26 Weeks!

Yesterday, I officially 26 weeks along!  I had my sister take some 25 week belly pics for me on Saturday and I am just getting around to posting them.  It was only 6 days ago, so you get the drift, my belly looks pretty much the same.

I am so absolutely in love with the picture below. It is the only picture I have ever been able to get of me and the munchkin both looking at the camera and smiling at the same time.

Overall, I have been feeling pretty good. I have definitely been feeling the weight of my growing belly and am not getting around quite so easily, but I am hanging in there and doing well considering. I can't believe I am almost in my 3rd trimester (2 more weeks) and coming to the last third of my pregnancy. Things have really been going by so much faster this time around and I can't complain too much about that. As I get closer to the end I am getting more excited about meeting this little girl! I am also getting more nervous about not sleeping much for a while and how everything else is gonna go.

I am at that stage in my pregnancy when it is time for the dreaded glucose test, which tests for gestational diabetes. I failed the first round when I was pregnant with the munchkin and had to go back again for the three hour one, which I did pass. It's also very common for woman that eat the way I do to get false positives on the first test because when you don't have that much sugar in your diet, drinking so much of it all at once can be hard for your body to handle. Not to mention how sick it can make someone feel that isn't used to that much sugar. I have heard so many stories of people throwing it up and I felt close to it when pregnant before. The test has been looming over my head and I have really been dreading it. I just really didn't want to take it, most likely fail, then have to take the three hour test again. 

I talked to the nurses at the office about it and they said that I could just come in one morning and test my blood sugar levels an hour after a meal. Apparently, there was some miscommunication and I was under the impression I was supposed to eat a large meal and even include some extra sugar, which I did with some pancakes I had made with honey as the sweetener. I headed in after breakfast yesterday, they pricked my finger, tested my blood sugar levels and I got a number of 148! That is high! The cut off for passing is 130. After discussing my confusion over what I was supposed to eat, the nurse concluded that might have had something to do with it and we decided I would come back again after eating a regular (more normal for me) meal.

I called up there after I got to work and asked if I could just come back in after I ate lunch. The nurse told me that after talking to the nurse practitioner, they felt that regardless of what I had eaten for breakfast that number seemed really high and they wanted me to come in the this morning, having eaten nothing, and take my blood sugar level, then send me off with a monitoring kit and have me test my blood in the morning upon waking and then after each meal (4x a day) for a week. 

Ugh. 

So, starting this morning, I will be pricking my finger and testing my blood 4x a day. My first reading before I ate any breakfast was 81. They would like it below 90 after fasting overnight before I eat anything, so far so good there. I just finished eating breakfast and will be taking my first after meal reading in about an hour.

Not gonna lie, I am concerned the original number of 148 was so high. It really surprised me. I remember that my youngest sister had gestational diabetes when she was pregnant and we were all surprised. The funny thing is, if I did have it, they would put me on a diet that consisted of me eating pretty much the way I currently eat anyway to keep my levels low. I am just hoping that I get better readings in the next week and I am not diagnosed with it. We shall see.

We have officially decided on a name for the baby! It wasn't easy for us either. We couldn't agree on anything. We both really love this name and it felt right to both of us, so it has stuck and now we refer to her by her name more often then "the baby". We have been calling her by her name to the munchkin too, and she is starting to as well. It's all so exciting!

Soccer Practice, Lots of Outdoor Fun and Tons of Pictures!

I don’t typically do weekend recaps. Hell, who I am I kidding, that would be too organized and dependable as far as my blogging goes lately. This weekend though, the weather was perfect and we had so much fun doing things outdoors and hanging out with my sister and her family. I had my camera with me all weekend and I wanted to share some of the pictures. I have been so busy taking pictures for other families lately, I have been really slacking on taking pics of my own.

Saturday morning was the munchkin’s first day of Soccer! We enrolled her in a little Kickeroo class for ages 2-3. To be honest, we probably wouldn’t have enrolled her in any type of sport so soon, but we had three other couples (including my sister) that were going to put their child in the class as well, so we figured it would be a great play and socialization time for all of us. Plus it was at 10:20am on Saturday morning, which with our schedule, couldn’t be a more perfect time. It is indoors at a big sports facility only two miles from our house.

We told the munchkin we were going to a soccer field to play soccer. She was so excited! Then when we pulled into the parking lot, she took one look at the building and started crying. “I wanna play soccer”, she sobbed. We had to assure her that the soccer field was indoors and that she really was going to be playing soccer, we just had to go inside. Once she realized she was infact still going to be playing soccer, she cheered up again. Only my child.

Soccer “practice”, was about 45 minutes long. Pretty much the husbands ran around the field with the kids, while the moms hung back, took pictures and talked (atleast in our group). There were some great photo ops and I took way too many pictures. Here’s some of my favorites...

Crustless Cheesy Bacon and Avocado Quiche (sugar Free • gluten free • low carb)

The other night, I realized I forgot to thaw out anything for dinner and had no plan really for what we were going to eat. That seems to happen more then I would like lately. Pregnancy brain is no joke. I will actually be getting ready in the morning and will say to myself, "Don't forget to get the chicken out to thaw"... Then in my car on the way to work, I will realize that I totally dropped the ball on that one. Again. Lucky I do keep some things on hand just for this reason. In a pinch, there are usually some leftovers hanging out in the fridge somewhere, or some cottage cheese or lunch meat to just make some sandwiches. 

