It has been much too long since I’ve done a Five-Senses Friday, and today was full of sensing. I’m getting this in just under the wire, but it still counts!
Today I went yard sale-ing. That’s a verb, right? (Okay, present participle. I’m a grammar nerd and I looked it up.) I spent $45.50 for a Pampers box full of infant clothes, four Kroger bags of infant/toddler clothes, 11 kids books, a Tonka truck, a set of 100 wooden blocks, an old school wire and bead toy (like they have in church nurseries and doctor’s offices), a solid wood highchair, a gift wrap organizer, and a slight sunburn. I also got to meet several lovely neighbors for the first time. I call that a good day! Can you tell I’m still pumped?
Today I also…
heard: familiar voices from my car radio and new voices from my neighbors, insects and birds chirping in the distance, the familiar warm weather thump of a neighbor’s cornhole game
saw: orange-breasted robins (I think they must have a nest nearby – I have seen so, so many robins this spring); my pink-tinted and freckled shoulders and nose; bright red strawberries; a multitude of little blue onesies, t-shirts, pants, and jackets (other colors, too, but mostly blues)
smelled: food cooking from neighbors’ yards and our own, the faint scent of flowers in bloom, freshly mowed grass
felt: warm breezes on my bare shoulders, the cool metal of my new favorite necklace (a sweet Mother’s Day gift from Jeff), life kicking and squirming inside me
tasted: glass after glass of cold, refreshing water; lovely dinner from the grill — burgers on toasted buns, juicy corn on the cob, cool strawberries, sticky s’mores
It’s been awhile since I’ve shared anything from the kitchen, probably because I’ve been in sort of a rut — just making the same old recipes. It’s easy and I’m usually content with the same old rotation, but Jeff appreciates it when I try out new things and I enjoy it too. Last week I finally received my subscription to Everyday Food again so that should help. It’s such a great little magazine! My gift subscription ran out at the end of last year and it took forever to process my new subscription.
Today I’m going to share some recipe link love I’ve stumbled across over the past few months:
Pretzel, Chocolate Chip, and Caramel Cookies
I found this recipe from another recent blog discovery, Alli ‘n Son. Alli hosts Sweet Tooth Friday and then features her favorites on Saturdays. These cookies were one of her favorites and I can see why. They’re like a Take5 candy bar in cookie form! Salty, sweet, and gooey all in one. I learned the hard way that it’s best not to refrigerate the dough like normal chocolate chips cookies — or at least to let the dough sit out on the counter before attempting to scoop. Also, I cut each Kraft caramel into 4 pieces and I think 6 would be better. The caramel kind of oozed all over the cookie sheet. Yummy, but messy. I’m curious to try them in bar form next time.
This is a simple, basic stir-fry — no exotic ingredients necessary. We eat a lot of stir-fry at our house, but tend to make the same ones over and over. It was nice to change things up a little. This recipe is also easy to modify to your own tastes.
I haven’t tried this one yet, but doesn’t it look amazing? I’ve printed it off to add to my recipe binder and can’t wait to try it. Be sure to check out The Cooks Next Door for more delicious recipes. The link is on my sidebar too. Friends of a friend co-founded the site and they always have interesting recipes.
Happy eating!
In honor of the beginning of filming for the movie version of The Hobbit (so exciting!), here is one of my favorite quotes from that favorite book:
“Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”
“All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There’s no hurray, we have all the day before us!”
…
“Good morning!” he said at last. “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water.” By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
“What a lot of things you do use ‘Good morning’ for!” said Gandalf. “Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I move off.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
When I wrote Part 1 back in February, I fully anticipated many more pregnancy thoughts flowing out of me on a regular basis. I have been jotting down thoughts at random, but nothing that seemed particularly cohesive. That seems to be a theme in these later weeks of pregnancy: non-cohesive thought. Not all the time, but I definitely have moments of baby brain. (Yes, it’s true, baby brain does exist!) I feel more forgetful, and I have to concentrate harder on things that used to come so easily. Now that I’m in the third trimester, I’m missing that lovely second trimester energy and am generally more tired all the time.
