Saturday, January 21, 2012

A 16 Week Belly Update and Some Saturday Morning Scenes (My Own Personal Concert)

It's crazy that it's only been 2 weeks since I posted my last belly pic.  I feel like I have grown alot too! I am definitely looking pregnant now.  I feel great though.  My energy has come back quite a bit and I don't feel like I need as much sleep any more. I have felt alot more motivated lately to get some things done.  As far as the pregnancy goes, there really hasn't been many other changes since my last check in. I am doing really good and I am very grateful for that.

I have started to feel more and more excited about the arrival of this new little baby. Not that I wasn't excited before, but it was sometimes a little overshadowed with a bit of anxiety. Things were very hard when the munchkin was born. Ofcourse it's all fleeting and it was totally worth every second, but still, I have fears of having a replay.  Every baby is different, just like every pregnancy is different, so I am hopeful and excited that things will be different all around.  I guess only time will tell.

We have started talking about baby names alot more, so that's been fun. If we are having a boy, I think we already have a name. It's the same name we have always wanted. You never know though, we could still change our  minds. 

Only a little over four more weeks till we find out the sex of this little baby boy or girl!



Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Filling (processed sugar free • gluten free • low carb • dairy free options)


I love most things pumpkin. 

This weekend I was on a quest to make a yummy pumpkin muffin. At the last minute, I decided to put a little surprise inside with a cream cheese filling.  I was making 24 so I could freeze half for later, but after the cream cheese filling idea, I wasn't sure how well they would fair in the freezer. Anyone know how well cream cheese stuff does in the freezer? So we are eating lots of muffins this week and passing them out to anyone who stops by. 
I was pretty proud of how these turned out. 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Breaking Out of a Food Rut

This past weekend was all about food. I was getting really bored with our meals lately. Not that I didn't still enjoy what we were eating, but things were getting a bit redundant. I realized I hadn't tried any new recipes in a while and vowed to start doing much more of that immediately! Friday, I made up a 2 week menu plan and picked out a bunch of new recipes to try! It was a mix of breakfast meals, dinners and treats. Thanks to pinterest, it's so much easier to keep track of this stuff now. Maybe now the poor binder in my kitchen will get a break from me always stuffing it with new recipes, when it's already ruined from having too many in it as it is.

Saturday morning, I made some pumpkin muffins.  I pretty much made this one up and I was really happy with how they turned out. I will be posting the recipe in the next couple of days.



Monday, January 16, 2012

Saturday Morning Scenes (Yes I know it's Monday)

On The weekends, the hubs and I take turns sleeping in.  It's awesome to have one morning that I can sleep in as late as I want to (which usually ends up not being that late, but still I CAN if I want to, which is the nice part, especially while I am pregnant and more tired then usual). 

The other great thing (maybe even greater really) about this, is that I wake up early with the munchkin on the other morning and we get to have some play time to ourselves. We get up, make breakfast, then we usually end up on the floor in the living room enjoying some kind of activity.  The TV is never turned on.  I take this time to totally concentrate on her and it's a very special time for me (and I like to think for her too).

These pictures were actually taken 2 Saturdays ago. One of her favorite toys right now is her duplo legos. It's amazing to me the stuff she comes up with. Maybe she will be an architect some day. I just can't believe sometimes how much I love this little girl.



Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Taco Bowls (Sugar free • gluten free • low carb)

This is a super quick and easy way to get your taco fix.  And if you or someone you are dining with would prefer their taco filling in a shell, this is perfect for that too.  Yum!

We make this all the time and today someone asked me for the recipe.  I realized I have never added it to my blog! I will add a picture the next time I make these.  

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Our Gluten Free Update and How this "Experiment" has Impacted our Lives So Far

A little over a month ago, I decided that the munchkin and I were going to go gluten free.  There were some good reasons why I thought it might be a good option for us.  HERE is my original post and why I decided to try this.

I started logging updates in the beginning, but then Christmas and the festivities hit and I totally fell off the bandwagon.  I was hoping to log some info as I went and then present it all together once we hit the one month mark (oops we missed that too).  December 6th was our first day going completely gluten free and it has officially been one month and four days.  I thought I would finally post an update.  I've got some pretty amazing stuff to share!

Here is what I started to log during the first week...

Monday, January 9, 2012

Cell Phone Photo Dump Update!

