Turley Times

ICYMI - My Thanksgiving placecards

2011-11-09T10:32:00.000-06:00

The Thanksgiving placecards I made a couple years ago are getting a few pins on Pinterest (click here to see my boards - I'm obsessed with recipes and Star Wars) and I thought I'd blog about them again in case I have some new readers who have never seen them. These cost me a mere $3 to make, and many people would be able to make these for free if they have the right supplies on hand.

I see my old blue and white kitchen in the background! It almost makes me miss our old house...almost.

Here is my original blog post, complete with step-by-step photos, because these were, like, so complicated to make - $3 Thanksgiving placecards The fonts I used were Pea Sarah Quick from kevinandamanda.com and Californian FB.

Monday night snack and a Thanksgiving shopping tip

2011-11-08T13:16:00.001-06:00

This week's Monday night snack has been postponed to this evening due to the fact that I was sick all day yesterday with a migraine. When we were at the food coop in Decorah Steve saw some dark chocolate oatmeal cookies that he thought looked good. Since we try not to buy food items that could easily be made at home, I looked for a similar recipe and came across one on the Betty Crocker website for Chewy Chocolate-Oat Bars. I made them this morning and I think they are pretty good! They are similar to a chocolate chip cookie or bar but they aren't overly sweet so I think Steve is really going to like them. You can really taste the whole wheat flour and it provides almost a nutty flavor.

Thanksgiving is a little over two weeks away - can you believe it? We are hosting for the 6th year and for the past few years I've divided up my shopping list and purchased the food we need for the big meal over several weeks' time.

Around Halloween I finalize our meal and write down all the ingredients I need to buy. Then I take that list with me to the store and buy a few items on the list each week. It makes my shopping trip a little longer for a few weeks, but it's nice not spending a ginormous amount of money the week of Thanksgiving since everything got divided over the past several weeks. Usually the first week or two I purchase stuff that happens to be on sale and non-perishables. The week of Thanksgiving is when I buy perishables and anything else I need that I didn't already buy.

Usually Hy-Vee has good sales around the holidays, but you never know when they might have something marked down a few weeks before and then have it full price later on. On Saturday, for example, I bought caramel bits for a dessert I'm making and they were on sale for $1 off. I had to run into Hy-Vee again Sunday night and noticed the same caramel bits were back to full price. So I was pretty excited I had nabbed them the day before!

Weekend getaway and Monday night snack

2011-11-01T10:31:00.000-05:00

Real trips outside the house have been few and far between since Claire was born. Yes, I go grocery shopping and run errands, but a lot of days we never step foot outside the house so I tend to go a little stir crazy. So when we had the opportunity for a getaway last weekend we jumped on the chance. Steve's parents have a cabin in NE Iowa that we love to visit but we hadn't been there in 18 months. But Saturday morning we got packed up early and made our way to Iowa's Driftless Region. We went to Decorah first...we picked up 13 free range chickens from our "chicken guy" we bought from at the CR farmers markets over the summer, got some coffee, went shopping at the Oneota coop (fantastic grocery store!), and had lunch. Then by mid-afternoon we made our way to the cabin and were able to go on a little walk and Steve was very excited to catch a trout.

I wasn't sure how well Claire was going to like being in the car for a long time and sleeping in a new place, but she was an absolute champ. She slept great and was, for the most part, a very happy baby. It was raining when we woke up Sunday morning so we decided to head home pretty early. It was nice to get away from the real world for awhile and enjoy life in the woods. Next time we need to bring Larkin with us...she was in her kennel outside while we were gone and while she survived, I know she would've had so much more fun with us.

A few pictures from our weekend:

Larkin was named after this road in NE Iowa:

The wife of our "chicken guy" makes and sells homemade Norwegian lefse (basically Scandinavian tortillas) and kringla (cakey butter cookies) and we bought some of each while we were in Decorah. Steve and I devoured all the kringla by Sunday evening. I went hunting online for a kringla recipe so I could make some for our Monday night TV watching snack. Let's just say I need to leave the kringla making to the experts! Mine tasted great but looked horrible. You are supposed to mix together the dough ahead of time and let it chill overnight in the fridge. Then, you are supposed to take teaspoons of dough, roll them between your hands to make long ropes, and fashion them into figure-8 shapes. I thought the dough was extremely difficult to wield, and it was very sticky so I wasn't able to make pretty kringla shapes. I ended up using my cookie dropper so my kringla looked like boring blobs. Here is the recipe I used if you're interested in giving it a shot. I'm only about 1/4 Norwegian so maybe there is too much stubborn German in me to learn how to make proper kringla.

Paws in the Park

2011-10-27T12:24:00.001-05:00

On September 24th, Steve, Claire, Larkin, and I went to Noelridge Park to participate in Paws in the Park. This was a new event put on by Cedar Rapids animal control and the proceeds went toward their spay/neuter fund. We were so excited to see Larkin interact with other dogs and it ended up being such a fun morning. I'm really bad at estimating, but I would guess there were about 40-50 dogs who participated with their humans. We had the option of walking or running (we walked) and doing 1 or 2 miles (we did 1 mile...hey, I was pushing Claire and the terrain wasn't the easiest for maneuvering a stroller!). Larkin had an absolute blast and we humans had a good time, too. Here are some photos!

Every dog got a gift bag and Larkin's included a new bandanna!

Food.

2011-10-27T09:02:00.000-05:00

Today I'm going to talk about food, because it's been on my mind a lot lately. Steve and I have been making a lot of changes regarding the way we eat. We visited a lot of farmers' markets over the summer, Steve has been trying to eat healthier, I've been trying to get rid of the last of my baby weight, and we've watched a couple food documentaries lately (Food Inc. and Forks Over Knives); all these things have prompted us to consider what we're eating before we put it in our mouths.

Before I go to far I just want to say: This is not meant to be a preachy, "What I'm doing is correct and you're wrong if you disagree" type post. I want this to be purely informative, not persuasive. But if you are wondering why we've decided to make the changes we're making, the movies I linked to above are really great resources. Also, I've been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma which is also very informative and interesting.

I would say the biggest change we've made is that we are eating virtually 100% grass-fed, free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free meat. We've been getting most of our meat from vendors at farmers' markets and the online food coop to which we belong. This has been a little difficult because a lot of times you are at the mercy of the vendor and what they have available on any given day. If you want ground beef you might not be able to get it just because they ran out or didn't bring any or whatever. What we try to do is buy a large cut of meat (or a whole chicken), prepare it (usually roast the beef or boil the chicken), and then freeze the meat into one-meal portions. So for example, a couple weeks ago I roasted a rump roast one afternoon and once it was done I sliced all of it and packaged it into four different freezer bags. Then we come up with meal ideas that could use sliced or shredded roast beef. One night we had beef and noodles. Another night we had barbeque beef sandwiches. A couple nights ago we made beef stirfry. Same with the chicken - all of it gets shredded at once (like how I showed you in my previous post) and then frozen for upcoming meals. It does require a bit of planning ahead, but it is really nice to pretty much be able to skip a step in the cooking process when we're making dinner since the meat is already done.

Another change we've made is that there hasn't been any pop in the house in over a month. Steve still drinks it at work (it's free and he's a caffeine addict!), but we haven't been buying it. I really hate diet pop (I've grudgingly forced myself to like Diet Dr. Pepper but that's it) so I used to consume a lot of HFCS and empty calories. Steve always drinks diet pop but we had been experiencing quite a bit of sticker shock when buying pop at Hy-Vee. So we decided to stop buying it. Now we've been getting a lot of use out of our Brita pitcher and drinking water with Crystal Light or Ocean Spray packets mixed in. I'm not a huge fan of drinking plain water, but if I mix in a flavor packet I can drink water all day long. And it is amazing how much the flavor packets cost in comparison to pop, especially if we buy the larger packets that make 2 quarts of beverage.

The last major change has been in our snacking habits. Like a lot of people, we really like to snack. Especially while we're watching TV or movies. But in an effort to cut down on processed, pre-packaged snack food, we've stopped buying most snacks and I've been doing a lot more baking. This is a win-win because even though we're still consuming sweets and snacks, they are healthier than store-bought snacks, and I love to bake so I've been motivated to pursue that hobby more lately. Monday night is the only night in which we watch live TV; it's our Dancing With the Stars and Castle night. At the beginning of the DWTS season, I promised Steve that every Monday I would make a snack for us to eat while watching our Monday night shows. And so far I have lived up to that promise! I thought I'd share what I've made so far .

September 19th: Lemon oat cookies. I only use 1 cup of sugar instead of the 2 cups this indicates. I've had my recipe for awhile and when I wrote it down I listed 1 cup of sugar. These are light, buttery, and not too sweet, which means even Steve will eat them!

September 26th: Homemade granola bars. I need to tweak this recipe because the last time I made these they were completely falling apart. I don't know what the deal was. I found a different recipe on Pinterest (You use Pinterest, right? Because it's amazing) that I'm going to try sometime.

October 3rd: Caramel apple crisp. I am a sucker for anything caramel apple related, so when I found this recipe (on Pinterest, surprise surprise) I knew I had to make it. And it was soooooo good. I halved the recipe since I'm just cooking for two, and it fit nicely into a square glass Pyrex dish. Also, instead of buying regular caramels, I bought caramel bits so I didn't have to do any unwrapping.

October 10th: Sriracha peach crisp. I absolutely love Budget Bytes, the blog from which this recipe comes. I love crisps. I love peaches. I love sriracha. But for whatever reason, I just did not love this recipe. Steve wasn't digging it either. It had so much promise but fell flat for us. If any of you try it I'd be interested to hear how you like it.

October 17th: Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Steve's favorite. These did not last long!

October 24th: We liked the caramel apple crisp so much the first time I made it, I decided to make it again!

That's all I have to say about our food journey. It has been an adjustment, but I would say it's been a change for the better for us.

Recipe: Make-ahead chicken breasts

2011-09-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

Today I'm going to share how I roast chicken breasts in bulk to freeze for later use. This might be a painfully obvious idea for most of you, but I didn't start doing this until a little over a year ago, so if I can help someone else "see the light" I'm happy to share.

Roasting (or baking...whatever...I'm not going to get into a discussion about the nomenclature of cooking methods) chicken is so super easy, and it saves a lot of time when you are cooking meals, because you have an entire step already done. Woo hoo!

Here's what I do:

First, I set my oven to 400 degrees and prepare the chicken while the oven is preheating. I start by drizzling some olive oil in a Pyrex baking dish, adding the chicken to the dish, and coating both sides of the chicken with olive oil. Normally I roast much more chicken than this at once (if the oven is already on, why not do a bunch at one time?), but this was all the chicken I had the day I did this. But there have been times I've done a couple 9x13 pans at once.

