugar and milk until smooth and thin enough to drizzle. Drizzle over loaf. Let glaze set up before slicing, about 30 minutes.

Baking notes: My loaf pan was only 8.5x4.75, so it was a bit thicker and took around 80 minutes to fully cook.

The Final Stretch

Finally made it to the third trimester! I say finally, but really the past 28 weeks have literally flown by and I can't believe that in only 12 short weeks Brent and I will get to meet our little girl! We are so excited!! :)

I have started putting her "nursery" together. I use the term nursery loosely because it's really just her section of the room since we want her to be in our room for at least the first couple of months. We don't have any furniture or anything bought for her yet since we are waiting for the baby shower, but it's fun to try and decorate and get things ready.

Weight update:
Pre-pregnancy - 168.0 lbs. [my scale]
First doctor appointment (8 weeks) - 174.0 lbs. [my scale], 176.0 lbs. [dr. scale]
28 week appointment - 193.8 lbs. [my scale], 194.2 lbs. [dr. scale]

So, I've gained about 25 pounds total.. which is within normal, but I still have 12 weeks to go. My doctor originally recommended that I gain 25-35 pounds based on my pre-pregnancy weight and height. That would put my delivery weight at 193-203 pounds.. which is still doable, but I'm not going to stop eating or anything to stay in that range. If I gain a little more, I'm okay with that.. just gotta keep Beannette healthy :). As far as my personal goal to stay under 200 pounds, I don't think that's gonna happen.

I also had my glucose test at my last appointment, it was absolutely terrible. I had to fast for 12 hours, which was bad enough because I get really nauseous if I don't eat every few hours. And then I had to drink this orange drink that was basically pure sugar. Remember that I have had a hard time stomaching anything too sweet this entire pregnancy, so add that to my empty stomach and I felt miserable. I had to sit on my sugar drink for an hour before going back and having a ton of blood drawn. Luckily, all of my numbers were within normal range which means NO gestational diabetes for me! YAY! :)

Symptoms I've been experience include: lots of back pain, swollen ankles if I stand or walk for too long, food aversions, insane appetite, headaches, bloody gums and sore teeth, and a complete lack of sleep which leads to exhaustion. For some reason I just cannot get comfortable at night, so I tend to wake up every couple of hours. Guess my body is just preparing me for what's to come...

We also got a little bad news at the appointment. My doctor is concerned that I am not feeling much movement from Beannette so he scheduled me for an emergency ultrasound. It is on Tuesday morning... I am trying not to be too worried about it, I feel like if he thought it was serious he would not have waited until Tuesday to schedule it.

I have also moved to bi-monthly appointments! :)
It's getting close...

I am loved!

Brent does a wonderful job of cheering me up, even if it something small he knows exactly how to make me smile!

Let me first go back a few weeks, when I was in the heat of my baking streak. I constantly complained that finding what I needed was impossible because I had acquired too many spices and baking materials. Seriously. This was my cabinet:


Whether he was tired of hearing me complain constantly, or because he loves me that much he went out and got me this:


I was ecstatic! :)

Fast forward to yesterday.
Wednesday was a terrible, terrible day. Lots of drama and stress, on top of the 3 hours I spent in the ER early that morning... and it only got worse from there. Let's not even talk about the pregnancy hormones and emotions thrown into it.. it was just a bad day.

Thursday, he had to work and knew I was still pretty upset about Wednesday. As I was sitting at my computer checking my daily sites (mostly blogs) he was being awfully secretive in the bedroom. I assumed he was just playing his video games and didn't think much of it. After awhile he came out and got on his computer and I went to take a shower.

I got in the bathroom and found a post-it stuck to the bathroom mirror. It said "you will ALWAYS be beautiful to me <3". I lost it, I started crying my eyes out and I went and gave him a huge hug! It meant so much to me to find that note, and he knew it would make me smile... I don't think he was expecting the tears though. :)

It also really made my heart melt that he does pay attention to what I do. I sit on my computer everyday and browse multiple healthy living blogs, following the lives and healthy stories of people who I have never even met. It is a great inspiration to me, not only because I love seeing that other people live happy, healthy lives but because they also make healthy living and healthy eating fun. Health food does not equate to bad food, and exercise does not equate to torture. It's nice to see others who feel the same way.

