Nursery

I haven't been posting because my camera is practically dead.  I take pictures with my phone, but for some reason the app won't publish my posts correctly.  I'm really hoping this issue resolves itself soon!  But I've gotten this post to go through somehow, so I can show you all pictures of our (soon to be occupied!) nursery :o)

 

 I love this crib.  It converts into a toddler bed, then into a twin bed when they're older.  After we bought it, I read about how it's better for the baby to be on a mattress on the floor, but we're going to use it anyway.

 

 Where we live, crib bumpers are banned.  But we got mesh bumpers so that there's no risk of limbs getting caught.

 

My best friend ever helped me decorate the nursery with pictures of frogs.  I wanted classic, gentleman frogs.  What we came up with was perfect:

The first one on the left here is perfect because it goes so well with the lamp in the room.

I have a thing for frogs in top hats, what can I say?  It works for a boy or a girl.

The band of frogs on the right are my favorite in this grouping.

We repurposed a bookshelf (where you can see that frog lamp).  My BFF and I painted a dresser that *B* had as a kid.

On the other side, we've got a night light, the monitor, and some houseplants.  As we get books for the baby, they'll go on this shelf.

A friend of mine gave us her old glider.  I have a feeling I'll be sleeping in it very soon.  The lights on the wall are fluorescent.  At first it bothered me that they took awhile to get bright, but now I think that'll be a good way to get my eyes to adjust to the light.

These are our cloth diaper inserts.  We registered for FuzziBunz.  My mom, for our baby shower, made diaper cakes.  She ordered WAY too many inserts - 105 to be exact!  She thought they were like gDiapers where you could just pull the inserts out and leave the diaper on the baby.  I haven't figured out what we're going to do with them.  For now, I'm just going to keep them in the closet until we decide what to do.

Scary Day

Okay, so it's been a while since I posted.  Life has been insanely busy. 

On Saturday, *B* and I went to a flower mart that a neighboring town hosts every year.  There's always good food, so we had lunch while we were there.  *B* and I split a virgin pina colada. 

I'm usually pretty picky about what kind of frozen drinks I have.  Slurpees (and pretty much all drinks that come out of the rotating vats like Slurpees) have really messed with my heart in the past.  In college, I went to the ER because I had palpitations for 6 hours after drinking a small diet Pepsi Slurpee.  But I heard the guy using a blender, so I figured he had a bottle of mixer (which has never hurt me in the past).  It occurred to me later when I thought back to the drink stand that the fluid in the drink did come out of one of those vats.

At the end of the drink, my heart went haywire.  It was so erratic that I couldn't get a pulse to read on my heart rate app.  The beats were fast, slow, big, small, and generally crazy.  Of course, then I started freaking out because I was afraid of hurting the baby.  So my pulse and blood pressure increased. 

My heart rate was up for almost an hour and a half.  Thankfully, it came down.  If it had been up for 20 more minutes, I would have had to go to the hospital.  I don't even want to think of what they'd do to me there.  I would imagine they'd recommend induction (which I emphatically don't want).  I've tried doing research over the years about this issue (palpitations and Slurpees) but I haven't found any medical data, only anecdotal evidence.  When I was in college, the cardiologist just shrugged and said "so don't drink them anymore." 

It really worries me that we feed our children these drinks when they can have such drastic health implications.  Any thoughts on what the specific trigger mechanism is for this reaction?

Baking Day!

Both *B* and I were home today for Easter weekend, so today became grocery and baking day.  Instead of driving the mile to meet our new pediatrician, *B* and I walked into town.  It was very nice to get outside and enjoy time together.  The pediatrician's office seemed really nice, though I didn't have many questions for them yet. 

We had a little extra money in the budget, so we splurged on a small lunch out.  We wandered down to our local garden center and picked up another suet feeder and some celery plants.  I'm really hoping to get celery to live year round just like Shirley did.  We then did a small marketing trip, and lugged the groceries all the way home, with little rest stops for me (we have a lot of big hills in our town).

I still can't really sit still for too long, so I got to baking.  I'm getting around to perfecting the technique of making whole wheat bagels.  They're finally turning out well:

I also tried adapting our wheat bread recipe into a cinnamon raisin swirl bread.  I rolled the dough out as wide as my cutting board.  It was still pretty thick, so that meant that I had very little swirl-action going on.  Next time I'll cut it into the two separate loaves, then roll it out.  I also swapped out sugar for honey.  It wasn't perfect, but it's still pretty tasty:

I'm still keeping up our food tracking and real food experiment.  I can't wait to share the results of our first week on Monday.  It's really been an eye opening experience!

Checking Off the List

I've had a hard time with stress about the baby for the last few weeks.  Finally *B* told me to write a list of all of the things that I worry about not having done.  This list was massive:

• Paint the ceiling in the nursery
• Fix the crack in the wall in the nursery
• Remove non-baby items from nursery
• Stain the deck
• Buy and install blinds
• Buy and install curtains
• Get crib mattress
• Get prefolds
• Stock diaper bag
• Paint baby's dresser
• Pick out homecoming outfit
• Pack hospital bag
• Hang plants in nursery
• Buy new vacuum
• Get hand-me-downs from *B*'s sister
• Fix carpet patches where cats did damage
• Fix doorjambs (not necessary but annoying)
• Paint trim in bathroom where mold had grown before new fan was installed
• Fix dining room chair whose supports had fallen out

So far, we're down to just this:

• Buy and install curtains
• Get crib mattress (we got one from SIL, but it's four inches too small!)
• Paint baby's dresser
• Pack hospital bag
• Hang plants in nursery
• Buy new vacuum
• Fix carpet patches where cats did damage
• Fix doorjamb

 *B* has been amazing about knocking out that list.  He took it on himself to clean, power wash, and stain our deck.  