But I’m getting ahead of myself now. Let me back up a little bit and fill you in on some of the thoughts and updates of the last couple of months.
- Around 20 weeks, I really noticed a change in my appetite. Some days my hunger level felt fairly normal, while others I felt like I could eat everything in sight. Now (30 weeks) I feel like I’m eating all the time, partly because I’m always hungry and partly because I have to eat smaller more frequent meals because the baby’s taking up all the room where my organs used to be.
- We have picked out a name for our little boy, but we’re not sharing it yet. We picked his first name pretty early on — Jeff suggested it and we both knew it was right. The more we thought about it, the more we loved it. His middle name was harder to agree on, but we’ve finally settled on that as well. I can’t wait to share it (and him) with the world!
- Baby is head down and very active. He moves all the time, and it’s been fun to observe his patterns of wakefulness and sleep. I hear those patterns that start in the womb correlate to sleeping patterns after baby is born.
- Speaking of sleep, I haven’t had trouble sleeping at all. Well, I’ve had like two nights where I’ve woken very early and can’t fall asleep again for hours, but I can’t complain. Maybe it’s just because I’m a deep sleeper, but the baby hasn’t kicked me awake yet, nor has my bladder insisted on middle of the night bathroom trips.
- Speaking of bodily needs, my bladder seemed to shrink significantly around 22 weeks. I used to get really annoyed with all my extra trips to the bathroom, but now I’m just used to it.
- Jeff came home from a business trip in March and announced that he wanted to start reading to Roo (who at the time was just beginning to hear sounds outside of me). His pick? The Chronicles of Narnia. We decided to shake things up a bit and go in chronological order, just for fun. Jeff’s been reading a chapter to us many nights before bed. I love it, and think he’s going to be a fantastic dad.
- I hadn’t heard anything much about pregnancy congestion before I noticed always being a little fuller in the nasal region. Jeff told me I’d sometimes whistle when breathing and I had to start sleeping with my mouth open just to breathe comfortably at night. It’s just one of those weird things no one told me about ahead of time.
- Mostly I love being pregnant and like this new temporary shape, but sometimes it’s still just weird to see my body this way. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and do a double-take.
- I spent many hours in March and April researching and making lists of baby gear and accessories. There is a stinkin’ lot of baby stuff out there, people! I am a researcher by nature so I can’t just make arbitrary decisions. I need (okay, want) to find the best, most helpful baby things at reasonable prices. I don’t want to waste money and space on unnecessary “stuff.”
- We’re sloooowly making progress on the nursery. The old TV and TV stand are gone from the room, as well as several pieces of old furniture that have been taking up space in the basement for quite a while now. A new-to-the-U.S. Bulgarian couple (from a connection at church) got our desk, matching bookshelf, and vacuum. St. Vincent de Paul (a local Catholic charity — they have the best thrift stores!) came and took five other pieces plus two bags of old linens. An old couch is still in the room, but it’s slated to replace an even older couch in the youth room at church.
- I have to mention the moving guys from St. Vincent de Paul. They were both pretty big guys, but one was absolutely massive. He looked like he stepped right out of an action movie or used to be a strong man at the circus. He single-handedly carried our old, not-flat-screen, wide, extremely heavy TV down the stairs and down our front hill stairs. My mouth was literally hanging open watching this. Clearly this guy is in the right line of work.
- We’ve attended four of our six childbirth class sessions so far. I signed us up for the unmedicated childbirth class through the hospital early on, and then sort of wished I’d looked into Bradley classes first. However, it’s been an overall beneficial experience so far and I think we’ll be in good hands with our doula and midwife.
- I’m in the middle of writing our birth plan and researching pediatricians. Yes, this is really happening!