Then I season each chicken breast with salt, pepper, and garlic. I usually keep the seasonings pretty simple so they can be used for a variety of different meals.

I usually do a minimal amount of salt and loads of pepper and garlic, because that's the way we Turleys like it.

Then I cover my pan with aluminum foil, stick it into my 400 degree oven, and then find something to do for an hour or so. Normally I see that hour as an opportunity to exercise or clean my toilets. Ha! Just kidding. More like eat ice cream and surf the Internet. Anyway, this is what the chicken looks like after about an hour at 400 degrees:

Then it's time to shred, shred, shred. You've probably heard of the "two forks" method. If not...you just take two forks and shred your chicken. It will be fall-apart juicy and tender so it won't take much effort on your part.

After all the chicken is shredded, I freeze it. How I freeze it depends on my mood/level of laziness. Sometimes I get out my postage scale (which also works great for weighing food) and divide the chicken into precisely weighed portions. More often, though, I take a clump of chicken that looks to be a suitable amount for making a meal for two and call it good. When I roasted these two chicken breasts, I just put one in each freezer bag. Make sure to label your bags! Steve never labels anything and most of the stuff he freezes gets thrown away because we have no idea when it was bagged or what the heck is even in the bag. I seriously keep a Sharpie on my kitchen counter because I use it all the time for food labeling.

That's it! Really simple and not at all time-consuming. It just requires a few minutes before and after the chicken cooks, and you have that entire hour for ~~ice cream eating~~ exercising.

What can you use your pre-cooked chicken for? For starters, basically any recipe that tells you to cube your chicken and cook it in a frying pan. I'm sorry, but I think that method is so icky. I don't think the chicken turns out very well at all and it just looks like a watery mess. If your recipe calls for cooking chicken in a pan, just throw in your pre-cooked chicken, warm it up, and move onto the next step. I usually use pre-cooked chicken in:

-Pasta dishes that call for chicken. Add it to the sauce as it starts to simmer and let it heat through.

-Any chicken and dumplings/chicken and biscuits/chicken pie recipe - basically any recipe that involves making a roux and dumping in chicken, vegetables, and milk/broth until you have a thick gravyish liquid.

-Soup! It's so easy to dump a bag of chicken into a pot of soup. You don't even need to thaw out the chicken beforehand; just add the frozen block of chicken and allow your pot to simmer for awhile.

-Mexican food. A lot of times I'll heat up the chicken in a pan and then add water and taco seasoning as if I was making tacos with hamburger meat. This pre-cooked, shredded chicken also works extremely well if you are making quesadillas.

Hopefully I gave at least one person out there the idea to roast chicken in bulk to use later on. It really is a time saver and the chicken is so much more moist and tender than when it's cooked on the stovetop, even after it's been frozen.

Life update and photos

2011-09-21T15:41:00.000-05:00

Hey guys. I can't believe it's been over a month since I last blogged. I haven't even blogged using the new Blogger interface yet. Anyway, we've all been having a good end of summer/beginning of fall. Over the past few weeks we've gone to some farmers' markets, roadtripped to Ames to see my parents, enjoyed the beautiful weather as we've gone on walks, and Claire started Kindermusik a couple weeks ago. I'm so, so glad we signed her up for Kindermusik. I had some reservations about it since she's only 5 months old; I thought she might not get much out of it. I was definitely wrong. It's so fun watching her interact with the other babies and just plain having fun.

The next several weeks will continue to be a little busier than normal. Some exciting stuff, some not so exciting stuff. I started a 4-week Bible study at our church this morning (exciting, and nice to gather with other SAHMs). I went to the dentist a couple weeks ago to get some of my old fillings replaced, and I have to go back and get more work done in October (not so exciting, but painful!). We are getting Claire's 6-month pictures taken the first week in October, and we're going to do some family shots too (exciting, at least for me). This Saturday Steve and all three of his girls (Hannah big girl, Larkin the little girl, and Claire the baby girl) are going to an event at Noelridge Park called Paws in the Park. It is a 1-mile run/walk for dogs and their humans with proceeds benefiting the spay/neuter fund at Cedar Rapids animal control. The weather should be really nice and it will be fun to see Larkin interact with lots of other dogs. She still gets jumpy around new people, even when she's got her Gentle Leader on, so I'm a little nervous about how things will go, but maybe she will decide to be on her best behavior so she doesn't embarrass herself in front of all her new doggie friends. I can hope, anyway.

Here are our last six weeks in pictures!

Claire rolled over for the first time on August 7th:

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit:

Same dress, 1983 vs. 2011

Visiting my parents in Ames:

Labor Day walk at the Morgan Creek arboretum:

Larkin testing her boundaries...we decided to see how well she would do with staying in the sunroom if we took down the gate we usually have up. She decided to lie there with one paw over the line. Notice the ominous-looking spray bottle that was ready to get her if she tried venturing any further.

Rice cereal

2011-08-04T15:36:00.000-05:00

At the doctor's on Monday, we got the go-ahead to start Claire on rice cereal. Last night was her first rice cereal meal. I think the pictures speak for themselves...disgust, followed by bewilderment, followed by cautious acceptance!

Recipe: Green breans with pancetta and shallots

2011-08-03T09:55:00.000-05:00

Here is the recipe I talked about in my last post that I promised to share. It is a slight variation of what the Hy-Vee nutritionist made at the cooking demo we went to a few weeks ago. She said to blanch the green beans before adding them to your pan of other ingredients; I just saute them so that I don't have to dirty another pot, but you can certainly blanch the beans if you prefer. I am terrible with measurements (I'm an eyeballer) but I tried to list measurements as accurately as I could.

Green beans with pancetta and shallots

1 oz. diced pancetta (I buy a 3 oz. package from Hy-Vee and use about 3 slices per lb. of green beans)

1/2 Tbsp. olive oil (just a guess; again, I'm an eyeballer!)

2-3 shallot cloves, chopped

1 lb. green beans, ends trimmed

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pancetta in a large frying pan until lightly browned. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add olive oil to the pan and allow it to heat. Add the shallots, green beans, and salt and pepper; saute until desired consistency is reached (some people like pretty crisp beans, others like them wilted). Add the pancetta back to the pan and heat through.

There are only a few ingredients in this recipe but it is amazingly flavorful. Making this recipe was the first time I'd ever cooked with shallots. I'm still wondering how I lived to be almost 28 before discovering them. They are basically part garlic, part onion - so what's not to love?! Green beans are my favorite summer produce item and eating them with the shallots and pancetta is just so delicious. I'm sure I'll be making this recipe a few more times before summer ends. Here's the photo of the finished product again.

Catching up

2011-08-01T14:27:00.000-05:00

I swear I haven't given up on blogging. I've come to the realization that blogging is like cleaning...the longer you put it off the more you have to do, and the more you have to do the less you want to do it, so then you keep putting it off...etc. But I will do my best to sum up the past month or so of our lives.

We went on our first vacation with Claire in early July. We drove up to Decorah and spent the night at Hotel Winneshiek (which I have blogged about before - here). I was a little nervous about how everything would go, particularly how Claire would sleep away from home in her pack 'n' play. I must be too much of a worrywart because she had no problems sleeping whatsoever and the whole trip was a success! The day we got up to Decorah we went to the trout hatchery and a food coop we love. Dinner was at Mabe's Pizza, one of my favorites. The next morning we went out for breakfast at T-Bock's and then went to the Vesterheim Norwegian-American museum before heading home. It was a short little vacation but it was good to get away for awhile...especially considering the last time I had spent the night away from home was when I was in the hospital!

We went to a farmers' market every Saturday in the month of July. I can't think of many things I like better than buying and eating meat and produce from right here in Eastern Iowa. I'm going to be really bummed when fall and winter come around and it's back to eating frozen veggies. At one of the markets we attended there was a cooking demo presented by the nutritionist at the Marion Hy-Vee. One of the recipes she prepared is now my new favorite recipe and I promise I will post the recipe soon but here is a peek at what it looks like:

Earlier in the month Claire and I went to my hometown to meet up with my parents; their house is still for sale and they needed to take care of some things there. I was able to get some pictures with Claire at my childhood home.

I really loved doing this comparison photo. The photo at the left was taken in 1988 when I was 5 (helloooo drought!). Look at how much the same tree has grown in 23 years!

I joined a moms' meetup group a couple weeks ago and attended my first meetup last week - Claire and I went to toddler story time at the Marion library. Claire obviously isn't toddler age yet but we read to her constantly and she loves taking in new places and faces so I decided we would give it a try. We didn't sit very close to the librarian reading the stories (in case I needed to make a quick exit) but Claire did a good job of sitting in my lap for the duration (which was only 20 minutes) so I think we will be going back. It's a nice way to get out of the house (that doesn't involve spending money at Target ☺) and since she loves being read to, I think it's something she will start to enjoy as she gets older. And it is good for me to meet other moms who live closeby!

Larkin continues to be a good doggie, despite the fact she is a total bank account drain. She's lucky she's so loved. ☺ We got her blood tested for environmental allergies. Unfortunately, she is allergic to a host of different stuff. Fortunately, the test didn't end up being a complete waste of money because we were able to pinpoint what she's allergic to. So now she has to go back to the vet in August to get an injection that will hopefully curb all of her itchiness. Which will cost more money. Again, she's lucky she is loved! She has come up with a new tactic for getting our attention when she's outside and wants to come in:

She must have read Animal Farm while I wasn't looking: "Four legs good, two legs better!"

I saw the photographer who did Claire's newborn photos at Hy-Vee last week. She said, "I've been meaning to tell you to come in to the studio because we ordered, like, 500 lip balms with Claire's photo on it." WHAT! How fun! So the next day I stopped in and she gave me a ton of lip balms. We just love that photographer (Kenzi Photography). When I was in the studio I scheduled an appointment for October to do Claire's 6-month photos and some family photos for our Christmas cards. Did I really just say Christmas? It will be here before we know it. Anyway, here is Claire, the little lip balm model:

Today we took Claire to the doctor for her 4-month appointment. She weighs 15 lbs, 8 oz (87%) and is 26 inches tall (97%). She has grown so much in the past 4 months, I can hardly believe it! She got more vaccines today and is now in a deep sleep. After her 2-month vaccines she was pretty out of it for about 24 hours so I'm expecting a pretty quiet rest of the day. Unless Larkin causes a ruckus, which I can't ever rule out!

That pretty much sums up our month. It's weird being moderately busy for once; usually we are just big ol' homebodies. August looks to be busy as well - more meetups with the moms group, Steve has relatives coming to visit from out of state, definitely more farmers' marketing, I'm attending an outdoor concert at Brucemore in a couple weeks, my birthday is this Friday, and we start Kindermusik on August 22nd! Whew!