My favorite quickie dinner though, is making breakfast food. I could eat breakfast food for all three of my meals for the day. On this particular night though, I didn't want to go with the usual. I wanted to try to come up with something a little out of the norm for us. So I did a quick inventory of what we had on hand and thought, "Why not throw a bunch of this crap together and make a quiche"?  The result ended up being something delicious that I will definitely be making again!

I loved the creaminess of the avocados and the cream cheese. The bacon added some great flavor to the inside, but next time, I will definitely add some more bacon to the top for some crunch and will include that in the recipe. Adding some sausage to the inside would be super yummy too or trying different cheeses or herbs. The options are endless!

Without further ado, I give you...

 

Crustless Cheesy Bacon and Avocado Quiche

(sugar Free • gluten free • low carb)

Ingredients:

• 8 Eggs
• 1/2 C Heavy Cream
• 1/2 White Onion, Chopped
• 1/2 Tb Marjoram
• 1/2 Tb French Tarragon
• 1/4 tsp Sea Salt
• 1/4 tsp Pepper
• 1/4 tsp Onion Powder
• 2 Avocados
• 5 oz Cream Cheese
• 3/4 C Shredded Cheddar Cheese
• 15 Strips Cooked Bacon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Grease an 8x8 glass cooking dish.
3. Crumble 10 strips of bacon and layer the bottom of the dish (reserve the rest for the topping).
4. Cut avocados in half, remove seed and slice lines vertically and horizontally, then scoop out of skin with a spoon. Layer on top of the bacon. 
5. Cut up cream cheese into little cubes and layer on top of avocados.
6. Scramble eggs and whisk in the heavy cream, chopped onion and seasonings. Pour on top of everything else already layered in the baking dish. 
7. Sprinkle half the shredded cheese all over the top.
8. Crumble the rest of the bacon and add to the top of the dish.
9. Sprinkle the rest of the shredded cheese over the bacon.
10. Bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until the quiche is set in the middle.
11. Enjoy!

This post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday and the Healthy Home Economist's Monday Mania.

The Clients I Dread...

I've always had kind of an amazing gift for attracting incredibly unstable people. My husband says I attract all the weirdos. I am not quite sure what it is about me that makes them want to continue to interact with me long after our initial encounter. Once they meet me, they want to stick around. They want to keep bugging me and maybe even freak me out a little bit.

Maybe sometimes I am too nice. Maybe I give people the benefit of the doubt a little more then they deserve. Maybe I should tell people to f$*% off more.

Monday, I received a phone call. It started out innocent enough. It was a man calling about setting up a photo session for his girlfriend and her baby. He was referred to me from an old graphic design client. Or so I think. That part is still a little fuzzy. He hadn't seen any of my work and had no idea who I was, but had my name and number and wanted more information. So I went over some things and talked to him about pricing. We went off topic a little bit, he discussed how his girlfriend was a graphic designer and I mentioned that I was as well.  He had also started a new business himself and his girlfriend was doing the design work for him. He seemed pretty normal. Then after we ended our conversation I emailed him some links for my photography website and facebook business page.

Things kinda went down hill from there.

Eye Goobies, Potty Training and Itchy Vaginas... Oh My!

Things have been a little hectic around the homestead. The poor munchkin has been dealing with some issues that has definitely put a hault to our normally pretty calm household.

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday morning (2/25), she started getting a few crusties in her eyes, which over the course of a couple of days, turned into waking up with green goo completely covering her eyelashes and making it hard for her to open her eyes. She had no other symptoms and other then the goo, and seemed to be completely fine. At first I tried clearing things up on my own, but nothing was helping and things were getting worse. By Tuesday, I called the doc and they called us out a prescription for some antibiotic eyedrops.

Even though I may have been being silly, I didn't want to use them. I am not gonna lie, I do have a grudge against antibiotics. I am not completely anti-antibiotic. I know that sometimes they are absolutely necessary and that they save lives, but I also think they are overprescribed and overused, leading to drug resistance and other problems. They kill off all of the good bacteria too, which many times, especially in my case personally, always seems to cause problems elsewhere.

My husband, on the other hand, doesn't always agree on the med front. And in a situation like this, I know that if I didn't use them and things got really bad, I would feel pretty awful.  Plus it was antibiotic eyedrops, which the nurse assured me wasn't the same thing as oral and that they didn't cause the same kinds of problems that regular antibiotics did. So we started using them and right away her eyes started clearing up and looking better. Within a few days the goopies were gone and she seemed to be doing much better. We were instructed to continue with the drops for the 7 full days to keep the infection from returning.

Then the weekend came and we were going to attempt "potty training".  We were trying a method that our sitter had just used with great success, along with another friend of ours that we went to highschool with, who used it on all of her kids. It was called "THE POTTY BOOT CAMP: Basic Training For Toddlers".  While the book got really good reviews on amazon, I was a little apprehensive, given the munchkin's very sensitive personality.  But with such great reviews, and the birth of baby number 2 coming up (which meant two kids in diapers), I thought it was worth a shot and didn't think it would hurt. She had already gone in the potty a few times and seemed to understand the basic concept.

I still have quite a bit of mommy guilt over this one. So far we had been doing a child led approach. I always felt that was the best for her and I really wish I had just stuck with that.