- Remember how Jeff gave me a 3D/4D ultrasound package for my birthday? Well, we had it done just before 29 weeks. Roo only gave us a partial view of his face; apparently he didn’t want to give up his comfy placenta pillow. It’s hard to really tell what he looks like, but it was still a fun experience.
- Just last night I felt gentle, rhythmic baby hiccups. I’d read in one of the weekly BabyCenter update emails that he could be experiencing hiccups and if so I would feel them too. That was weeks ago so I thought he just wasn’t going to get them. They are so cute though!
- I bought an exercise/birth ball to sit on for better posture and to have while laboring at home. It is soooo comfortable to sit on! When I can’t find a comfortable position, I get on the birth ball and it feels fabulous.
Okay, this might just be a weird Sarah thing, but I noticed very early on in my pregnancy that people started asking me how I was feeling rather than how I was doing. It’s a subtle shift, yes, but for some reason it has really bugged me, probably because it seems like almost everyone I know has made this shift. Yes, I’m pregnant, but I’m still me. A lot of women struggle with morning sickness and other annoying symptoms during pregnancy, but I’m not sick — pregnancy is not a disease or disorder. Especially during the second trimester, most pregnant women feel pretty great! So why do people have to keep asking how I’m feeling? I feel great! If you ask how I’m doing and I’m not feeling well, I’ll probably tell you that. But that’s a question I can answer in a non-pregnancy sense as well. I know the people who ask do so because they care about me and mean well, and I’ve learned to relax about it. I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else has noticed this or had this same reaction? Like I said, maybe it’s just me being weird.
I cannot wait to meet this little boy! Just 10 more weeks, give or take a week or two. That’s just crazy. So far pregnancy has been an amazing journey, but I’m looking forward to the even more amazing journey of parenthood. I’m not under the illusion that childbirth or parenting will be easy — quite the opposite in fact. But I hear the rewards outweigh the difficulties and make all the hard work totally worth it.
Linked up with Wordless Wednesday, Project Alicia, To Be Thode, “Say Cheese” at It’s A Blog Party, Ramble Road Ramblings, Better in Bulk, and Alli n Son.
The last Saturday in April was warm, dry, and sunny — a rare thing with our record-breaking rainfall for the month. The weather was just one small blessing among many blessings that day. The day of my baby shower.
I’d been much anticipating this day after attending so many baby showers for friends — finally it was my turn. My mom was there from Illinois. Jeff’s mom and sister-in-law drove down from Columbus. A college buddy drove down from Dayton. And, of course, several friends from my beloved church family were there as well. There are so few occasions when friends and family from different circles merge in one place, and I greatly enjoyed having so many special people in my life all together.
We gathered together at the home of my good friend Bertie, aka my adoptive Cincinnati mom and hostess extraordinaire. Another precious friend, Kyna, co-hosted with her. We all enjoyed a lunch of salads: chicken salad with croissants, pasta salad, greens salad, fruit salad. Plus delicious cake (from Servatii!) for dessert.
After lunch and mingling (women do love to mingle and talk after all), the group settled into the living room for some games and a little surprise. Kyna had asked me for my mom’s phone number, but I didn’t have any idea what they were planning. As it turns out, Mom was the one giving the little talk for the shower — sort of a history of Sarah and the influences that have shaped my life. It was fun and touching to hear Mom’s perspective on my life. She talked about the family and work situation when I was born (my dad was self-employed and they didn’t have medical insurance), parenting and schooling decisions that vastly shaped my early years, and the influences of church and friends. Some things she shared were new to me, others I’d all but forgotten. As I prepare to enter motherhood, I’m gaining a whole new perspective on my parents and a whole new level of thankfulness for the work, love, and prayer they have and continue to pour into my life.
Next up, presents! I mean really, who doesn’t love gifts… especially cute little baby gifts?
Cute, teeny, tiny outfits… practical gear… baby blankets… bathtime fun… it makes it feel all the more real that this little guy will be here before you know it.