I will leave you with some more Claire pictures because I'm not dumb and know that's what everyone wants to see anyway!

My afternoon...

2011-07-03T16:29:00.000-05:00

I hope all of you are having a relaxing weekend! I know I am!

The little girl in the mirror

2011-06-28T15:31:00.000-05:00

I love holding Claire in front of mirrors because she is so fascinated by her own face. I always say to her, "Do you want to go visit the little girl in the mirror? If you smile at her I promise she'll smile back at you!" It's so cute to watch her study her face and then give a little grin. Here is one of our visits to the little girl in the mirror.

Our literate dog

2011-06-25T06:56:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I never posted this video. This was from right after we came home from the hospital. Larkin had been staying with Steve's parents and Grandma Turley taught her a new trick!

It's been awhile since we've done this trick with her so I'm not sure if she still knows it. And in the interest of full disclosure, we've also held up a plain white napkin and she'll sit when we do that, too, so she's not actually reading. But it still looks pretty cool!

What's new

2011-06-24T15:19:00.000-05:00

I realized June is almost over and I've hardly updated in weeks. The three Turleys (and Larkin) are all doing really well. Claire's last doctor's appointment was almost a month ago on May 27th. At that time she weighed 12 lb. 4 oz. and was 24" long - so about 2 lbs. heavier and 2 inches longer than at birth. I just got done packing away clothes she's outgrown. She was lying on her activity mat as I was doing that, and I would hold up little outfits to her body and wonder how she was ever able to fit into them! I'm sad that she's outgrowing her clothes but on the flipside I guess that means more shopping for me. ☺

Claire is still sleeping through the night for the most part. I say "for the most part" because she is starting to unswaddle herself during the night so around 4 AM she'll wake up and start to move around a bunch in her crib. She's not exactly crying or hungry or upset, she just wants to fidget. So one of us has to go in and reswaddle her and get her to go back to sleep. It's a little annoying to get that before-the-roosters wake-up, but I just have to keep remembering how fortunate we are to have such a good little sleeper because for the most part she does really well!

We have a good routine going during the day. Claire usually takes a short nap in the morning, a really long nap in the afternoon, and sometimes another shorter nap either late morning or early evening. She's really starting to consolidate her asleep and awake times. It's fun that she can stay awake for longer periods of time now, and with her ever expanding personality, she's just a fun little girl to be around! She smiles a lot, has started giggling just a little bit, and really chats up a storm once she gets going. We've been testing out the Bumbo seat with her and she can sit in it unassisted for little bits at a time! I think Steve is really excited for her to start creeping and crawling...it will be fun, but I'm well aware that it will come with a new set of challenges!

I'm starting to mentally prepare for making baby food. I have a book that I've skimmed through but still need to actually read, and have done some research on supplies I'll need. We already have a food processor and a blender so that's good. Somewhere I read that baby food can be store in the freezer for up to six months, I think, so I'm planning to start making food soon so I'll have a little stockpile ready for when Claire is old enough to start eating it.

Larkin is doing well. She's still a vegan but over the past several weeks she's really started itching again. We think she probably has some sort of environmental allergy as well, like possibly a grass allergy. Antihistamines help control the itching, but we think we might want to have her tested for allergies so we can for sure know what she's allergic to and do whatever we can to control it. Her old frisbee bit the dust a few weeks ago so I bought her a new one on Amazon that said it was chew-proof. All I have to say is that Larkin would not be a good spokesdog for this company because there were teeth marks on it within just a few hours of her playing with it!

That's all I can think of right now. I've been just as bad at my blog reading as I am with my blog writing. So that's why I haven't been commenting as much lately. I'm also thinking about paring down the number of blogs I subscribe to. It seems like so many of them anymore are basically sandwich board blogs - almost 100% promotional and very little actual content. Yes, I'm sure Silhouettes are way cool, but there are only so many sponsored posts I care to read!

Now for some photos!

Had to sneak in a Larkin photo - this was at Steve's grandma and grandpa's house.

Meeting her great-grandmas last weekend:

Garage sale rant

2011-06-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

It's cold and rainy today and I feel like ranting.

Tis the season...garage sale season. Claire doesn't really need much clothing right now, but I've decided to start looking for stuff in bigger sizes to save for when she's a bit older, and it's fun to get out and do some thrifty shopping. I've always enjoyed "the thrill of the hunt." However, nearly all the sales I've been to this year have been complete duds. I will pose two questions:

1. WHY do people try to sell clothing that is super old, pilled, faded, stained, or in otherwise horrible condition that it would be unsellable at even Goodwill?

2. If people insist on selling such horrid clothing, WHY do they price it so expensively?

Seriously, people. If something is in such bad condition that you yourself would not buy it at a garage sale, then don't try to peddle it to your customers. And if for whatever reason you insist on selling your kids' gross clothing, then at least have the decency to price it accordingly. Faded, pilled pajamas with milk/formula stains all around the neck should be priced at no more than a quarter, not $1 like I saw at a sale last night. Just because an outfit was made by Gymboree doesn't mean it should be priced at $3 when it's in such horrible condition I would be embarrassed to see my daughter wearing it.

My other big beef is when people sell clothes that are really old. I may sound like a freak, but I know clothes and can identify them well, similar to how people can look at a piece of antique furniture and say "Oh, that's a Duncan Phyfe that was made in suchandsuch year, blahblah," or how sports fanatics can recite obscure statistics about their favorite team at the drop of a hat. Even if you aren't very knowledgeable about clothes, Gap and Old Navy make it really easy to see how old an item of clothing is - they print the season and year in which it was sold on a little tag on all their clothes. So when I go to a garage sale and see a Babygap sweater priced at $4 and then look at the tag and see that it was sold in freakin' 1999, I consider that to be extremely overpriced (not to mention a little ugly, because it was the 90s, after all).

Maybe I am being too picky. But I am willing to pay several dollars for a cute outfit at a garage sale, as long as it's in good condition. The whole practice of people thinking their stuff is worth more than it actually is because it's THEIRS and they LOVE it and can see past the flaws drives me bananas. It's like people here have forgotten how to have a garage sale. This is something I will remember whenever I decide to part with some of my stuff and have my own garage sale.

Ann Perkins and I have the same decorating taste

2011-05-24T14:59:00.000-05:00

The other day I was catching up on past episodes of Parks and Recreation on Hulu. During one of the episodes something in Ann's house caught my eye.

No, not the Pretty Woman dress Leslie is holding. See what's on the wall in the background? Does that remind anyone of anything?

Yep, it's the same as Claire's family tree in her room. Evidently Ann Perkins (and the set dressers for Parks and Rec) shop at Pier 1, too!

Photos from Claire's newborn session

2011-05-21T20:34:00.001-05:00

I previously blogged about the horrible time we had at the the photo studio for Claire's first shot at her newborn photos (not because the photographer was bad - she was amazing! - but because Claire was inconsolable nearly the entire time), and the second chance the photographer gave us. We are SO thankful we got to go back because Claire's photos turned out awesome! We had a hard time picking out favorites and ended up being a little spendier than we thought we were going to be but it was worth it. Our favorite photo of the whole session got made into a 20"x30" canvas wall hanging. Then we ordered a 10"x20" floatwrap that is a collage of three photos of Claire wearing an adorable pompom hat. Once I get them hung up I'll try to remember to post pictures of them because they are so cute.

We were able to purchase a CD of high res images from Claire's photo session so I can share our favorites with you all! This one is our favorite by a mile. The dress she is wearing is the special dress from her Great Grama that I got at my Wiebel baby shower. The headband is from an Etsy shop called Forever Handmade. The shop owner is from Iowa. I don't know her personally, but we have the same hair stylist so that's how I found out about her shop. She also made the pompom hat in the photos below. She makes great stuff!

The rest of our favorites...

Hello!

2011-05-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

OMG, you guys! I'm sorry I've been gone for so long. I have an excuse for my absence and she's the sweetest, prettiest little excuse I've ever seen. ☺

Things are going really well with Claire. One of my favorite things about her is that she has been consistently sleeping through the night! The first night she did it was April 28th and other than a couple hiccups we haven't looked back since. Sometimes she'll wake up for the day super early (like at 5 AM), but I'd rather have a good stretch of uninterrupted sleep and then wake up early than to keep having to wake up during the night. I guess Claire agrees!

Naptime is a different story...she really only wants to sleep in my arms and will cry if I try to put her down, even if she was already asleep. And as much as I love cuddling, sometimes holding her for much of the day gets to be tedious. Today I decided to try "Ferberizing" to see what would happen. I know she is a little young but she's already sleeping through the night so I thought she might get the hang of this too. I started out with small intervals - 1, 3, and 5 minutes. She cried during the 1-minute, 3-minute, and 5-minute intervals, but calmed herself down during the second 5-minute interval and was able to take a little nap on her own. Tonight I tried it again and I only had to go in and calm her once. That was about an hour ago and we haven't heard a peep since! So I'm hoping we are starting a new phase of sleep habits but we'll see how the next few days go. She is still sleeping in her bassinet in our room. I'm thinking we will eventually move her bassinet into her room and have her sleep like that for a few days before moving her to the crib. I don't want to spring too many new things on her all at once.

Speaking of new things, Claire started to smile a couple weeks ago and I swear her smiles could melt a giant block of ice. It's so fun to see her personality develop more and more every day. She has also been doing a lot of cooing so I've been trying to talk to her like we're having a real conversation. I pretend that she's telling me a story that her big sister Larkin told her so I'll say things like, "Really? Larkin said that? Then what did she do?" Hey, I've got to entertain myself somehow!

I've gone grocery shopping with Claire two times and both times were a success. I was really worried she'd have a meltdown and I'd be THAT parent with THAT kid at the grocery store. But both times she was very content to take in all the sights and sounds. The second time she started to fuss in the checkout aisle, but I found her pacifier and all was well again. I haven't ventured out of the house much just the two of us, but those two Hy-Vee trips gave me confidence that there is hope that I will indeed get to go shopping again. ☺

The weather has been nice here lately so we've been able to go on walks. I try to take Claire on a little walk during the day, and then all four of us (Steve, Claire, Larkin, and me) will head out after dinner. It's nice to get some exercise and try to make the rest of my baby weight disappear. I bought a new baby carrier (an Ergobaby) so depending on if Claire is alert/happy or sleepy, I'll either push her in the stroller or carry her in the Ergo. She usually falls right to sleep when she's being carried. I like wearing her in the Ergo because it reminds me of when I was pregnant with her. And carrying her is good exercise!

