3rd trimester?

Some websites say the 3rd trimester starts at week 27, others say at week 28. Anywho, I'm in week 27 this week, so 3rd-ish trimester! WOO-HOO!! It has been flying by!! 

This weekend was car seat information overload. Since technically he can come at any time now and likely live through it (though hopefully he will wait a few more months to make an appearance), I want to have the car seat sooner rather than later. Though I suppose if I was to have him right now this second, he would likely be in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for a couple weeks, which I would have time to get all the necessary things. Anywho, looking up car seat information and price checking is mind-numbing. There are so many different kinds of car seats and brands. Should we go with an infant car seat that has the handle that is easy to carry (which means in about a year we will have to buy another car seat for a bigger child)? Should we go with the convertible car seat that does not have a handle to carry but will last the child for the first few years from infant to toddler? We've never done this before. Is it likely the baby will wake up every time we get him out of the carseat? I was under the impression babies sleep all the time...can we assume if we get the convertible car seat that he'll keep sleeping when we need to get him in and out of the car? 

Cravings: no weird food combination cravings. Mostly just crave chocolate (though in all honesty that was before pregnancy too). Lately I've really wanted a chicken in a biscuit like you might get for breakfast at a fast food place like Burger King or Hardees. But eating better means staying away from fast food. Breaded chicken in a biscuit might not be a healthy food but I do foresee this being cooked at home within the next month...

Appetite has increased two-fold. Anything that I would have eaten before now needs to be nearly doubled for me to feel full. Hello grocery store....we were becoming good friends, but now it seems we will be best friends since mama goes through the food supply so much faster now. On one note, our fridge is completely full right now! Can't say I've ever seen so many good things in there before! 

Ben's uncle Larry came and visited a couple times last week. We had a five-star chef in our house twice AND I'm pregnant.... how lucky are we! He made us breaded chicken with baked eggplant and mashed potatoes one night. The next visit was lasagna (with apple slices and carrots!!), and for dessert a puff pastry filled with apple slices and strawberries and topped with a cherry apple syrup that we made ourselves. We learned so many amazing cooking tips; we've been experimenting ever since we ran out of the leftovers. 

The lasagna might sound weird to have apples and carrots in it, but here's the thing: we have food restrictions in our household. AND we love Italian food. Some of the main restrictions (found in probably all Italian dishes) are no garlic, no onions, no mushrooms. Larry thought that he should replace the things that he would have used like onions and mushrooms and replace with things that would give the same consistency without taking away flavor. In place of onions, he put apples. In place of mushrooms, he put carrots. And we never would have known the difference if we didn't see him make it. Quite an amazing experiment (he had never made it like that either). One more recipe to add to his menu.

image from recipe website

And while on the topic of food, Chef Baby has done it again. Ben has been on an apple craze. We have so many apples in our house, yet they don't look like they're disappearing. On contrary, I think maybe they're multiplying. So I found some recipes with apples, and we tried one tonight. Super easy, not much mess, and so very yummy! They're called Apple Squares from the allrecipes.com website. We did not use nuts and we used one and a half apples. Also my pregnancy brain forgot to put in the baking powder, but it still cooked and tasted good.  

It tasted like the apple crisp a la mode from Applebees, minus the a la mode. It would be sooo very good with vanilla bean ice cream. Every time I make something new like this and it turns out good, Ben asks me what have I done with his wife. He says this is just me turning into a mom.

It's getting harder for me to get up and down from chairs now. I can tie my shoes/touch my toes but it must be done in an awkward bending way. If only my arms were a little longer. If you've ever wondered what it feels like to be pregnant, just imagine you've got your pants pulled up right under your breasts and can't bend over without discomfort.

Now for some funny pregnancy memes, courtesy of googling pregnancy memes.


Yep, definitely there now and can only assume it will get worse. 



I asked Ben this weekend, "can we make a chocolate cake? We have strawberries we can eat with it so it's healthy!" haha. We did not make a chocolate cake, by the way.



Oh, have I mentioned how out of whack my hormones are right now? I should probably take this sign with me to work. Working on sick patients every day definitely brings on the water works. Working with incompetent people brings on the anger. And all of this emotion just makes me need a York peppermint patty to get through it all.




Still not sure if Fred knows there's something different going on. This picture was just too cute to not include it.

Thanks internet for your funny memes. 

FOOOOOOD

Today I think I've eaten the most in one sitting than I have ever in my entire life. I made a one-dish meal that had potatoes (cut into about 1 inch cubes), chicken breast with Italian dressing, 1 whole carrot (sliced) and 1 whole zucchini (cut into 1 inch cubes also). I did have intentions of making this for both of us and possibly having leftovers....but instead I ate all of it.  :(   
...And still hungry...

