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13 November 2012

Gratitude 2012 (week 2)

Here we go with week 2. I'm pretending like I'm NOT so, so many days behind.


14 November 2012: I am grateful for the miracles that science has wrought. It is incredible to me the things that modern medicine can accomplish to make our lives better and even save our lives. Thank you to the men and women who dedicate their lives to being the absolute best at what they do from scientists to doctors to researchers, and everyone in between.

13 November 2012:  Today I am acutely grateful for my health. It's not by any means perfect, but it's pretty stellar. My entire life I've been plagued by little things here, and I've let them snowball in my head into a much sadder situation that reality calls for. This pregnancy has been quite the wake-up call. I have had NO morning sickness or other major issues come to light, so I really need to be positive when it comes to my upcoming eye surgery. It's merely a bump in the road.  God, thank you for my health, every day, but especially today.

12 November 2012: God, thank you for my husband. He goes above and beyond the duties of husband and even beyond the duties of best friend and life partner. I take him for granted all too often and I need to stop every day and feel blessed.

11 November 2012: Clean water. Clean water when I turn on the faucet, when I grab a Nalgene out of the fridge, and even when I turn on the garden hose. So many people live without clean water and so many die from dirty water. It truly is an amazing thing.

10 November 2012: Sushi!! A healthy, wonderful, delicious vacation for my tastebuds.

9 November 2012: Teachers!! Every day I thank my lucky stars that I had the wonderful, talented, kindhearted teachers that I did. They prepared me physically, mentally, AND emotionally for thriving in the 'adult' world.

8 November 2012:  The rain. I know y'all are hating on it out here, already, but it smells good, it's cleansing, and it sure beats shoveling the driveway every morning!

06 November 2012

Gratuitous Doggy Pictures

Well, I'm having a strange day, emotion-wise, for no reason. To remedy that, I'll make an entire post of just gratuitous dog pictures because it makes me feel better.

(Ignore the leaning tower of magazines and say "aw" at my snuggly siblings.
Barley gives new meaning to the fetal position.
They make it sooooo difficult to get out of bed in the morning.
"Can we open the package from Grandma?!"
Everyone needs a good roll in the dirt.
Awkward fat-girl pose. Nice, Barley.

Grati-tooted (Week 1)

Last year I was horrible about keeping up with my days of gratitude so I thought I'd start this year by making a fart pun. Off to a good start!

7 November 2012: I'm absolutely glad nobody is holding me to this month of gratitude. So far, I've earned a big fat F- for my punctuality.  


6 November 2012: Today I'm grateful for our Constitutional rights. So many American wander through life without realizing that people all over the world live without rights that we take for granted.


5 November 2012: I couldn't get through the day without knowing I was coming home to my pups. They are full of love and energy and trust me fully. Zak and Sara were the start of me really growing up.


4 November 2012: On this rainy day, thank you Lord for a roof over my head. And not just a plain roof, but a beautiful, lovely home.


3November 2012: Absolutely, endlessly grateful for the means to have a full pantry and refridgerator.  I'm trying my best to never ever take that for granted.


2 November 2012: I'm incredibly grateful for this pregnancy. We were starting to wonder if it was even possible or if storks really were the ones responsible. No matter what happens, I'm excited and blessed that we are going to be parents before 2022!


1 November 2012: I'm grateful for the loving family and friends that surround me, buoy me, and encourage me. My dear husband is the mac to my cheese. My parents and brother are my foundation. And my awesome friends are an endless source of laughter, sunshine, and sushi dates.

03 November 2012

Disposable Diapers are apparently the devil's invention...

I decided a long time ago that disposable diapers were not something we wanted to use except in case of an emergency...today I found this article that has actual sources and I'm firmly set. Cloth systems, here we come!

http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/dangers-of-disposable-diapers

26 October 2012

Blackberry Cobbler

This recipe is very similar to the one found in "The Pioneer Woman Cooks" by Ree Drummond, which is one of my most favorite cookbooks!

Ingredients:
-1 stick of butter
-1 1/4 plus 2 tbsp sugar
-1 cup milk. We don't keep fresh milk in the house so I use powdered milk and it works just fine.
-2 cups berries. We use fresh picked blackberries and clean them well in a colander. Be sure to let them drip dry.
-1 cup flour
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F and grease a pie pan or 3qt baking dish.
2. Melt the butter. If you aren't experienced with this, do it on a low power setting in small time intervals or it will EXPLODE and make a huge mess. Also, you only need to melt it about 85% of the way and let it sit on the counter. The rest will melt on its own.
3. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. We don't own a sifter so I just mix them together in a large bowl thoroughly.
4. Whisk the milk and 1 cup of sugar with the flour mixture.
5. Whisk in the butter. Pour into your baking dish.
6. Add in the berries.
7. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar over the top (it's going to seem like a lot but trust me!) and bake for 50-60 minutes until golden brown. 10 minutes before it's done cooking, top with the last 2 tablespoons of sugar and return to oven.
8. Eat alone or with ice cream!