It's hard to think of any stories about our life that don't involve Claire. Work continues to go well for Steve. A couple weeks ago he had to go to California for work but he left Tuesday morning and got home the next afternoon so it wasn't a bad trip. Last weekend my mom and I went to an antique sale outside of my hometown. We also stopped at my childhood home, the house they are trying to sell because they moved away last fall. I took photos of the empty interior while we were there for posterity's sake; I'll try to post them sometime for those who have actually been inside that house because it looks so much different with everything gone. That was the first time I had seen the house completely empty. My parents moved in right before I was born and lived there until last fall. I'm still bummed that someday (hopefully soon) they won't own that house anymore. I just hope that whoever buys it takes good care of it and is able to create happy memories there like we did.

That's all I can think of to say. Now, without further ado, Claire picture overload!

Drama queen

2011-04-26T23:28:00.000-05:00

Claire slept in my lap for awhile tonight while Steve and I watched Dancing With the Stars. She ended up in quite the histrionic pose. I hope this isn't a sign of what her teenage years will bring.

Life update

2011-04-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

I thought I owed the faithful readers of this blog (...do I have any faithful readers?) a real blog post. Claire is asleep right now so we'll see how much I get written until she wakes up!

The first few days after we got home from the hospital were kind of eventful, and not in a good way. We had to deal with a bit of a health issue with Claire. It's kind of a long story so I will share the very truncated version. We found out Claire lost 15% of her birth weight (doctors don't like to see babies lose more than 10%) and we figured out it was because she and I were having trouble with nursing and she wasn't eating very much. We've had to take her to the doctor several times over the past couple weeks to monitor her weight and I am happy to report she is now back up to her birth weight. In the meantime, I've made the decision to stop nursing her and feed her my milk from a bottle, supplementing with formula when necessary. I am sure there are people out there who would like to label me as a lazy quitter who gave up on nursing too easily. I guess to those people I would like to say: 1. It's my baby, not yours. 2. It's not a pleasant thing to find out you were basically starving your daughter for the first five days of her life. 3. Because of #2, it has been wonderful to be able to monitor how much she is eating every day. 4. I would say that what I am doing now is MORE work than nursing. Lots of planning ahead and bottle making/washing! 5. Did I mention it's my baby? ☺ But really, Steve is behind this decision 100% and we both think this is what is best for Claire. Now that we have made this change Claire is eating like a champ (usually around 20 oz. a day!) and her mom and dad are a lot less stressed out.

Claire got baptized on April 10th. The weather was amazing that day and we had several family members who were able to attend, which meant a lot to us. Claire wore my baptism dress that I wore on my baptism day, September 4, 1983. My mom made it for me so that made it an extra-special dress for Claire to wear on her baptism day.

The same day Claire was baptized, Steve left for a trade show in Las Vegas. He left Sunday night and didn't get home until Thursday evening. All his girls were pretty sad that he was gone. Thankfully, Steve's trip went really well and he didn't have any issues with his flight home so we were reunited on that Thursday night as planned. And the best part of Daddy coming home from Vegas was that he got to start a ten-day vacation! He's been home all this week and it has been really great. He will go back to work on Monday, and even though we'll obviously all miss each other during the day when he's at work, I think we're looking forward to starting a normal routine.

While Steve was in Vegas, I took Claire to a photography studio in Marion to get her newborn photos taken. I was really looking forward to this because it was nice to get out of the house, and photo shoots are fun! Well, they are supposed to be fun...Claire's was a Disaster with a capital D. We were there for two hours and she was crying inconsolably for most of the time we were there. Every time I'd get her calmed down and set her down so the photographer could take some photos, Claire would be calm for maybe a minute tops and then start screaming again. The photographer wanted to take nude photos first so Claire was either naked or wrapped in just a blanket for most of the time...no diaper. I got peed on. The photographer got peed on. The photography props got peed on. It was pretty much a big pee party. Oh, and I fed her a bottle to see if that would help to calm her down and she ended up spitting up all over me, the chair I was sitting in, and the floor. It was a ginormous mess. Thankfully, the wonderful photographer (Kenzi Photography) offered to have us come back another day to try again. We went back this week with Steve the "Claire whisperer" in tow and things went much better, thank goodness. Steve and I are so anxious to see the proofs from her session. I have a feeling it's going to be very difficult to narrow down our favorites!

It's been a little hard between Steve's business trip and subsequent time off of work, but we're trying to get used to our "new normal" life with a little one. Claire can't get enough of being held, which is obviously fun for us because we love to cuddle with our cuddle bug, but it has made bedtime a little difficult. So we are adapting by hanging out in our bedroom at night watching TV while holding Claire until she is out cold, and then putting her to bed. Once she is out she will generally sleep for a long stretch, but when she wakes up in the night she is very alert and it's hard to get her back to sleep. So last night, for example, she slept from 11:00 until 4:30, was wake until around 6:00, and then woke up again around 6:30. I guess I can't complain too much because getting that nice long stretch of sleep is a lot better than the first couple nights we were home (when she was probably hungry 24/7) and would wake every 45 minutes or so. Steve and I are still pretty exhausted, but as the Darius Rucker song goes, "it won't be like this for long!"

Well, the natives are getting restless (i.e. Claire is waking up) so I better end this!

Miss Claire

2011-04-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

No time for an actual blog post (plus it's difficult to type when you're holding a baby) but here are some adorable photos. ☺

Her baptism day, April 10th:

Claire's birth story

2011-04-08T17:14:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone!

My girls, both human and dog, are asleep right now, so I thought I would try to write a proper blog post since I haven't in awhile. (Even though I know you are all here for baby photos anyway!) I wanted to share Claire's birth story, as best as I can remember it, anyway. A lot of details are really fuzzy now but I'll do the best I can to remember the key points!

Steve and I got to the hospital around 6:00 PM last Tuesday evening. We got settled in our room and I got hooked up to the monitors. After a while, the OB on duty came in to check on me and give me Cervidil. It is my understanding this is kind of like the preliminary drug given to women who are being induced, and Pitocin is kind of like "bringing out the big guns." I was told that I would get going on Pitocin Wednesday morning, provided I didn't go into labor before then, which I didn't really expect would happen...but more on that later.

When the OB checked on me she felt my belly and told me I probably had an 8-lb. "Iowa-sized" baby in there. Again...more on that later. Oh, and when I first got hooked up to the monitors the nurse told me I was having contractions. Honestly, I had no idea that what I had been feeling the past couple weeks were contractions. They were not painful and I just thought it was the baby moving, because I figured contractions are supposed to hurt, right? But when I could see the monitor in addition to feeling what I had been feeling, I realized yep, I had been having contractions without knowing it.

This was me Tuesday night. I ended up looking a LOT different the next day.

After getting the Cervidil, Steve and I ordered some dinner and spent the rest of the evening watching a Seinfeld DVD we had brought. I fell asleep around 11:00 (I had been offered, and gladly accepted, an Ambien to help me relax and get some rest), and Steve said he went to sleep around midnight. Both of us were expecting to get a decent night's sleep in preparation for the big day that was to follow.

Fast forward to 1:30 AM. I woke up to the pain of some decent contractions. I remember getting up to go to the bathroom since I knew it might be awhile before I'd be able to comfortably do so again, and I paged my nurse. When I was checked around 1:30, I was dilated to 2 cm. Obviously we still had a ways to go. The next couple hours are really fuzzy. My contractions kept getting worse and worse and I can't say it was the most pleasant experience I've ever had. I told the nurse I wanted an epidural, and at some point she hooked me up to an IV. She told me I needed to have at least half a bag of fluids in me before I could get an epidural. Meanwhile, Steve sat next to me and helped me through my contractions. Early on they were manageable, but as the night wore on they became unbearable. Around 3:40 AM, the nurse told me that she was going to check in on me again around 5:00 to see if I would be ready for the epidural (I'm guessing she thought that's about when I'd have enough fluids to proceed). I remember thinking that was going to be the longest hour and twenty minutes of my life. Thank goodness Steve was there to remind me to breathe, because, really, it's true - you just want to hold your breath when you really need to keep breathing instead.

I started getting really delirious during that 3:40-5:00 AM timespan. I remember lying in the bed focusing on the buttons that moved the bed up and down while breathing through each contraction. At one point during the night the nurse wanted me to turn over to my other side. The side rail on the other side of the bed was down so I couldn't focus on the buttons anymore and I remember feeling completely lost because I didn't have anything to focus on anymore. I had read in pregnancy books testimonials from women who said they were able to sleep between their contractions. When I read that, I remember thinking, "Oh, yeah right!" But guess what? I did. Not between every one, but I specifically remember nodding off a few times.

Also - and I totally realize this is going to make me sound like a crazy person, but I swear it's true - I started assigning a picture or a word/name to each contraction. I have no idea why. But I remember starting a contraction and envisioning a picture of a yellow house with a yellow sky. Another contraction I named Ann. Another was Walter. Seriously. Isn't it weird how the mind works? And I wasn't even doing this consciously to keep my mind off the pain. It was just like these words and images were coming to me. Believe me, I was just as confused by all of it as it was happening as I'm sure you all are.

Finally, finally, finally, 5:00 AM came. I really didn't think I would be able to make it until then, but that's the thing about labor - your body survives things you don't think it can. The anesthesiologist was called to come give me an epidural. If I remember correctly, one had to be called from home or some other location because the others in hospital were attending to other patients at the time. So I had to keep waiting. And breathing. And trying my hardest not to push. During one contraction in particular, I couldn't help but try to push even though I knew it wasn't time. Both Steve and the nurse said, "Okay, you need to keep breathing, if you push now you could put stress on your cervix," blah blah blah. I remember yelling, "I KNOW!" It was very difficult to make my body do one thing when it really wanted to do the complete opposite.

I think it was around 6:00 that the anesthesiologist came to my room. It was kind of a "hallelujah" moment. I was checked again around that time and I was dilated to about 9 cm. I think everyone was pretty amazed that I had gone from 2 to 9 in such a short amount of time. I had been told in childbirth class that 8 cm was the cutoff point for getting an epidural. Oh, crap. Luckily, the anesthesiologist gave me an epidural anyway, bless his heart. The relief from all the pain was very nearly instant. I started chatting and laughing with the nurse and Steve. Things were okay again! I said to the nurse, "I'm so glad I finally got the epidural because I couldn't have delivered without it." She replied, "What are you talking about? You almost did! You were great!" Well, while I am flattered she had confidence in me and my ability to have a natural delivery, I was very glad that I decided to go the epidural route. I know tons and tons of women have delivered babies without pain relief, and I have so much respect for them, but the decision to have an epidural is one I do not regret and I think it was the best choice for me personally.

After I got the epidural, I had to wait until I was fully dilated before I could start pushing. There was a new OB on duty who came in to check on me. She, too, felt my belly and estimated I would be delivering a 7.5-8 lb. baby. Shows how much these doctors know. ;-) I got the epidural around 6:30, and I think I spent the next 90ish minutes resting/sleeping. It really is a blur. I think it was around 8:00 AM that the OB broke my water. When my water broke there was meconium. The neonatologist was contacted because the OB wanted him to be present at the birth in case there were any problems due to the fact there was meconium in my water.