I don't take pictures very often with my cell phone.  They never look very good and I usually have my camera with me, but sometimes, it does come in handy.  Here is a collection of pics I just pulled off of my camera dating back to last summer.

Sometimes, if I can't decide what to wear, my sisters might get pictures of me playing dress up so they can tell me what dress looks better.  Below are some samples I sent to them right before a wedding.  And yes, I do realize I kinda look like a hooker in the 2nd one.  I actually ended up wearing the 3rd one to the ceremony which was outside and about 100 degrees.  I was a hot sweaty mess by the time they said "I do." Afterwards I went home, freshened up and changed into the first one for the reception, which was thankfully indoors with air conditioning.

Friday, January 6, 2012

My 14 Week Pregnancy Update!


Wow. 14 weeks. Already. Yesterday actually marked the day and that is when I took these pictures. I seriously can't believe I am already into my second trimester. Things are really flying by. The holidays probably helped with that. But other then not being able to drink any alcohol (and I have definitely noticed and missed the absence of wine) and being more tired then usual, I honestly haven't even felt like I am pregnant. At first as I was actually worried about it. The say that lots of morning sickness is a good sign and some people worry when you feel nothing at all. I was so relieved at that 9 week appointment when everything looked great on the ultrasound and then again at the 13 week appointment, when we could hear that heartbeat nice and strong. Now that I am getting more into the second trimester, I am relaxing more with it and I guess just considering myself extremely lucky. It's quite different then the first time around with the munchkin. She wasn't so easy on me and I could definitely tell for sure that I was pregnant.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Munchkin is in a Big Girl Bed!

We hadn't exactly planned on moving the munchkin to her new room yet.  In fact, yesterday morning, it was still strictly her play room.  We hadn't even purchased anything yet to decorate her new "Big Girl Room", which I still plan on doing in a woodland animals theme.  But we have been talking about it for quite a while.  We were planning on turning her room into the baby's room, leaving the crib and furniture for the new baby, and making her toy room her new room.  My parents still had the twin beds from when we were little kids and we were going to be using one of those beds.  The bed was at my dad's friends house and after about 3 months of waiting for it, hearing that we were getting it very soon, over and over again, we were getting a little frustrated.

Stacy, our sitter, messaged me yesterday saying she had been thinking about letting the munchkin sleep in her bed for her nap and no longing using the pack and play.  I told her to "Go for it!"and that we had been wanting to move her to a real bed for some time now and that might even make the transition easier once we did.  So she decided to go ahead and try it that day.  Then I decided to look on Craig's list and see if I couldn't find her a little toddler bed.  I didn't want to spend very much money at all.  Hopefully we would still be getting the twin bed from my parents and if I found one that was nice enough, I could always resell it after we upgraded her again.  I found a really nice one on CL.  It was made of real wood and had a little drawer underneath.  They were asking $85.  I had already set a budget for $50, so I sent them an email and crossed my fingers.  We went back and forth a bit and they eventually agreed to the $50.00.  Yay!!!

So after dinner, we all climbed in the car.  I had told the munchkin we were going to pick up her big girl bed and she couldn't have been more excited.  She kept talking about it the whole way there.  Once we were at the seller's home, we had to move her car seat to the window side from the middle in order to fold the other seat down to fit the bed inside.  As I held the munchkin next to the car while Joe did the rearranging loaded everything up, she kept pointing to the bed, saying "My big girl bed! I'm going to sleep in that!"  It was the cutest thing ever.

We originally planned on bringing the bed home and taking some time setting it up.  Maybe letting her get used to the idea and try starting her off in it this weekend.  We got home about 20 minutes before her bedtime and she just couldn't stop talking about her big girl bed and how she was going to sleep in it.  She was just so excited and seemed so ready, that we decided to give it a go.  We rearranged some things in her play room and set up the bed.  We took the mattress that was already made with the sheets in her crib right off and placed it on the toddler bed.  She climbed right in all excited and ready to go.  She started saying "Put on my pajamas!  Brush my teeth!"  She was cracking me up.

Please excuse the crappy cell phone pics...




Notice the little Winnie the Pooh blanket?  That was Joe's when he was a baby!