Adding the berries before cooking!


Roast Pumpkin & Pumpkin Chili

Around the Head household, we have a bit of an obsession with pumpkins. We put them all around the house and porch because they are pleasing to look at and we EAT THEM! We brew with them, and we can them. We love pumpkins and squashes in all shapes and sizes and colors.  For most people, carving pumpkins is the biggest spotlight they get, but around here, if we are cutting one up, it's to put it in the oven for dinner. 

One more little note: don't bother with pie pumpkins unless you don't have the space for leftover pumpkin.  Pie pumpkins are usually more expensive and don't taste any better. They do have a lot of seeds, if that's what you're after, and the are a more appropriate serving-size. :)

Roast Pumpkins!

Ingredients:
-Pumpkin
-2 cups water
-Optional: pumpkin spices like salt, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves

Directions:
1. Cut around the stem, similar to carving a pumpkin. You don't need to make the hole big enough to get your arm in, though. Just remove the stem and compost or throw it away.
2. Slice the pumpkin in halves using the stem-hole as a starting point.
3. Scrape out the goo and seeds with a metal spoon and your hands. You can save the seeds if you're inclined.
4. Place pumpkins cut side-down on a baking sheet or baking pan. Put enough water in the bottom to cover the pan bottom.
5. Roast at 350F for 30-60 minutes. All pumpkins take different amounts of time to cook. It's done with the flesh is pierced with a fork relatively easily. We check at 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and 60 minutes. You can add more water to the pan if it dries up, but if you forget, it won't dry out the pumpkin or ruin it.
6. When it's done, remove from the oven and flip the halves over. We use an oven mitt and big fork to flip them. Let them cool and season and eat!
NOTE: For roasted cubes that we use in the chili, take out when the pumpkin meat is soft when poked but not mushy. Let cool and cube.

You can scrape out the meat and put it in leftover containers. You can also puree it in a blender or with an immersion blender to make better than canned puree.


Pumpkin Chili!

Ingredients:
-1.5 lbs ground meat. I prefer breakfast sausage.
-1 large white onion, chopped
-1 large bell pepper, chopped
-2 cans (15oz) black beans
-1 can (46oz) tomato juice, reduced sodium
-1 can (28oz) peeled and diced tomatoes with juice
-1 can (28oz) pumpkin puree (or homemade stuff! we don't puree it since we like it chunky.)
-2 tbsp chili powder
-1/4 cup white sugar
-2 cloves of garlic, minced
-1/2 tsp each cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg
-1 can (15oz) corn
-Roasted pumpkin chunks from a 3-5lb pumpkin

Directions:
1. In a large dutch oven or soup pot, cook the meat over medium. While the meat cooks, chop the onion and bell pepper. Throw them in and let them cook for 5-6 minutes, until starting to soften.
2. While the veggies cook, drain the corn and rinse the black beans.
3. Stir in everything except the pumpkin chunks and simmer for 30-60 minutes over low heat.
4. Add in pumpkin chunks, simmer 15 minutes, and serve!

Love In Many Forms

Well, the baby is really real. (I know that sounds silly, but for the first few months, there really wasn't any indication that I was pregnant other than having to pee all the time!) Now I have a bump to show for it all.  :)

A bump and this incredible elation. I feel happy every minute of the day lately. We wanted a baby, not a pregnancy, but a BABY for so very long now. It feels real and it feels soon. Life couldn't be better.

But along with this newfound bump is a newfound exhaustion. I cannot figure out how to get out of bed. I sleep 14-16 hours a day and could keep sleeping!! Somebody told me this would pass with the first trimester but it's only gotten more intense. I have the utmost respect for women with five kids and job who are pregnant. I can't imagine.  It makes it easier and easier for me to say we are adopting the rest of our family!   :)