I started pushing around 8:45 AM. At that time the nurse dialed down the pain relief so I could feel enough to be able to know which muscles to use to push. Pushing was not pain-free, but it was bearable. Another strange thing - while I was pushing, I knew I was starting another contraction not because I could actually feel the contraction, but because my upper right leg started hurting. So when I felt my leg start to hurt I knew it was time to push. Steve stood on my right side and I made him put basically all his body weight into my right hip during each contraction so it wouldn't hurt quite so much.

I pushed until 10:00 AM, at which point the OB came in to check on me again. She said that I hadn't progressed at all during that hour and fifteen minutes of pushing. Also, Baby Turley was faced the wrong way ("sunny side up"). She recommended that, based on the fact that I hadn't progressed, the baby was faced the wrong way, and there had been meconium in my amniotic sac, a c-section would be for the best. I didn't really start to freak out at that point, but I was nervous. I mean...major surgery? I knew it was always a possibility, but after spending nearly the entire night in labor I had kind of forgotten about it and figured I would be pushing out the baby at some point. Anyway, everyone started getting ready for surgery while I laid there with Steve next to me. I told him I was scared and he told me, "Guess what? You are done. You don't have to push anymore. You just get to lay there and everyone else is going to do all the work for you." Later, a nurse told me almost the exact same thing. That really did put me at ease.

We had to wait on another anesthesiologist to come in, who was on vacation and at home but got there as fast as he could. I think I was brought into the OR around 10:45 or so. This is where it really starts to get blurry. As far as I could tell there were a ton of people in the room. Someone was doing a lot of counting; I think she was taking inventory of all the supplies they would need for surgery. At some point someone must have put a cap on my head because there is a photo of me after surgery wearing one. There was a radio on in the room and at some point "Love Story" by Taylor Swift was playing. A blue sheet was put up to separate my vision from what the doctor and other people were doing (thank God), and when it was put into place someone said, "Sorry that this sheet smells like crayons, isn't that weird?" I don't remember it smelling like crayons, but I also don't remember a lot of stuff that was happening. By this point I was almost asleep. I had my eyes closed for most of it because whenever I opened my eyes all I could see was the blue sheet. Steve was brought into the room and he stood behind me. I don't really remember him being there because I couldn't see him anyway. I laid there for awhile, and then I started hearing little cries. I don't know if I said it out loud, but I remembered thinking, "Is the baby born?" Well, duh...who else's baby would that be? ☺

Steve went over to where Claire was and I continued to lie there in a daze. I remember people talking to me and asking me questions and I could barely respond. I was so exhausted I literally could not form words and speak. However, when Claire was put on the scale and I heard a bunch of gasps and "Oh wow!"s and then "10 pounds 3 ounces!" I said, "OH MY GOSH." HOW did I carry a baby that big? No wonder I felt like a beached whale toward the end of my pregnancy.

So, I was still lying there and presumably getting sewn up when I remembered saying, "Umm...I'm feeling kind of nauseous..." Someone said one of the drugs can cause nausea and laid one of those little kidney-shaped pans next to my head. Ha. Right after that, I threw up. Like, big time, projectile vomit. I don't think it mattered if the kidney pan had been there or not. I felt bad but it wasn't like I could really do much about it. Fortunately, soon after that episode, Claire was brought over to me and I got to see her for the first time. (You can ignore the tiny bit of vomit on my gown.)

Eventually, I got hoisted onto a different bed and wheeled into the recovery room. I think it was at that point that I was given some meds because my blood pressure had dropped a lot during surgery. There were two nurses who continued to care for Claire. Thank goodness Steve was there with the nurses because I had no idea what in the world was going on. I found out that her glucose levels were low so that was going to be monitored. I continued to lie there while people kept doing stuff to me, like inserting a new IV into my other hand because my blood clotted in the one I had received the night before. Yuck. At least I was too delirious to really notice or care. I started to perk up a little bit after awhile and Steve told me I was looking a lot better than I had in the OR. I'm glad I couldn't see what I looked like and that I wasn't very aware of what was going on because I don't really care to know. After what seemed like a long time, I got to nurse Claire for the first time. Then one of the nurses snapped a couple family photos before we rolled on down to our home for the next three days, aka my hospital room. (You can ignore my icky pregnancy double chins and focus on Claire's cute baby pudgies instead.)

Not long after we got to our room, Claire was taken to have some tests done since her glucose was low at birth. After awhile, we were told that she was going to be in the NICU because when her glucose was retested, it was even lower than it had been at birth. Also, her oxygen and temperature was low. That was a little scary, but we were told that these are common "big baby" health issues that are generally resolved quickly. After making some "she's here!" phone calls to family, Steve went to Claire's NICU room while I slept the rest of the afternoon in between getting checked on by nurses. Again, thank goodness Steve was there to be with Claire because I was totally out of commission. I'm glad he got to see her and bond with her so much early on since I was not able to.

Both sets of our parents came to visit Wednesday evening. Around 8:30 PM I was allowed to get in a wheelchair and go visit Claire in the NICU. It was so weird that I had hardly seen my daughter all day. I got to hold her for a long time and nurse her, too. After I got wheeled back to my room, Steve came with me and we ordered dinner. Then Steve spent the night in the NICU with Claire while I stayed by myself in my hospital room.

The next morning we found out that Claire was going to be able to stay in my room with us. She was still attended to by NICU nurses who kept checking her glucose levels, but it was so nice that she didn't have to spend any more time in the NICU. Poor thing had been hooked up to an IV and everything. The rest of our stay included seeing our visitors, getting as much rest as we were able to, and starting our new adventure as parents! We got to go home Saturday afternoon.

Well, that is my (lengthy) account of Claire's birth story. Things definitely did not go as I thought they would, but on the other hand, I really went into the whole thing with very few expectations of how things would happen, because I didn't want to have an idea in my head of how my labor would occur and then be really upset if/when the plan had to change. Thankfully, my wonderful husband was with me the whole time, and I was surrounded by a great team of doctors and nurses who helped me feel well taken care of.

More Claire

2011-04-03T20:34:00.000-05:00

Baby Turley is here!

2011-03-30T16:36:00.000-05:00

Claire Elizabeth Turley was born at 11:23 this morning. She weighs 10 lbs. 3 oz. and is 22 inches long. The three of us are doing well. I'll write more at a later point in time because this new mama needs her rest (I'm literally nodding off as I type this) but I'll leave you with a few pictures! We are so in love with her!

Recipe: Banana muffins

2011-03-28T08:10:00.001-05:00

I thought I would share a recipe since I haven't in awhile. This is my favorite banana muffin recipe. I like it because I like the flavor, the muffins stay moist, and I always have the ingredients in the house. They do not call for eggs, which is a plus for me because for most of my life I have been repulsed by eggs, both raw and cooked, and only up until a few years ago I still got the willies from having to crack eggs for recipes and risk getting icky egg white on my fingers. Needless to say, I don't always have eggs in the fridge, so it's nice to be able to whip these up when I get the urge and not have to worry about having eggs on hand.

I found this recipe online several years ago; I don't remember the source so I can't give credit where credit is due. So I'll just say thank you, Internets, and leave it at that.

Banana Muffins

Dry ingredients:

1 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 cup white sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. nutmeg

Wet ingredients:

1/3 cup margarine or butter (I use butter)

1/2 cup applesauce

2-3 mashed bananas (3 if small, 2 if large)

1 tsp. vanilla

Mix the dry ingredients together. Soften the margarine or butter and mix it with all the other wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Put the dry mixture into the wet mixture a little at a time and mix well until totally combined. Bake in a muffin pan at 350 degrees F until done.

I realize that "until done" is pretty ambiguous. When I would make these at the old house, they would take 25-30 minutes in a regular 12-cup muffin pan in my cold oven. I haven't made them in a normal muffin pan since we've moved; instead, I've been using my awesome new device - a muffin top pan!

It does exactly what it sounds like it would do - the muffin cups are very shallow so you just end up with fluffy muffin tops and no stumps. Because, as everyone knows, the muffin top is the best part and no one wants the stumps!

Anyway, in my muffin top pan, it takes about 20 minutes for the muffins to bake at 350.

Yum!

The final piece of the puzzle

2011-03-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I teased the last part of the nursery that was going to come together today. This morning Steve's mom and dad brought over their gift for Baby Turley. I know I have gone on and on about the amazing work done by Eddie, Turley family friend and craftsman extraordinaire. Well, he has done it again. He built a bookshelf for the baby's room and we could not love it more. After a little rearranging we decided to put it in the corner of the room next to the glider and it's a very cozy little nook.

I love all the special little details.

It's so funny because when all the baby's books were stacked in her closet, it seemed like she had a ton. Then we put them on the shelves and it looks pretty sparse! But that's okay because there is plenty of room for more additions to her collection over the years!

I'm using the bottom shelf to store her toys for now.

You can't really tell from the photos, but the vast majority of the baby's books right now are about dogs. I'm pretty sure she's going to grow up and not have any idea what a cat is! ☺

I am so happy that the nursery is complete. And Steve and I love the final piece...something that will be treasured for years and years to come. THANK YOU, Grandma and Grandpa Turley!

Finishing touches

2011-03-25T11:35:00.003-05:00

The nursery is almost finished! (About time, huh? Since I was due two days ago?) There is one last component that will be added tomorrow, but other than that, everything is situated the way I want it to be. Here's what I've done since the last time I blogged about the nursery (here).

The curtain and window shade have been up for a few weeks. I thought the shade was going to be really difficult to install but it wasn't so bad. It helped that I had Steve to assist me (i.e. do most of it for me). It does a great job of keeping light out of the room during the day, and I am so glad I spent the money on a cordless shade so we don't have to fret about dangling cords. I am totally loving the ruffled valance. I think it is girly yet simple and not too over the top.

The valance can be found here. It is a great Etsy shop with ruffles galore!

I took two of my mom's baby dresses and hung them on the wall using hooks I found from Urban Outfitters. I know it sounds like a weird place to purchase home decor, but they really have some amazing stuff. I wanted hooks that fit the style of the room but looked appropriate for having delicate vintage dresses hung from them. These hooks from UO fit the bill. They also have white beaded hooks if pink isn't your thing.

The baby's basket/menagerie has been added to. Steve found plush fish for sale on Cabela's website and ordered a brown trout. He was pretty psyched about it and I didn't think he was going to share it with the baby but he ended up putting Mr. Fishie in the basket with the baby's other stuffed animals. I also threw the baby's security blanket/"lovey" in there for now. It is a dog and it says "Mommy loves me." If you have read even a little bit of my blog, you can probably guess we really are not cat people. Unfortunately, there seems to be very few dog clothes and other things for baby girls. So I was really excited when I saw the doggie security blanket at Kohl's a couple months ago.

