Long Time No See

It has been awhile… 4 months to be exact. Our little guy is now a little over 5 months old and a whopping 20 pounds! I love my little chubster. :-) I look at my last post and laugh as I talked about being slow getting back to “normalcy” (whatever that is). I’ve definitely discovered that what I once thought “normal” – with regards to my schedule, getting things done around the house, sleep, and well, pretty much everything – is not normal anymore. I’m figuring out my new normal. This has meant waking up at 7am (or earlier) exhausted because our little guy seems to hate sleep and wakes up a lot each night (coffee is now my best friend), possibly taking a nap with him which is usually only 45 minutes (sometimes less), playing with him and trying to soak in every moment of him at this age because as I know already the time is really flying by, and then trying to rush around the house during his second and third 45 minute naps to get done what I can around the house, which despite my best efforts is still a complete mess. I get the laundry caught up (mostly), although it tends to enjoy sitting on the couch for a week before it gets folded, but I figure at least we can dig through the clean, albeit wrinkly pile, for whatever we run out of, right?

This past week was PC’s fall break (which, I think, is my favorite part about the school he is going to). It has been glorious, but far too short as always. It used to be that I looked forward to his breaks solely because of being able to spend all day every day with him for an entire week. Now, although this is still largely what I look forward to, it also means an extra set of hands with Little Prince. PC took a couple days and installed a gorgeous laminate floor in our kitchen. It looks spectacular! The rest of the week has been spent relaxing, which equates to watching our current favorite show, taking family naps, and playing tag team with Little Prince to catch some zzz’s when we can. The only reason I’m able to write this little post is because my sleep-deprived husband is taking a nap with our little one.

I still can’t believe we have a son… I feel… so incredibly blessed to be entrusted with this little life. He is the most precious thing. He is currently sitting up by himself (for a little while anyways), laughing at any and everything, teething a lot (which is fun – NOT!), and thus is chewing on everything. He is also fascinated with food. He watches PC and me eat with such intent and excitement as his little mouth moves as if he is eating too. I can’t wait to start him on solids.

It’s been a fast five months, but I’m loving being this kid’s mom, and I am so thankful I get to spend each day with him.

Mission Stork

He’s finally here! Actually he’s 6 weeks old (he’s getting too big too fast!)… I’m just a little slow getting back to any kind of normalcy that I once enjoyed. I’m finding that the sleepless nights/frequently interrupted sleep is taking its toll on me and I find myself joining our son for naps during the day, thus leaving little or no time for anything else. I seem to barely have time to keep up with the laundry let alone keep up with my other hobbies. So I’m a work in progress –definitely getting use to the whole mommy thing, but enjoying every minute of it. He is such a precious, sweet, beautiful boy! (I would put a plethora of pictures in this post, but that kind of defeats the purpose of anonymity – but take my word for it, he is pretty darn cute!) :-)

The little guy decided to make his appearance on April 30, a week past his due date. Thankfully my mom was able to come out for a nice two week stay. It was SO incredibly nice to have her here. The birth, though not what I planned, went very well with no complications, and our son is very healthy – all of which I am incredibly grateful for.

I’m enjoying every minute with my little guy. Being a mom is the best job ever!

Baby Update

I thought it would be a good time to give a pregnancy update. But before I do that I thought it would be fun to share a clip from one of my all-time favorite movies, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” on what it’s like being pregnant. :-)

Ok, my pregnancy hasn’t been that bad but she definitely has some good points! My pregnancy has been fairly easy compared to some, but I must say, I am ready for this little guy to make his debut and I’m ready to have my body back. :-) I am now almost 38 weeks (which is crazy!) He is about the size of a pumpkin, almost 7 pounds, and about 19 ½ inches long.

He is thankfully in the head down position and at my 36 week appointment I wasn’t yet dilated (which made me a little disappointed). Unfortunately my midwives don’t check me every week and won’t check again until I’m 40 weeks; I guess when I go into labor I’ll know! I am feeling him move constantly, in spite of my anterior placenta, and I absolutely love it! As most first time moms I’m sure, I have the tendency to worry a lot about whether or not he is all right, so feeling him move is truly my most favorite thing about pregnancy and it gives me great comfort and peace of mind.

The first trimester was kind of rough with the 24/7 nausea – Zofran became my best friend. Also during the first trimester (and partly due to the Zofran) I had the most horrible constipation (sorry if that is TMI). But once I hit about 15 weeks I was off of Zofran and overall feeling much better. The second trimester was by far the best, and the third trimester has been ok, but as with all pregnant women (I assume) makes me even more ready to meet our little guy.