I've been reading these blogs for a few months now and I must admit that while I love reading all of them, there are a few that have really stuck out to me for various reasons and I love them. I love the girls that write them, their stories, and I love reading their daily posts. Two of these, in particular, really stood out to me.

One was Caitlin. She is always upbeat and positive, and she shares stories about her personal goals and life outside of what she eats and how she exercises. Plus, it's always fun to see pictures and read stories of other furbabies :). But really, it was her side project that drew me to read HTP everyday.. Operation Beautiful. I first noticed the link on the side of her blog, and then I started following the OB blog as well. It really hit home to me because I have never had a good body image of myself and I used to partake in lots of negative and fat talk. I had never left any notes on my own, but I talked about them all the time. I thought most of my talk was just random babbling to Brent, until yesterday.

He actually listened and knew that if he wanted to make me smile he knew just what he had to do. Throughout the day I found 9 post-it's, all with different happy positive thoughts scattered throughout the house, and apparently there are still a few hidden somewhere. With each new-found note came new tears of happiness. Brent means so much to me, and for him to do that.. just to make me smile.. shows me how much he really cares about me. It may have been small, he didn't go out and spend a lot of money on lavish gifts, but his heart poured out to me on those little green pieces of paper and that means more to me than any material possession ever could. <3

New Discoveries

I was quite disheartened last night when I was craving a good ol' fashioned PB&J and then it tasted absolutely disgusting to me. The jelly was just too sweet and I couldn't stomach it.

Well, today I was making lunch and decided to try and get creative. Yesterday, Brent and I ventured to the Mount Pleasant Farmer's Market and picked up some fresh apples, it was seriously the only thing that looked appetizing to me (the one part of pregnancy I am quite sick of is my aversion to veggies...). I stared at them for a few minutes and knew exactly what I wanted to make.

I pulled out the bread and smeared one slice with peanut butter. I sliced the apple and put it in the peanut butter and covered it with cinnamon and nutmeg. To finish it off I grilled it on the skillet.

The finished product:



I cannot say enough how delicious this combo was! Brent, who was extremely skeptical when he saw me assembling it thought it was one of my greatest creations yet! I do believe this will definitely be making a reappearance. :)

It's a feast!

I've slowly been experimenting more and more in the kitchen, but mostly I have resorted to old favorites and lots of processed foods. My aversions have come back, hard, and I cannot seem to stomach fresh veggies. I have also been extremely exhausted and my feet swell if I am on them too long... hence why I have been pretty absent from the blogging world.

However, the other day Brent and I were at the grocery store and we decided we wanted ribs for dinner. Now, I LOVE ribs, and he loves ribs but neither of us had ever made them before. I tried looking up several recipes, but I didn't like any of what I found (mostly because they called for a 1 1/2 hour to 3 hour cook time and I was starving :P), so I decided to try it my own way.

We spiced them up with BBQ sauce and an assortment of other spices and put them under the broiler for about 15 minutes, checking on them somewhere around the 7 minute mark. This somewhat worked, the meat cooked but the BBQ sauce burned into a hard crisp shell. Don't get me wrong, it was still extremely delicious.. I just think next time I will try something a little different in the preparation.

On the side I made some homemade mashed potatoes.

Fun fact: Before he started dating me Brent hated potatoes with a strong passion, claiming they were disgusting and swore he had tried all kinds before. Now he loves them. He begs me to make potatoes (he especially loves them baked) with dinner! Success, if I do say so myself :)


Fun fact #2: Kenji loves mashed potatoes. It is a well known fact that Kenji is spoiled worse than most children, so of course when he smelled the delicious aroma of a new meat being cooked he all but dived into the oven to investigate. When we sat down to eat he jumped up on my chair (this is typical, he sits next to me in my chair while we eat waiting for me to give him bites), so I tore off some rib meat and scooted it over to him. He ignored it and instead stuck his entire paw into my potatoes and proceeded to lick it all off, then stuck his paw back in for more. I almost died laughing. :)

Overall, I would say the dinner was a success...