In addition to the two blankets from my side of the family (the pink quilt on the left made by my great-grandma for my mom, and the blue baby blanket made for me by my grandma), I am borrowing the middle blanket from Steve's mom. Her aunt (so the baby's great-great-aunt) made it for her when she was a baby. Isn't the hand crocheting around the edges so dainty? I was feeling a little bad that there wasn't much of anything from Steve's side of the family in the nursery, but that's what tends to happen when the boy of the family who also happens to be the youngest is having a baby girl and not a boy. So I was really excited when Steve's mom brought over that blanket for the nursery.

I'm really excited about this last component of the nursery I'm going to share with you. When I repainted the bathroom at our old house back in 2008, I had bought a couple metal wall hangings to spruce up the new walls. One was a large tree that is actually a photo holder. I never put any photos in the slots in the tree (who really wants to have their friends and relatives staring at them when they're on the can?) but you could never tell that it was actually a photo holder. After we moved I saved back the tree for the nursery because I had the idea to turn it into a "family tree." I ordered prints of Steve, me, our parents, and one of the baby's ultrasound photos, and arranged them on the tree to make it look like a photographic family tree. Due to the way the photo clips are situated, I had to tape the baby's photo to the bottom, but I like the way it looks. And I like how I'll easily be able to replace her photo with a current one as she grows.

I hung the family tree on the wall above the changing table.

Here is the baby and her adorable parents. ☺

My mom, dad and me:

And Steve with his mom and dad:

Like I said, there is one final addition to the nursery that will be made tomorrow. I couldn't be more excited about it so I will definitely be blogging about it once it is in place!

Stubborn

2011-03-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

Baby Turley is stubborn. (I wonder who she gets that from...) Today's doctor's appointment was a bit of a disappointment, although I was not surprised. I still have not progressed hardly at all so the plan is for me to go into the hospital Tuesday evening to be induced. We'll spend the night Tuesday night and hopefully by Wednesday morning I'll be in labor. This all goes out the window, of course, if I go into labor naturally before then, which I am really hoping is what happens. Even if I do have to be induced, at least I know that by this time a week from now I'll either be in labor or will have had the baby.

So, we're still playing the waiting game. My doctor is working at my hospital on Friday so we are all hoping Friday is the day. (But I wouldn't complain if I went into labor tomorrow. Or tonight.) I am just so ready to get this show on the road. Hardly any of my clothes fit anymore, I am not sleeping well (yes, I realize that I won't be sleeping after the baby comes anyway, but I'd rather be awake in the middle of the night because I'm caring for my daughter and not because I'm battling insomnia/heartburn/headaches/etc.!), and I'm just plain impatient at this point!

Baby bump - 39.5 weeks

2011-03-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

I haven't done a new bump photo in a few weeks, so here is my 39.5 week picture, taken yesterday:

Seriously, baby, I'm ready to evict you!

Larkin is famous!

2011-03-18T11:59:00.000-05:00

I recently submitted Larkin to a website called The Daily Puppy, and I was so excited to see that she is featured as today's Daily Puppy! Click here to check out our famous dog, and maybe feed her some biscuits if you so desire. ☺

How is Larkin handling her newly found fame? Well, right now she is asleep, but you can bet I'll be giving her lots of extra pets and scratches (and maybe a banana for lunch as a special treat) when she wakes up from her nap. Steve and I knew she was adorable from day 1; it's nice to have our opinions validated by so many who have left nice comments on the Daily Puppy website about our pup. We love our dog so much!

Another boring appointment

2011-03-17T21:12:00.000-05:00

I went back to the doctor today for my 39 week appointment. As you probably already guessed from the title of this blog post, Baby Turley is definitely not well on her way to making her appearance. I must have created quite the hospitable environment for her these past nine months because there hasn't been any progression. I was a little bummed after today's appointment because I was hoping the doctor would see some progress, but I am comforted by the fact that both baby and I are healthy and doing well. Like I told Steve tonight, I'd rather deliver a healthy baby late than deliver a baby with health problems early.

My next appointment is a day early next week, which means my 40 week appointment will be on my actual due date of March 23rd. If the baby hasn't arrived by then, the doctor said she'll go over induction methods since 41 weeks is the line in the sand. I would love it if the baby came before Wednesday but at this point I'm not getting my hopes up! I'm going to enjoy these last few days before the birth as much as I can. The weather has been great which means Larkin and I have gotten to play outside during the day a lot. I'm glad we've been getting to do that since her world is going to be upended and she'll soon play second fiddle to the baby. I've also been sneaking in naps during the day - I have to get as much sleep now while I can!

I would love it if the next time I updated my blog it was to share some baby photos and stats, but I'm not going to bank on that and will try to focus on having lots of patience as we approach the inevitable date of delivery, whenever that might be!

Laughing at myself

2011-03-14T07:38:00.000-05:00

I took this photo on August 15th. It was the first day I wore maternity jeans. (I started to grow in the belly area really early on.) I thought I was sooooooo huge that day. HA! I cannot WAIT to be down to that weight and size again.

Nine days until my due date...we're in the single digits now! We are both really hoping this is the week. Steve is going on a business trip in April and we would love it if there were several weeks between the baby being born and his trip instead of mere days. But, it's not up to us to decide. Fortunately, I do know that if I am past due, I would be induced sometime the following week so we WILL have a March baby, come hell or high water. We just hope it's sooner rather than later. Today is Steve's parents' anniversary...wouldn't a new granddaughter be a nice gift for them?

Still no baby

2011-03-10T21:35:00.000-06:00

Another non-update...I went back to the doctor this afternoon. Everything is still going great, but in terms of labor signs...zilch. I've just been having some minor pain that has been very sporadic. Nothing even remotely resembling contractions. Today I felt nauseous for the better part of the day. I thought maybe that meant something but I'm feeling fine tonight so maybe it was just a fluke. Steve said he has a feeling the baby will come this week. If he is going to be right the baby has two more days to make her appearance!

Happy birthday, Larkin!

2011-03-10T21:25:00.000-06:00

Larkin turned 1 year old today. It's kind of hard to believe that one year ago, our 60-pound dog was a little pup that looked more like a rat than anything. She's been living at our house for about 10 months now, and she has really become part of the family. Except for two fish that died almost immediately after I got them when I was a kid, I'd never owned a pet before, and before we got Larkin I was really skeptical that I would become super attached to her. I definitely surprised myself because now I couldn't imagine her not being a part of our family.

As you can see, I subjected Larkin to more humiliation and irritation by making her pose in a birthday hat. I decided to wait to take her picture until Steve got home so it went a lot better than her Christmas photo shoot did. I bought a pack of birthday hats on clearance at Factory Card Outlet. I figure I can use them next year when the baby has her 1st birthday. I'm so ~~cheap~~ economical!

Larkin got spoiled today. She had a banana with breakfast and got lots of new stuff...a new frisbee that I can hear her chewing on as I type this (I wonder if it will last through the weekend), a Chuck-It (more of a present for Steve and me, but we'll all have fun playing fetch with it outside this summer), and several new bags of treats. I really lucked out at Petsmart. Almost all their treats have something in them Larkin cannot eat but the other day when I went I found a bag of dried yams and two bags of doggie biscuits that are wheat/gluten free and made of all the good stuff Larkin can safely eat. They smell super good and I'm tempted to try one. There isn't anything in them I wouldn't normally eat so it's not like chomping down a Milkbone made from who knows what.

Steve made Larkin a special birthday dinner tonight, a baked potato topped with applesauce, carrots, and dried yams.

As you can see from her tongue, she was really excited to eat her special dinner!

Not surprisingly, she loved it!

Happy 1st birthday Larkin, and here's to many more!

Larkin tidbits

2011-03-08T10:05:00.002-06:00

1. Larkin has ruined yet another toy. This was a fun one, too - last summer we bought her an outdoor toy for when we kennel her. It was two big pink rubber rings linked together with a small black rubber ring. Steve could really chuck it across the yard for her to chase and she enjoyed chewing on it, too...in fact, she enjoyed chewing on it so much, last week she decided to chew through the black ring so none of the rings are no longer linked together. And we're pretty sure she ate a decent sized portion of the black ring because I came upon a horseshoe-shaped piece of ring in the yard but couldn't find any other pieces. I'm fairly certain she delights in decimating her toys because last week I looked out the window and saw this:

That's her, squirming around on the ground like a puppy, with the remains of the little black ring in her mouth. Good thing her birthday is on Thursday and I was planning to buy her a new toy anyway! ☺

2. She knows a new word - "look." When we say "Larkin, look!" she will run over to her favorite window ledge in the sunroom, jump up and rest her front paws on the ledge, and look out. It's very cute. She looks out the same window about a million times a day. It's an excellent vantage point for scoping out her boyfriend Bo, the neighbor's yellow lab. You may have heard the term "boy scouting" to describe girls checking out boys. When Larkin looks at Bo, I call it "Bo scouting!"

3. I have been eating fruit like crazy lately, particularly pears. I don't like to chomp down on a whole pear so I always cut them into slices. I got into the habit of giving Larkin a slice of pear as a treat whenever I cut up a pear for myself since she's still meat-free and I figure tossing her a slice of pear is far healthier than when we were giving her Milkbones for treats anyway. Well, Larkin must love pears as much as I do, because now she knows whenever I'm cutting up a pear and will jump up and down at the baby gate that separates the sunroom from the rest of the house until I give her a piece. Sometimes she'll be asleep in her crate but will run out as soon as I start slicing up a pear. It's pretty remarkable. We are trying to figure out if she recognizes the smell of the pear, or if she knows the noise of the paring knife against the Corelle plate I normally use for pear slicing and eating. Either way, we have been getting such a kick out of seeing her fly out of her crate the second I start slicing up a pear.

Baby non-update

2011-03-03T19:23:00.001-06:00

In case anyone has been checking here to see if the baby has arrived...nope. I went to the doctor today and while the baby is very low (which is awesome because that means she probably won't flip), there wasn't much progress. I haven't been having any contractions so I wasn't surprised. I go back next Thursday afternoon. Unless I deliver the baby before then!

Baby shower #2

2011-02-27T23:02:00.004-06:00

Yesterday afternoon my dad's side of the family hosted a baby shower for me. It was a small group of us girls but it was a great time!

We played a game where everyone had to guess how big around my belly is by cutting off a piece of ribbon from a spool. Whoever had the closest guess won. We played this at my cousin's baby shower two years ago and I won that time. I must have an eye for belly diameters because I won my own "guess the belly" game yesterday!