I've been learning more about how to make homemade things with simple ingredients. {Side note: all of these recipes came from allrecipes.com} It started with homemade chocolate chip cookies. I got a craving for cookies but it was too late (or I was too lazy) to go buy some, so I searched online just to see if I would even have the right ingredients. Sure did! I started whipping everything out right away, and made some of the best cookies I have ever eaten. They were perfect and even soft a day later (truth is, I cannot make soft cookies. They always turn super hard within an hour after getting them from the oven, so I consider this to be a HUGE success since the cookies were still soooo yummy and soft the next day).

Ben and I experimented with the next batch of chocolate chip cookies. Keeping the recipe the same, we used a food injector (looks like a syringe) and injected the cookie dough balls with peanut butter right before we put it in the stove to bake. I think we even had a marshmallow or two that hadn't been eaten yet, so we cut that up and put into a couple of the cookie balls. The marshmallow didn't really do anything (it basically melted after you took the pan out of the oven), but the peanut butter spots were a nice surprise!

Some of the batter from this batch was left without chocolate chip cookies and I only put cinnamon in it to try to make snickerdoodle cookies. They were good, but overall I think just the plain chocolate chip was the best.

This weekend I experimented with making our very own tortillas. It didn't quite come out like I would have liked, and I'm not sure exactly if it was supposed to come out that way or if it's something I did. I think partly I cooked them too long, which made them a little tough (not very easy to roll up for a burrito). I also think I could have rolled them out a little more before cooking. Will definitely experiment with again sometime just to see if they will come out better. They weren't horrible but not great either. I did cut a couple of them up into triangles/odd shapes and put them in the oven for about 7 minutes to make chips. I feel like those tasted better, lol.

We also made homemade chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies. A couple little issues with those too, but the taste was still good, so of course we ate all of them.

One more thing we made homemade was peach cobbler (which honestly, I think this was what started all of the fun homemade cooking). We made this earlier on in the pregnancy and I don't remember where I got the recipe from. It was just exactly how I remember my grandmother's peach cobbler. Mmmmm!

Now, we have about 10 apples that need to be eaten, and I've already found a few yummy looking recipes for them. I'll try to remember to take pictures of our food adventures so that this is more interesting. :)


Also, we ARE trying to eat better, and yet these recipes are not exactly healthy. I will say that the peach cobbler and chocolate chip cookies did come before our breakdown of making it a priority to eat better and read the labels. We're not perfect and will end up eating "bad" food once in a while. The tortillas are supposed to be fairly healthy I would imagine just because they are whole wheat tortillas and don't need many ingredients. I just bought some spinach tortillas from the store and the ingredients list is a mile long, therefore they are probably not all that healthy either. However, I still feel that our homemade tortillas were more in the direction of being healthy. The no-bake oatmeal cookies were a little healthy in the aspect that oats are good for you, chocolate is good for you (in moderation), and peanut butter can be good for you if you get the right kind. We just looked at what our peanut butter is made of, and it's mostly sugar. Crazy concept, I thought peanut butter would have been made from peanuts. I bought a new kind today that actually IS made from peanuts, so we will see just how a "real" peanut butter is supposed to taste.

This week on the menu we've got chicken & cheese quesadillas, probably some sort of chicken and spinach/veggie wrap, tortilla rollup with cheese and green onions, chicken and veggie stir-fry (usual weekly meal, usually served with brown rice), and a couple meals with lean ground beef. For me, most of these come with a side salad of spinach leaves, cucumber, carrots, and balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Fruit smoothies or oatmeal for breakfast. Usually a scrambled egg with a piece of toast/cardboard for lunch with side of strawberries. Snacks include greek yogurt with granola and strawberries, Kind bars, fruit, and cheese & crackers (surprisingly enough, plain triscuits are only made with 1 or 2 ingredients!). Happy eating, y'all!

24 Weeks

Or, as my lovely niece reminded me, another way to think about it, 6 months! Wow! Where has the time gone? Feeling great lately, got lots of energy, eating and exercising more, feeling Baby kick more. 

We got one of those exercise balls. I always thought they were silly when I saw them before, but wow, you can get so sore just from sitting on it! It's really great for helping posture, and of course there's lots of other ways to use it to get a work out. For $10, I'd say it's a great investment for anyone! 

No weird cravings yet. I've had small cravings here and there, probably my biggest craving is chocolate. Right now I'm on a chocolate and caramel kick (had to have some Rolos). Earlier on in the pregnancy I craved my grandmother's southern peach cobbler so bad, we had to make another grocery run to get some fresh peaches and other ingredients (can't forget vanilla ice cream!). I was in peach cobbler heaven. Ben said he liked it the most on the first day but didn't really like the flavor of it reheated.... It was a sad day to know that I was going to have the rest of it all to myself! Haha it was soooooo good!