Overall my symptoms haven’t been too horrible. I haven’t had any weird food cravings… I’ve pretty much been eating like I always have. Sure, I get in a rut of eating the same thing for breakfast, but I’ve always been like that. I think for me, being pregnant just gives me the excuse to eat more of the sweet things I like (Cookies N’ Cream ice cream being one of them) rather than me actually truly craving them. Once I hit the third trimester the stretch marks hit full force, making me nervous about them fading over time since there are so many. Along with that came a constant itchiness all over my abdomen due to my skin stretching that has persisted the entire trimester thus far. And just recently I think my lower abdomen muscles are in complete revolt against our son getting any bigger since any time I use said muscles (which is any time I move) it feels like I’ve been punched in the gut. All in all though, that has been the worst of it, and I count myself very lucky that I haven’t had any true complications. :-)

So now we’re just getting more and more excited to meet our son, and hoping that maybe he’ll decide to show up early. ;-)

 

Happy Birthday, Prince Charming!!!

Today is my beloved husband’s birthday! These days we don’t do too much for birthdays (we both kind of lost excitement for our birthdays in the mid-teen years), but we try to make the day special with a couple gifts and a special dinner or something. I think I actually look forward to PC’s birthday more than he does because it feels like he gets closer to my age (yes, I am *cough* 2 ½ years older than him).

I always have the hardest time figuring out what to get him for his birthday – and really any holiday that involves gifts – mostly because he is a very content person and “doesn’t need anything” or “just wants” me (if you read my last post you’ll see that he is truly a romantic). If I’m lucky I’ll get the name of a book that he would like (because he has so much spare time – not!) but sometimes I’m left to just figure out something I think he would enjoy.  It probably doesn’t help too that our anniversary is a mere week after his birthday… Poor guy. I feel like we kind of stole the thunder from his birthday.

Anyways, I digress – we celebrated his birthday this year with a homemade steak and potatoes dinner (his favorite – my man loves his meat!) over the weekend and just enjoyed being together and lounging around the house as we recovered from being sick the previous week. Of course today there will be cake and candles, but aside from that he has just been studying like any other day. I feel bad… I want to make his birthday special and out of the ordinary…I just feel so incredible blessed to be a part of his life and I want that to come through in everything, but especially on his birthday. :-)

So what have you all done to make your busy medical husband’s birthday special?

My Every-Day-Valentine

I’ve never been a huge fan of Valentine’s Day… Sure, as a kid I loved getting those little “Sweethearts” candy with cute messages on it, but now I see it more as just another over-commercialized holiday. And from a couples’ perspective, I don’t really like how it seems like all the pressure is on the guy to do the wooing, gifting, romancing, etc. Too many women, I think, base their husband’s/boyfriend’s love for them on how well he performs on Valentine’s Day. I mean, c’mon, it’s just one day out of the year! My husband and I see Valentine’s Day more as just an excuse to go out and be with each other than anything else. Now before you write me off as a complete Grinch, please read on…

Now don’t get me wrong – I like flowers, cards, etc. from my husband just as much as any other girl. But why should the expression of love be limited to (or rather focused excessively on) only one day a year? Little things like chocolates and flowers are definitely nice every once in a while, but more than that I appreciate the day in and day out love that PC shows me. He is always kind, encouraging, gentle, and loving toward me. Whether it’s showing appreciation for the measly dinner I made, listening to my hormonal-driven rants and vents, washing the dishes after dinner (we don’t have a dishwasher), or just holding me whenever I just need him (even if it means not getting done as much studying as he would like), he is constantly showing his love for me. This, to me, is true love. And I am blessed beyond words to belong to my Prince Charming.

Now it would be a lie to say that we didn’t “celebrate” Valentine’s Day at all – We usually just keep it simple with dinner and an exchange of cards or something, but this year we decided to go all out and go to a really nice dinner at the Melting Pot (yes, this is about as fancy as it gets for us). With Baby coming soon we knew this would probably be the last time for a while that we would be able to enjoy an extravagant romantic dinner, so we just did it! PC actually had the entire day off of classes – we couldn’t figure out why in the world he would get Valentine’s Day off of all the holidays, but figured it had to do with Loyola being a Jesuit school maybe? At any rate, we’ll take it! So we had a wonderful, relaxing day together and that evening enjoyed a delicious, romantic dinner, and exchanged our cards (actually for Valentine’s and our anniversary he writes me the most romantic letters you can imagine. Yes, he is quite the eloquent Romeo with these letters and leaves me breathless after reading them). So even though I’m not the biggest fan of the holiday itself, I am a huge fan of being with my Every-Day-Valentine and will take any excuse I can get to do so. :-)

Medical Monday: Best Granola Ever!