The food table was so pretty.

The cake matched the shower invitations. Both were brown and pink, which are the colors in the nursery. Synergy...I like it! The cake was so good; I only had one piece but I could have eaten a whole row.

After games and food, it was time to open gifts. Baby Turley and I got some great stuff and I am so thankful! And if my baby girl knew what the heck was going on, I know she'd be thankful too.

I know I shouldn't play favorites, but I can't help it. This was my favorite gift. It was from my grandma. She didn't make it, but it was handmade by a woman in the town where she lives. This photo does NOT do it justice. It literally took my breath away when I opened the box. I am definitely, definitely, definitely getting professional photos taken of the baby in this dress. I know it is something I will treasure for years to come and I know someday my girl will realize how beautiful and special it is, too!

My mom and me. I see myself in the mirror regularly, but I must not realize how huge I am because I could not believe how big I looked in this photo. I can't believe I am still 3.5 weeks away from my due date!

I felt like I got a lot done this weekend. Last night I ordered a baby monitor from Amazon and it should get here on Tuesday. Today I ordered the pack and play we registered for from Target. I had received some Target gift cards as shower gifts so we put those toward the pack and play purchase, which was nice. Steve and I did a lot of work in the nursery today. He helped me hang the shade and then I hung the valance. It is way cute and I will take a picture of it soon. Steve also attached the decorative border to the top of the changing table. Then I got to work on putting away all our recent shower gifts. I also did a load of baby laundry, assembled the bathtub (it has a hammock you use when the baby is really little that I had to put together) and bouncy seat, started assembling the swing (I got about halfway done and decided to do the rest tomorrow), and made a list of stuff to pack in the hospital suitcase and diaper bag. Tomorrow I hope to finish up the nursery, actually pack the hospital suitcase, and go to Target to get the rest of the stuff we absolutely need before the baby gets here. Thankfully there isn't much left to buy...did you know babies are expensive? ☺

"You're all baby!"

2011-02-24T12:12:00.000-06:00

Here is another comparison photo for fun. The first one was taken December 30th when I was 28 weeks, 1 day. The second one was taken today at 36 weeks, 1 day.

I'm ready to give the baby her eviction notice! My doctor's appointment this morning was just fine. I go back next Thursday already!

The next person who tells me "you're all baby!" is going to get slapped. Okay, not really. But it's not true and the more I hear it the more bummed out I get about my pregnancy weight gain. I have been one of those fortunate high metabolism, eat-whatever-I-want-and-hardly-gain-a-pound-type people my whole life. I am not used to all this "extra baggage." I guess being told "you're all baby!" is better than if people were saying things like "are you sure you're not carrying twins?" or something more insulting so maybe I should stop complaining.

Baby shower #1

2011-02-23T09:54:00.002-06:00

Steve's work had a baby shower for us yesterday afternoon. The company where Steve works is very small right now (about ten people) so it is a close-knit group. We were very humbled that they wanted to give us a shower and we had a fun time!

Long story, but Steve's work nickname is Freak, thanks to his prowess at craps during his Vegas trip in January. Steve wrote some sort of widget at work that he called a twidget (for Turley Widget) and since we are having a girl, the baby's office nickname is Twidgette. It's obvious why I would be considered an angel. ;-)

A diaper cake I think is too pretty to take apart! I think I will save those diapers for when it's 2 AM and we're all out and I'm desperate!

I have been craving Casey's donuts recently, and there was a healthy assortment of them at the shower, complete with pink icing! The baby was kicking while I ate a donut so I'm pretty sure she's going to like them too. I don't know what Steve is going to do with two sweet tooths in the house!

We received many adorable gifts!

I thought this was the coolest wrapping paper ever! I'm totally not normally a wrapping paper saver, but I kind of wanted to save this piece. Then Steve crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. Sigh.

The swing was a gift from all of Steve's coworkers. We are excited to get it put together and situated in the living room. I know we'll be using it right away!

I am 36 weeks today and have another doctor's appointment tomorrow. I will be going every week from now on. Steve and I still have several crucial items to tackle on our "before the baby arrives" to-do list. I'm going to try to get some of that stuff done today...starting to pack stuff for the hospital, getting the shade and curtain hung in the nursery, etc. The next month (or less) is going to fly by!

Baby bump comparison shot

2011-02-17T18:11:00.000-06:00

Today the temps here reached the 60s so I was able to wear a maternity shirt I hadn't worn since last fall. I remembered I had taken a bump photo in that shirt so I decided to photograph myself today to compare. The photo on the left is me at almost 19 weeks; the photo on the right was taken today (35 weeks, 1 day).

What a difference 16 weeks makes!

Larkin's new toy is a piece of garbage!

2011-02-14T10:33:00.002-06:00

I need to follow up on my post from yesterday. If any of you were thinking of buying your sweet doggie a tire chew toy like what we bought...DON'T. For one, the one we bought did not withstand Larkin's chewing and it took well under an hour for her to start chewing off bits of rubber. Also, she has thrown up twice since we gave it to her and hasn't been eating well and has been really lethargic. She is a bit of a mischievous dog and we know she's eaten all sorts of things she shouldn't, including bits of rubber from the rug we have in the sunroom, but nothing has ever made her this sick before.

I don't think this is a fluke; here is a link to the Amazon product page for the exact toy we bought. This same toy has made other dogs sick as well. It makes me really mad that companies make and sell dangerous pet toys! I just wanted to make sure to get the word out because I don't want anyone else's dog to get sick from this toy. Steve and I are definitely going to do our research on dog toys from now on!

Back to caring for my sick pup...

Larkin's new toy

2011-02-13T14:59:00.000-06:00

Larkin has decimated four of her toys in the past several weeks, and one more is about to bite the dust, so we decided to buy her something that will last that she'll also be able to really "sink her teeth into" (literally).

We're pretty sure she loves it!

Saturday's successes

2011-02-12T17:37:00.000-06:00

Today we decided to tackle several of the items on our "before March 23rd" to-do list. We stocked up on solar salt for the water softener, Steve changed the furnace filter, we wiped out and plugged in our chest freezer (that's right, it's been sitting empty and unplugged in our basement since last March - can you say procrastination?), went grocery shopping, and are now in the process of making meals we can freeze and reheat after the baby comes so that Mama doesn't have to do much cooking in the beginning. We also got the stroller put together and we figured out how to fold it up! Woo-hoo!

Oh, and yesterday I got the oil changed in my car, so I won't have to worry about doing that again until May. And maybe next time Steve will go do it for me so I don't have to sit at the car dealership with the baby. Hint, hint. ☺ There is still a lot left to do in the next five and a half weeks but we are making definite progress!

Baby bump - 34 weeks

2011-02-10T14:44:00.001-06:00

I posted this photo on Facebook yesterday. (I took it on my phone using Instagram, which is why it looks like a 1970s Polaroid.) Some of my friends were concerned with what appears to be me hovering dangerously near the stairs to the basement. I had to laugh because I wasn't trying to freak anybody out. Our hall seat has a large mirror that is good for taking photos (it also stays cleaner than our bathroom mirror!) so that's why I've been doing my bump photos there. There are several feet between the hall seat and the steps and I really don't stand close enough to the steps to be in much danger of falling. I just wanted to put that out there in case anyone else is freaked out by my photos. ☺

My doctor's appointment this morning was just peachy. My doctor said everything is looking great and she said the baby must have "read the textbook" because I'm measuring right at 34 weeks. The heartbeat was 158. I go back in two weeks for my 36 week appointment; following that appointment I'll start going every week until the baby decides to make her appearance. What? Is this possible? Only sixish weeks to go!

I've been upping my amount of exercise lately. Which for me actually means: I've started exercising lately. Our childbirth instructor said getting some exercise is important because if you are out of shape, doing even a little pushing will feel like running a marathon. Since Steve seems to think I'm some sort of feeble weakling, he's making me get up off my duff and do some moderate exercising. So far we've done mall walking and exercise bike riding. Tonight I think we're going to go walk at the mall again. Grumble grumble. It's not that I don't like to exercise (okay, maybe it is), but it's hard to get motivated to exercise when it's freezing out, I'm exhausted, my back hurts, and all I want to do is curl up on the couch with a blanket and take a nap. On the other hand, if walking around the mall for 30 minutes a few times a week will help labor and delivery go more smoothly, I'm all for that!

February State of the Turleys Address

2011-02-08T08:30:00.000-06:00

Since it's so flippin' freakin' frakkin' cold out, I thought it would be a good morning to catch up on my blogging. So here goes.

1. No, I didn't quit blogging. Sorry it's been awhile.

2. Steve had another business trip at the end of January, this time to Washington DC. I'm not going to get into all the specifics of his job, because I know I would do a horrible job of explaining it, but in brief, the company where he works is dealing with broadcast television, connected TVs, and the Internet. Steve went to DC to meet with, among other groups, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. At the White House. Pretty exciting! However, the "crippling" snowstorm that the DC area received while he was there caused the meeting to be canceled, so no White House visit for him. I say it was a "crippling" storm because they received a few measly inches of snow, but out there that is enough to shut everything down. Meanwhile, the following week here in Iowa, we received an actual crippling snowstorm in which my hometown received 18 inches of snow. But anyway. He had a good trip nonetheless and now feels like an expert when it comes to Metro riding, which is good, because it sounds like he'll be going back at some point in the future.

3. Steve and I have started a tour of our favorite local restaurants. We want to eat at each place one last time before the baby arrives since it's obviously easier to visit these haunts now than it will be in a few weeks. I am calling it our Freedom Festival (that is also the name of a 10-day long celebration in Cedar Rapids culminating in fireworks on the 4th of July). Steve says it's our Freedom Farewell. His description is probably more accurate. ☺ Our first stop was Zoey's Pizza in Marion. If you are within driving distance of Zoey's, you must go there. Like, today. Awesome pizza. We had our usual Chicago-style pepperoni and green peppers pizza, and we even ordered a larger size than normal so we could have leftovers for lunch the next day. Last Friday evening we headed to Java Creek Cafe with some friends for dinner and live music. We hadn't been there in awhile so that was a lot of fun. Then on Saturday evening we had Mexican food at La Camelia. It is a fairly new restaurant to the area but we've been there several times and we really love it (in fact, we had a celebratory dinner there the night I found out I was pregnant). We still have a couple more favorites to get to before March 23, but as long as that baby keeps incubating like she's supposed to, we should have plenty of time.