 

 The deck mid-powerwash.  The left side is (mostly) cleaned and the right side is obviously still grungy.

 

 After the power washing, our deck looked really strange.  It seems the lack of stain for so many years did a lot of damage.

 

 *B* staining the deck.  It already looked better.

All finished!  You can see that the fencing behind the potting bench wasn't done.  *B* ran out of stain.  But it lets you see the difference in color between what the deck used to look like and how it does now!

While *B* did that, my mom and I did most of the nursery work:  painting the ceiling, patching the walls, and hanging blinds.  I mentioned the other day that our diaper bag was just about ready to go. Most of the things left on this list are either optional, or require funding that we don't have at the moment.

Tracking Food for Pantry Optimization

When I've tried to determine what we needed in our pantry in the past, I was never quite sure what to get.  I've never specifically recorded the meals we eat for the purpose of pantry building.  Saturday night, I sat down and wrote out what we've eaten.

I am absolutely ashamed and appalled at how we've eaten in the last month.  Two nights a week, neither *B* nor I are home.  He has school and I work a second job.  We both tend to (separately) grab food out.  In the interest of full disclosure and public shaming into changing my behavior, this is what we've eaten in the month of March to this point according to my calorie tracker:

1             Homemade pizza

2             Coconut-vegetable curry, egg sandwich

3             Dinner out with friends – chicken sandwich, fries, jello

4             Coconut-vegetable curry, cheese bread

5             Dinner out – chicken bol, fudge pretzels, coffee, coffee cake

6             Annie’s mac and cheese, corn, asparagus, ambrosia

7             Peanut butter sandwich, oranges, fudge pretzels, coconut-vegetable curry

8             No dinner recorded

9             Dinner out with Dad – crab cakes, fries, and applesauce

10           Coconut vegetable curry

11           Dinner at friend’s – random finger foods (meatballs, popcorn, cookie, nuts, apple)

12           Dinner out - burger and fries

13           Steak, salad, baked beans

14           Dinner out – burger and fries, greek yogurt

15           Cabbage and kielbasa

16           Ordered in - pizza

17           Burger and baked fries

18           Leftovers – cream chipped beef on a biscuit, soft pretzel, eggs, asparagus

19           Coffee and fruit cup

20           Dinner out – chicken bol

21           Dinner out – burger and fries

22           Fettucine alfredo with broccoli

23           Dinner out with family – seafood portofino (2/3 portion), salad, breadsticks

24           Leftovers - seafood portofino (1/3 portion)
25           Lasagna
26           Peanut butter sandwich, banana, coffee
27           Cube steak, potatoes, and peas
28           Peanut butter sandwich, cashews, cheeseburger, fries, apples
You can absolutely see where Saturday night's epiphany happened.  Tonight was a bit of a blip.  I got a Happy Meal after I ate my packed dinner.  I was starving!  At least I only got a small supplimental meal.  Usually that burger and fries is massive.  But next time (Monday) I'll be more prepared with a bigger home-packed meal.

In the next few months, I want to try something new.  Starting the first of April, I'm going to keep track of all of the groceries that we purchase and use.  That way, I can get a better idea of what foods we like and what foods we don't like.

At the same time, I'm going to limit our food purchases to only real, whole foods.  This idea is not new.  When *B* and I originally read Michael Pollan's books and Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, I was all for responsible food.  We slacked off in the year and some since then, and our monthly menu shows it.  But I found a website, 100 Days of Real Food, that helped me find my way again.  I plan on taking the 10 day pledge starting this Sunday.  I'm really hopeful about this, and I'm really excited!  Good food here we come!

We Have Cloth Diapers!

I'm really paranoid that the baby will come and we don't have anything for him/her.  We figure that if the baby comes soon, we'll need diapers, something to wear, a place for the baby to sleep, and a car seat.  We have three little outfits and a crib without a mattress, and that's it.  So *B* and I bought a pack of prefolds tonight. 

 

A friend let me borrow some newborn covers, so we're started with cloth diapers!  They're in the washer as I type :o)

Garden Progress

Because it's an unseasonably warm March, our garden has exploded much earlier than normal.  We've got more growing now than in April of last year. 

 

The forsythia bushes are gorgeous.

 

Similarly, the helleborus is all in bloom.

 

I have hyacinths that I didn't even know existed just in front of our coldframe.

 My roses have new growth all over the place.

*B* bought me a very little lilac for a bare spot along our fence.  I hope this little guy makes it.

Our clover cover crop has really sprung up.

*B* bought some arugula plants the other day from Southern States.  While I'm not a fan, he will definitely eat them.

The rhubarb is just taking off.  We have two plants this year - I need to find recipes quick!

Even the garlic that I was worried about a few weeks ago has grown much sturdier.

 

I tend to collect mint plants.  Right now we've got peppermint, chocolate mint, variegated mint, and pineapple mint.  I need to repot the chocolate and variegated mints.  I didn't actually expect the peppermint to survive - *B* ripped it out of the front bed last fall.  We threw a couple of roots that we found this spring into a pot, and they're already sending up leaves.  We will have quite the mint harvest this year!