So this Medical Monday I thought I would share the recipe I use for homemade granola – especially since in the last month alone I have made *cough* three batches of it. Granola is so yummy, whether you eat it with milk, yogurt, or just plain, but it also can get pretty pricey for the good stuff. So after searching around online (thank you, pinterest) I found this recipe  from wallflour girl, and decided to give it a try. My husband and I loved it! Since then, I have actually tweaked it a little bit and added some extra ingredients that we really enjoy, as well as using a little extra of the liquid mixture, which made it more flavorful, clumpy and granola-like. So here is my version of the recipe:

Ingredients:

9 cups oats

1½ cups chopped nuts (we like almonds)

1 cup sweetened coconut 
3 cups brown sugar 

⅔ cup water

1 cup vegetable oil

½ cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 teaspoons cinnamon
1-2 cups of dried cranberries (add more dried fruit if your heart desires!)

(The italicized ingredients make up the liquid mixture.)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Lightly grease two 9x13 pans  (you could also put tinfoil in the bottom before greasing for easier clean up!).
Place oats, nuts, and coconut in pan, and mix well.

In medium saucepan, heat brown sugar and water until it just begins to boil.

Turn off heat, then stir in oil, syrup, vanilla, and cinnamon.

Pour over oat mixture and stir until evenly coated. Oat mixture should be no more than 2 inches thick to ensure optimal crispiness.

Bake for 40-50 minutes or until golden brown, stirring every 15 minutes.

Let cool and add in desired dried fruit. Store in air-tight container.

And there you have it! I was surprised at how easy it is to make (and how delicious!) I will definitely be making my own granola from now on! On a side note, I have tried a recipe with a honey base, but it lacked the amazing flavor this one has, so for now we’re just keeping to this recipe. 

Just this last week finished off a whole batch! So needless to say, I will be making yet another batch at some point this week. :-)

First Medical Monday!

This is my first time linking up to the Medical Monday Blog Hop (obviously posting a little late)! I am so happy to have discovered an entire network of women blogging their medical lives. It is so neat and encouraging to “meet” other women in the same/similar life situation as me.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday season with family and friends. My husband (whom I refer to as Prince Charming or PC) and I had a great time with our families back in the Pacific Northwest. As I’ve written of before I have missed family a lot as I have never really been away from them, especially my little brothers (who aren’t so little anymore), so it was nice to be able to spend some time with them. We basically spent a week at my family’s house and a week at my husband’s family’s house. It was so good to see everyone again!

While there we also had a baby shower as we are expecting in April. We asked for gift cards since we were traveling by air and wouldn’t have much travel space, but friends were very generous and in spite of bringing an additional bag ourselves, we needed to borrow another one from my parents! But we were happy to see a bunch of old friends and grateful for their generosity.

Getting home was also an adventure… We were scheduled to come back the Friday before PC started up classes again, thinking that it would be nice to have a couple days at home to rest up from our vacation (why is it that I always feel like I need a vacation after a vacation?) and get used to the 2 hour time change (I feel so old for saying that). Honestly, weather didn’t even factor into our decision to come home at that time. Well, let's just say that next year it will! Our flight Friday morning was cancelled due to the crazy winter weather at home in Chicago, and the soonest flight they could put us on was Sunday. So back to my parent’s house for a couple days. Come Sunday morning, and our flight was cancelled again and the soonest we could get a flight with that airline was Wednesday night! Well PC was supposed to start school on Monday and didn’t really want to miss three days of the first week, and by that point we were ready just to be home (2 weeks of living out of a suitcase is plenty). So we ended up switching airlines (paying extra of course) and getting a flight that was supposed to leave later that morning. Then that flight got delayed about 4 times. Finally though, we arrived home Sunday night, and our good friends picked us up, took us home, and even brought us dinner! As it happened, PC’s classes on Monday were cancelled due to the subzero temperatures, which was so nice because we had an extra day to settle down after all the business. I know I’m probably just a wimp when it comes to this kind of weather and the complications that come from it, but growing up in the Pacific Northwest I’ve just never had to deal with (or even think about) all the difficulties that a harsh winter can bring. I definitely have a greater respect for all those people who have lived with them their whole lives.

So needless to say, next Christmas we’ll be giving ourselves an extra couple days of leeway at the end of our trip. :-)