On the flip side, this pregnancy has been making me thing an awful lot about my birth mother. First of all, I have to say that she is somebody I rarely, if ever, think about.  I have a mom and a dad who are very real and very amazing and very much all that I need. We celebrated my "homecoming" day last weekend and my birth mom didn't even cross my mind. Not at all. That day is and was about a baby and two new parents. It's a day I can't stop anticipating for myself next spring! I've never wanted to meet or investigate my birth mother or know anything about her. The drive has never existed for me until now. Now, I can't stop thinking about how scared she must have felt, how sad she must have felt, and how brave she was. I can't stop thinking about how her pregnancy with me must have been the opposite, emotionally, from what my pregnancy is. I can't stop thinking about how lucky, how fortunate, how blessed I am. I am financially, emotionally, and physically secure. I can't stop thinking about how much happiness this pregnancy has brought me and how she didn't get any of that. I still, strangely, don't want to know her or meet her or anything like that but I am trying very hard to not feel heartbreak for her. I will never take for granted all of the horror she must have endured to give me the opportunity to be here today. I am realizing that despite the fact that she gave me up, she is still a real mom because she made the choice to break her own heart for my well being. And I know it's in my blood to do every thing my children need, whether or not it breaks my own heart.


11 October 2012

Grapefruit Baby

Over the past few days, we've realized that we can feel the uterus now, which is really strange overall and also kind of cool...

Before I could feel it, I was just feeling doughy and fat....the growing uterus was pushing things up and out of the way but not actually "showing" yet so I had the honor of feeling fat and wide, but with nothing fun thrown in the mix.  Now that the baby is tangible in a small way, I feel better about how ugggghhhh I have been feeling about my physical shape.  There's a hard little grapefruit sitting in my pelvis!

Have you ever looked at maternity ads? They are ridiculous. Either the "models" are not really pregnant, or they have issues! They all have perfectly toned and skinny arms and legs with a pert, perfectly round little belly. Their boobs don't look like they're about to explode off of their bodies, and  they don't have a constellation of random acne on their cheekbones.  Fake, I say, fake!  

Speaking of maternity ads, I have decide to buy as little maternity wear as possible.  Maybe I'm grossly underestimating how fat and large I really am going to be...we'll see! For now, my jeans fit with extra room. When those don't fit, I have old pairs of 'fat' jeans that should work. And my last resort will be yoga pants and cotton skirts with wide, stretchy waistbands on the bottom. I might end up having to get some preggo leggings to wear underneath, depending on how harsh the winter is here. Or maybe I'll just cut the legs off of my old leggings and wear them like thigh-high leg warmers!?

For tops, I have tons of tops that should fit through most or all of the pregnancy. Empire waisted tops were popular recently so I have lots of those. Most of my t-shirts and long sleeved shirts are extremely stretchy and roomy in the gut.

So, I know that I'm going to have to buy bigger bras, preggo leggings, a warm cardigan or sweater, and something else warm to take place of my winter coat. I'll probably also need to conjure up a preggo raincoat since that's what it does here allllllll the time. Everyone talks about being warm all the time when they're pregnant, but I've sadly been the opposite. I will probably die of hypothermia this winter, on a 40F day, too. Pathetic!   :)

Finger's crossed that that's all I'll need! I purposly didn't buget much for maternity wear because I plan on slimming down asap after baby comes, and we don't know if I'm going to be pregnant again, so I do feel like it's sort of a waste of money. Oh, and jeans with stretchy bands at the top creep me out!

04 October 2012

Cheap Rib Recipe

A few months ago, I found pork ribs on sale for a great deal, about $0.80 per pound for spare rib racks.  I really didn't have to think too hard about it...I just threw four frozen slabs in my cart and kept going! 

Last week we thawed a slab, and I realized I didn't have a good recipe for the pork spare ribs. Usually we spring for the baby back ribs when they are on sale at Costco, and they never fail to turn out tender and amazing.  I have tried spare ribs before and  they always turn out a little tough. Hmmmm.

Well, the ribs were already thawed, and dear husband was already hungry so I googled "pork spare ribs" and tried the fastest cooking recipe that popped up. My grandmother used to say, "If you starve 'em long enough, they'll eat anything," and I figured by the time the ribs were cooked, husband would be starved long enough to eat them, even if they ended up tough and stringy.

Lo and behold, they turned out awesomely.  (Thank goodness!! We still have three slabs in the chest freezer!)  Husband finished the leftovers up last night so I'm sure there will be another thawed rack with my name on it soon.

Here's the recipe:

1. Cut the ribs into portion sizes (3-5 rib chunks depending on your crowd). Put in a large pot, cover with water, and boil over medium-high heat for an hour. 

2. A half-hour into your boil, mix 1 cup ketchup, 1 cup bbq sauce, 1/2 cup brown sugar, about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 2 tablespoons worcestshire sauce, 2 tablespoons steak sauce, a dash of hot sauce, and a clove or two of minced garlic into a small sauce pan. Cook over medium-low or low heat to combine and thicken, about 20 min. Also pre-heat oven to 350F.

3. Put the boiled ribs on a cookie sheet covered in foil and cover with the sauce you just made. I brush it  all over to make sure the ribs are well coated.

4. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.

5. Uncover the foil and bake another 15-20 minutes until the sauce looks dark and thick on the ribs.

6. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes. Eat!  

21 September 2012

Oh Baby!

Well, I think most of you know by now that we are expecting our first next spring, and we couldn't be happier. I contemplated starting ANOTHER blog just for baby, but I think I'm pushing it with the billion I already have and don't maintain. Oops.  I thought I'd start the post with the basic baby news and then switch to our trek to family-hood.  :)

THE NEWS: On 20 August, a pee-stick test had two lines and I just about fainted. First I started sobbing, then I ran around pantsless trying to find my phone, and finally, I got dressed and went to the Navy familiy clinic to confirm it. An ultrasound on 5 September gave us a due date of 28 April 2013. We got to see and "hear" the tiny, rapid heartbeat and bring home a picture of the tiny bean.   (This weekend it'll be 9 weeks.)  We can find out the gender around Thanksgiving and fully plan on doing so. It's still a surprise, just earlier as opposed to later!  

THE TREK: Two years ago we decided that I was going to go off the pill and we'd "see what happened." It seemed like great timing: we were finally living together in the same house, we were both done with our bachelor's degrees, and we felt like we had sated our wanderlust at least a little. Shortly after we made this decision, Don deployed for the holidays, and I found out I wasn't pregnant. Was I disappointed? Honestly, no. I wasn't in a rush, I was living the good life, and I didn't want Don to miss out (especially if the first trimester was ugly, haha!)  However, another cycle of being home and being deployed came and went, and I honestly started to wonder if my system was working. I scheduled my annual checkups and talked to my Navy doctors and was assured that I was extremely young and to just give it time.  What they failed to understand is that my overactive brain cared less about being pregnant and more about knowing nothing serious was broken or wrong. Sadly, if you are young and healthy, the Navy medicine system won't give you a second glance. Fast forward several months, through another holiday cycle to the start of this year, 2012. A year and half of trying had come and gone, and it was finally starting to really "get" to me. By this point, all I wanted was a baby in my arms. Forget the miracle of being pregnant and all of that, just hand me a baby!

I needed to stay busy and keep moving forward. Luckily I was never one to feel jealous when I saw other pregnant women (they actually made me feel sad because they waddled and looked uncomfortable!) but I was starting to feel sensitive when I watched Teen Mom or other shows like that. These girls get pregnant at the drop of a hat and it's not something they want. We found out in January that Don had orders to stay in the area for another two years so I found us a wonderful house and we bought it, moved in, and have been working on the never ending to-do list since. It has been fullfilling, maddening, and awesome to be home owners.

In May, Don rotate off of sea duty to shore duty and we started to seriously consider adoption. The more research I did, the more my heart hurt. I cried a lot. A typical private adoption, besides costing thousands of dollars, was not really an opton because we needed to be able to guarantee we could stay in-state through the adoption and up to a year after. Considering an average adoption takes 24-36 months, this was something we had no way of guaranteeing as a Navy family. 

And really up until August, we were in contact with DCFS, trying to find out if local adoption was an option for us. I had decided a few months ago that I wasn't willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get pregnant; three or four rounds of Clomid and that's it. No hormone therapy or IVF or anything.  I had faith and still have faith that we will become a family in the perfect way, however it happens, without the use of dangerous and ineffective procedures. I don't know how I got "lucky" enough to not have a huge pregnancy drive so this was an easy decision for us as a family. I can't imagine wanting to be pregnant more than anything!

On Sunday, 19 August, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I had been reviewing adoption information all week and feeling really homonal. We climbed into bed that night and I just had a solid cry. Don rubbed my back and listened (something he would medal in at the Listening Olympics!!) and just let me feel full of despair. If my system was broken, we would potentially have to wait years to adopt. Of course I was willing to wait, but it still stung.  We decided that I would take a pregnancy test the next morning if I was feeling emotionally up to it since I hadn't taken one in some time. I used to take them every 5 weeks or so just to make sure I wasn't missing anything...

And sure enough, those two lines appeared, as plain as day.

We have decided to share our news, eventhough it is probably much earlier than most people prefer and here's why: I am a very open, emotional person. My biggest happiness so far from this pregnancy is knowing that I can even be pregnant. Losing this baby early on would darn near kill me, but it's not something I want to hide. It's easier for me for everyone to know that I'm pregnant so that if something happens, people can understand why I'm down and out for a few months. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I can make it logical in my head.   :)

We can't agree on names for boys or girls yet, so the baby is currently named "Chomper" after the t-rex in the move "Land Before Time." Not sure exactly how that came about, but for now, it's the nom de jour.