So we put on her PJ's, brushed her teeth and she ran straight to her new room and climbed into bed.  About 8:15, I read her a book, tucked her in, shut off the light and left the room.  I was still not sure how things were going to go.  She sang and talked to herself for a little while.  Then seemed to drift off.  About 30 minutes in, we heard a loud thump!  I ran in there and she was sitting up on her bed quietly crying.  She told me she fell off of her bed and hurt her leg.  I kissed her leg and tucked her back in and she went right back to sleep.  About 9:45 we heard her crying.  I think she woke up and forgot where she was.  I went back into her room, gave her a hug and kiss and told I loved her and tucked her back in again.  She sat back up and asked me for another hug.  That pretty much melted my heart.  Then she laid back down and went to sleep again.  We didn't hear another peep from her all night.

This morning we actually had to wake her up for breakfast.  She was sound asleep!  So I would say that things went pretty darn good for our first night.  I just can't believe what a big girl she is all of a sudden.

Now we just need to actually decorate her new room and get her some furniture in there.  That will be a work in progress for the next few weeks.  We are waiting to get our taxes back to to help with some of the funds.  In the meantime, I think she will be perfectly happy as is.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

I have a crush on Edward Edmonds.

I was reading a post today on a blog that I sometimes follow concerning health and nutrition.   The author was pissed off that his opinions and information were being taken out of context to help someone else's agenda.  He was blogging about the other blogger's post and what he had written on their blog.  I found his comments very amusing, and out of curiousity, I went to read the other blogger's original post that had stirred all of this up.  I could see why he was pissed off.

But I won't get into all of that, this is not what this post is about.

I read down through all of the comments left on the page.  Then I came across Edward Edmonds.  I loved his comments so much that I had to follow the link to his website.  It led me to a blank page.  Boo.  Then, I found a blog he had started about training for the 2016 olympics but never actually posted anything to it yet.  I am now his only follower, just incase he does actually post something.

Which also means that if he sees that I am his new and only follower and follows that link to my blog, I am totally busted here.  Oh well, I am gonna say it anyway...

I have a crush on Edward Edmonds.

I have no idea who he is really, other then what I have derived from my internet sluething, and yes I am a very happily married woman, BUT I absolutely adored his comments so much that I wish I could meet him.  He summed up how I feel about the whole health food and nutrition debate so well, better then I ever could, that I instantly wanted him as my BFF.

I am going to copy and paste his comments below:

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Edward Edmonds said...

“I’ve consulted with Don in the past, I found his advice to be useful in some ways and in other ways not useful. But any advice is context sensitive. Not once did he cram a vegan/vegetarian philosophy down my throat. The fact still remains that you should eat what gives you the best well being. End of story.

Science at it’s present state can’t give us a definitive answer. If anything the only thing we’ve learned is that if you eat real fucking food that’s a good start. Whatever our thresholds are for shitty food varies from person to person. There is no getting around that, we are not blackboxes. Our self-preserving nature is inevitable, but if we spent time eating real food for the time being we could focus on doing cooler things with our intelligence like exploring space. Then when we actually know something about the human body we could start discussing whether or not eating this particular food or that is the fountain of youth. That’s a long way off. First we must preserve the future, once we do that we can preserve youth.

We forget in the detailed darkness of science that around the world diets are varied. There are some cultures that tend to be disease free and others that tend to suffer. Sometimes it seems the controlling factor is diet sometimes it doesn’t. But Price proved beyond a reasonable doubt (at least in my mind) that good health is beyond the realm of picking starch over fat. Price proved that it’s what’s in what you’re eating that is the governing paradigm.

A head start is to adopt the philosophy that if you eat a clean mixed including food from all sources your on the right track. If you adopt a philosophy of chugging cream all day long or eating spinach all day long is it not reasonable to suggest that some problems are going to arise? Good health rarely arises out of extremes. And even when a culture is able to thrive on an extreme diet, we have to remember that it might not necessarily represent the optimal solution, it might just be that it’s the optimal solution for the particular environment which allows sufficient reproduction. The idea of an “optimal solution” is negated by the fact that again around the world cultures eat diets of varying extremes and exhibit similar life expectancies.

Dr. Harris has a sensible approach to eating. No bullshit attached, sure his views on carbohydrate have changed over time, but so what, everybody’s views change over time as we search for some type of optimal solution and optimal advice. Duh.