Nothing new in my world, really. Started washing and folding some of the baby clothes we have before I start taking inventory. The 0-3 month onesies are some of the cutest and smallest clothes I've ever held. It's a very interesting feeling to look at the clothes basket and see little boy clothes ready to be laundered. I'm loving this little guy more and more and really can't wait to hold him in a few months and shower him with kisses. 

Ben and I keep envisioning having this little boy and all the fun things we will get to do with him and teach him. I am super excited for all the baby stages, but I also keep envisioning the 2 & 3 year old stages where he's walking and we can take family walks around our neighborhood and look at lizards and ... well the list goes on and on with things to do. 

There's still so much to get done before his arrival. I started looking at baby shopping websites to get an idea of how much more we need and what it will cost. The good thing is that a lot of this stuff we only need to get once and then when it's time to plan for baby#2, we will already have a lot of what we need. The bad thing is that it's just soooo much to get at one time! And I am only talking about essentials and not things that are neat to have (i.e. a baby wipes warmer is an interesting idea but not an essential). 

And if you're worried about Mr Fred, he's still getting plenty of attention. He's been very sweet to me lately. Not sure if he has any idea what's going on or if he's able to sense it. He can see the new clothes and toys, but he's actually not that interested in them. He's not a fan of toys that make noises or sing songs, but I keep telling him that he's going to have to get used to it for a while. Some of the baby toys make some of the same sounds that his cat toys make...I believe that he does approve of those types of toys. 

Here's what babycenter says about what's going on with baby at 24 weeks:

Your baby's growing steadily, having gained about 4 ounces since last week. That puts him at about 1 1/3 pounds. Since he's almost a foot long (about the size of an ear of corn), he cuts a pretty lean figure at this point, but his body is filling out proportionally and he'll soon start to plump up. His brain is also growing quickly now, and his taste buds are continuing to develop. His lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" as well as cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help his air sacs inflate once he hits the outside world. His skin is still thin and translucent, but that will start to change soon.

Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!!

haha, Gender Reveal ice cream. from here

New stuff:
It's a boy! This week I'm 23 weeks along (5 months), which means I'm past the halfway point of pregnancy. Whoooo it has flown by! He weighs a little over a pound now and is probably around 11 or 12 inches long. Amazing! 

As for mama, I've been feeling great! Besides an ever-increasing belly and random kicks and jabs, I probably wouldn't think I was pregnant. I know this sweet period won't last, so I'm soaking it in! 

We bought our first clothes for Baby Boy last weekend at our community yard sale! We got some awesome finds; there was a nice woman selling her son's baby stuff and she kept everything in such good condition, it was like buying brand new! We stocked up with a few outfits for the whole first year and got a baby swing all for really cheap! Yay deals!

As new parents, we're going through some interesting changes too. Whenever that moment hits you that "this is real" and that you're having a baby together, you realize in that moment that you'd do anything for that little one. We've been working for years to eat better, to be healthier. We usually take a few steps forward, then maybe a step backwards to the junk food, and then forward again. A little at a time, but we've both come a long way in our eating habits.

Then we get the news that my iron is low. For me, working in the medical field, I see patients with low iron all the time and I know what is seriously/critically bad and what is borderline (in my opinion, I am borderline right now between "okay, not great" and "definitely room for improvement"). I'm right on the border for the state law to say it's ok for me to have a home birth or that I have to deliver in a hospital. I've been taking an iron supplement to help and came to the realization that I really need to step up my game if I want to have a healthy baby and a healthy labor. 

So, Ben and I spent a few hours at the store reading labels and getting healthier food choices. We're not perfect by any means in regards to "eating clean", but we've both decided this is what needs to be done to help our little family. We are eating things that when we read the ingredients section on the label, we know what most or all of them are. And shopping at the local farmer's markets for fruits and veggies (and OMG so much cheaper than at the grocery store!!).

We had an interesting discussion also about how vague most doctors are in regards to being healthier. Typically you may go to the doctor for something and they may tell you if something is wrong and give you a prescription to fix or mask the problem. Not too many go into depth explaining the different processes of the body or talk too much about how to fix the problem without prescriptions (guess that's why some people would rather go to a homeopathic physician). Anywho, our midwife is completely awesome and so helpful in giving us ways and ideas to help our baby get the optimum nutrients he needs and explaining how certain things will counteract other things (for instance, I can't take the iron supplement with a drink that is high in calcium because iron and calcium counteract each other). 

Apologies for the really long post with only one picture (and a borrowed one, at that). Here's you a random picture that's probably been seen in a previous post. 

Have a great week!