What we do know is humans are dynamic creatures. I think it’s reasonable to suggest that at one point in time our diets were dynamic as well--their is no reason not to think so just like our environments were dynamic. I’m certain there were times where we had to survive eating vegetation and tubers just as I’m certain there were times that all that was available was animals. It was the act of survival that brought about the balance. Something we no longer have to do anymore, so we search for that balance, going from one way of eating to another way of eating. Don’t you think there is a reason for that? Don’t you think that there is a reason why as soon as us humans started settling down and getting habitual that disease started becoming a problem? We evolved for a dynamic changing environment, it’s clear, look how we populated the entire world like a goddamn virus. Look around is there any single multicelular species quite as successful as us? We humans as animals are a fucking evolutionary masterpiece. Now look at us. We are dropping dead because we are getting too clever for our own good. Our adaptability to varying environments that gave us the edge is changing, we are now a lazy sophisticated brainy species we adopt the environment to our needs now, and we’ve done it all so cleverly but we’ve forgotten the environment were we came from, now we must adapt to the clever environment we’ve created for ourselves or face destruction. Pretty simple shit. Don’t know how anybody reasonable person could miss that. Pass me two sticks, no pass me the lighter.

Would you pour fucking diesel into your gasoline engine? So why would you eat anything but real food? If you mixed a little bit of diesel into your gasoline would the car start. Sure would. Would it get you from point A to B? Sure would. Would your car last as long as if you just used gasoline? No. We are products of the environment. And unless Twinkies grow on trees then all we’ve ever eaten is real food. You eat real food you’ll be fine most of the time. Sure shit goes down. You’re an idiot if you think any one way of eating (besides eating real food and in a sensible way) is going to give you a 100% confidence level that you live a long healthy normal life. That’s life, it’s the lottery, some people hit the jackpot, eat shit all their lives and live to 110 years old. And some people get the shaft, eat seemingly well throughout their lives and drop dead. That’s life. There is no such thing as rocket fuel for humans. What is optimal is individual, you might fit into certain paradigms but you aren’t a machine where all you need is regular oil changes and gasoline. We aren’t “designed” that way. Would be pretty limiting.
I’m so sick of these stupid debates it does nothing for progress but highlight how incredibly fucktarded people are, real food isn’t going to kill you. And if you eat something and it gives you a headache, WTF? Don’t eat it. If you eat a peanut and you break out in lepersy... use your head.

Instead we should be looking at prime suspects like soy feeding your baby and eating Twinkies and jelly beans but instead we are fucking worried about eating green beans and rice. Perhaps if we learn those mechanisms that make eating 20 pounds of Twinkies and jelly beans a day kill us (besides the common sense part) it will give us some insight into how the human body works and down the road to finding something useful and practical to apply to our lives. Standard reverse engineering. In the end if that means for each green bean pod you eat shaves 1 second off your life, than so be it, we won’t eat green beans.

Back to Don. Don is a nice guy, if you read his wife’s blog you know that he cares and he works diligently in his own way to help at least those who he loves or care about. He’s got a degree in philosophy so of course he is dense. He does over analyze grammar and it often seems dishonest the way in which he does it. I see this often in people who’s blogs I’ve read for long periods of time where they are paradigm shifting. It’s classic of people who can never settle for “Well, that’s just the way it is.” People who are constantly searching and want to give the right answer to everybody. I’m sure that one day through his experiences of different extremes he’ll find the right balance. But I just wish Don, for the sake of his own dignity would be more honest about that search and what he is thinking.

If there is anything that we in this community have learned in the past few years is that eating real goddamn food will make the biggest difference for the most. Instead we are worried about legumes and “safe starches”... give me a fucking break. Is there anybody left on this goddamn planet with common sense?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

REAL FOOD.  That's what it's all about.  My philosophy is if it comes from an animal or grows out of the ground (and in a NATURAL way), and doesn't have anything added to it that also doesn't come from an animal or grows out of the ground (and in a NATURAL way), then it's probably good for you.  Otherwise, try to avoid it.

Incase you are super bored and really want to know, the original article I was reading can be round HERE. I then was curious about the blog he was referring to so I went to go read that article HERE, and that is where I found the above comments.

I also found THIS article about Edward with an interview on his views of barefoot funning and his training for the upcoming olympic trials.

Anyway, I just loved his comments and wanted to share.  It's all about common sense and it's not near as difficult as some people make it out to be.