4. Larkin has been doing well. We don't think she is liking her vegetarian diet very well because she's not eating quite as much as she should every day, but yesterday she ate very heartily so we're hoping she's turning the corner. We've been supplementing her kibble with a little bit of safe human food, but we don't want to go overboard because we don't want her to stop eating her dog food. She has been pointing like crazy lately, which is so fascinating to me because no one taught her that; it's something she does instinctively. She points at the neighbor dogs. She points at Steve when she sees him. This morning I let Larkin out and saw her pointing toward the neighbor's house. I looked up and saw two birds in the sky. Steve really needs to take up hunting because all this raw talent is going to waste! Even though Larkin weighs 60 pounds and is transforming into a dog, she is still as adorable as ever. Yesterday she was taking a nap in her crate when all of a sudden I heard a thumping noise. I looked over and saw her wagging her tail in her sleep. I told Steve she must have been dreaming about him. She is a daddy's girl!

5. Tomorrow I will be 34 weeks along. Yesterday I was looking at the calendar and had a panicky alarm bell moment because it sunk in how close I am to my due date and how much we've yet to take care of before Baby Turley comes into the world. Last night I made a giant to-do list and it helped to at least have our tasks laid out so we can get working on them. We made some progress on Sunday when we bought a travel system. We had decided on this particular travel system a couple months ago but didn't buy it then because, well, we didn't need it! But lately it's been disappearing from Target's shelves and I'm wondering if they are discontinuing that particular color or something and bringing in a different model. I was getting worried on Saturday because one of the Cedar Rapids Targets didn't have any for sale, but on Sunday I went to the other CR Target and they had two. Whew. So now we have the travel system we want, and I ordered an extra car seat base for Steve's car Sunday night, so we should be good. Now we just have to put together the stroller and get the car seat installed in my car! And get the car seat checked by the fire department, of course.

6. That's all I know. Sorry, no photos. Things have been pretty uneventful here lately. I'll try to do a bump photo later this week.

Baby bump - 32 weeks

2011-01-26T13:45:00.002-06:00

This is how I currently look:

This is how I currently feel:

(source)

Yes, the "beached whale" stage of pregnancy is in full swing. I am well aware that it's going to get even worse as the next eight weeks progress. But I can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. Ever since 30 weeks rolled around it seems like we're starting to sprint toward the finish line. And waiting for the baby to arrive is definitely adding some excitement and pizazz to a winter season normally filled solely with cold and darkness. But until that baby girl of mine is in my arms, I will just have to deal with stuff like having a hard time getting out of bed and not being able to turn my cart around in a Target aisle because there's not enough room for me, the cart, and my belly (true story, it happened yesterday). It will be worth it!

Childbirth education class continues; we had our third class last night. We talked about pain medication. One of the other moms asked the instructor (who is a labor and delivery nurse with 35 years' worth of experience) what percentage of moms she sees getting an epidural. The instructor said...wait for it...95%! I couldn't believe it. I thought a lot more women forged through labor without one. Knowing that statistic definitely makes me feel like less of a weenie if I do decide to get an epidural (the plan right now is to play it by ear).

I don't have much to finish up with nursery-wise. I ordered a curtain and a shade this week. I'll definitely post photos once they're here and up. I ordered a cordless cellular shade for the window. The thought of dangling cords in the nursery is too terrifying for this mama. The windows in our house, for whatever strange reason, are not a standard size, so everything we order has to be made-to-order (i.e. expensive). Thank goodness for JC Penney coupons!

I go to the doctor tomorrow for my 32 week checkup. Except for the whole beached whale thing, I have been feeling really great. My only calamity (if you can call it that) is that I've been getting heartburn fairly frequently. Nothing major, just enough for me to make sure to keep a bottle of Tums by my nightstand in case I wake up in the night feeling uncomfortable and need to pop a couple.

Those are all the pregnancy-related tidbits I've got for now!

Recipe: Homemade granola bars

2011-01-20T20:09:00.004-06:00

Hey everyone! Guess what today was? National Granola Bar Day! I had no idea there was such a thing as National Granola Bar Day until this morning. The funny thing was, I had been toying with the idea of making homemade granola bars today. Once I found out it was granola bar day, I figured I had to make them, and I thought I'd share my recipe with you.

Making your own granola bars might sound like a royal pain, but seriously, it's not. If you can handle making Rice Krispie treats, you can handle making granola bars. (Fun fact: I have actually never made Rice Krispie treats. But from what I can tell it doesn't look very difficult.)

The recipe I use is something I created based on a granola bar recipe from Mother Earth News. If you click on the link, you can see the recipe in its original form. I did some altering to cater to my tastes. The great thing about making your own granola bars is that you can throw in whatever you want - chocolate chips, raisins, dried fruit, the list goes on.

Here is how I make my granola bars:

1. First, I preheat my oven to 300 degrees. While the oven is preheating, I take out my large metal mixing bowl and mix together the following:

2 1/2 cups rolled oats (I use quick oats because that's what I always have on hand)

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1/2 cup wheat germ

Once the oven has preheated, I dump this mixture into a metal 9x13 baking pan and toast the ingredients for 20 minutes, stirring them once or twice.

2. While the dry ingredients are toasting, I simmer the follow ingredients in a small saucepan on the stove:

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup honey

1 cup peanut butter

Once the dry ingredients have finished baking, I remove the saucepan from the burner and stir in 2 teaspoons vanilla.

3. After taking the dry ingredients out of the oven, I dump them back into my big metal mixing bowl. Then I pour in the peanut butter mixture and stir to coat. I take the same 9x13 pan I used to toast the dry ingredients, grease it with shortening or cooking spray, and then dump the contents of the bowl into the pan. I take my mixing spoon and make sure everything is fairly level. The pan goes back into the oven for another 20 minutes at 300 degrees.

4. Immediately after I remove the pan from the oven, I take a spatula and cut the granola into bars. Today I cut the granola into 12 bars, but it just depends on how big or small you want your bars to be. Then I cover the pan and put it in the refrigerator for about an hour or so to make sure everything hardens. After about an hour, I remove the cut bars from the pan and store them in a Ziploc bag.

See? Not that hard at all. And if you don't like lots of seeds, the Mother Earth News article has lots of great ideas for different granola bar variations. I think these are way tastier than any store-bought granola bars I've ever had!

Here is what the finished product looks like:

And a couple close-ups so you can see all the yummy oats and seeds:

One more note: Today I went through and tagged all my recipe posts with the aptly named label of "recipe." So now you can more easily access my other recipe posts, since I'm such a prolific cook and all (kidding).

Linking this post to Weekend Bloggy Reading at Serenity Now!

2010: My year in books

2011-01-14T10:04:00.000-06:00

I really fell off the book-reading wagon in 2010. I guess that's what the process of moving, owning a new puppy, and forgoing books in favor of baby and pregnancy magazines (and reading portions of many a pregnancy book) will do. After reading 67 books in 2009, I only managed to read 25 in 2010. Still probably impressive by some people's standards, but I wish I had read more, since we literally own hundreds of books and I know this year will not get any easier in terms of finding time to read books that aren't made of heavy cardboard.

Here is what I read in 2010:

1. We Have All Gone Away - by Curtis Harnack (188 pages)

2. Dave Barry's Homes and Other Black Holes - by Dave Barry (184 pages)

3. My Life in France - by Julia Child (414 pages)

4. Main Street - by Sinclair Lewis (517 pages)

5. A Gate at the Stairs - by Lorrie Moore (322 pages)

6. Baker Towers - by Jennifer Haigh (334 pages)

7. Shoe Addicts Anonymous - by Beth Harbison (327 pages)

8. On Mystic Lake - by Kristin Hannah (404 pages)

9. On Target: How the World's Hottest Retailer Hit a Bull's-Eye - by Laura Rowley (188 pages)

10. How to Be Lost - by Amanda Eyre Ward (290 pages)

11. It's Not the End of the World - by Judy Blume (174 pages)

12. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - by Mark Twain (282 pages)

13. The Bridges of Madison County - by Robert James Waller (171 pages)

14. Love Walked In - by Marisa de los Santos (307 pages)

15. Just as Long as We're Together - by Judy Blume (296 pages)

16. The Debutante Divorcée - by Plum Sykes (248 pages)

17. The Summer Before - by Ann M. Martin (215 pages)

18. After All - by Mary Tyler Moore* (317 pages)

19. Six Months to Live - by Lurlene McDaniel* (136 pages)

20. Lost & Found - by Jacqueline Sheehan (278 pages)

21. The Wednesday Sisters - by Meg Waite Clayton (284 pages)

22. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - by Tony Hsieh (244 pages)

23. The Condition - by Jennifer Haigh (390 pages)

24. I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood - by Dave Barry (254 pages)

25. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal - by Ben Mezrich (255 pages)

* = reread

Because metrics are fun:

Total number of books: 25

Total number of pages: 7,019

Mean pages: 281

Median pages: 282

Shortest book read: Six Months to Live by Lurlene McDaniel - 136 pages

Longest book read: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis - 517 pages

Nonfiction books read: 8

Fiction books read: 17

Juvenile/young adult books read: 5

Adult books read: 15

Favorite books I read in 2010 (non-rereads only):

1. My Life in France by Julia Child

2. Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh

3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

4. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

Least favorite/most disappointing books I read in 2010:
1. How to be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward
2. Lost and Found by Jacqueline Sheehan

I think I don't have very many least favorite or most disappointing books because I did a better job of quitting reading books I really disliked instead of miserably plowing through them like I did for a lot of books in 2009!

Here's to 2011 and the beginning of reading to my little one, who I hope will grow up loving books just as much as her mom and dad do!

The state of the Turleys

2011-01-12T10:06:00.000-06:00

1. Last Wednesday, Steve left for Las Vegas. He was at the Consumer Electronics Show for work and didn't get home until very late Sunday evening (actually, it ended up being very early Monday morning due to his plane needing de-icing in Denver). This meant Larkin and I were on our own for five very long days. Wednesday and Thursday went well, but she was being a giant pill on Friday. You know how you can go on vacation with people, people you really truly love and enjoy hanging out with, but by the time the last day of vacation rolls around you pretty much hate them and never want to see them again? I think that's what happened with Larkin and me. She was sick of me, and as much as I love my doggie, the feeling was mutual. Steve's parents came over on Saturday for dinner and to play with Larkin and that gave both her and me a much-needed reprieve.

2. Steve started to come down with something in Vegas and we are pretty sure it was the flu. He thought it was just the dry air getting to him, but by the time Sunday rolled around he had a pretty horrible fever, along with exhaustion, a sore throat, and an aching body. (How fun to be stuck on airplanes and in airports when you are sick.) He never, EVER misses work due to illness but he stayed home on Monday and Tuesday, so that gives you an idea of how crummy he's been feeling. He is back at work today, but I have a feeling he won't be staying there all day.

3. I am happy to report that I currently do NOT have the flu, and I am really hoping Steve's icky germs stay the heck away from me, because I'm pretty sure flu + pregnancy = disaster.

4. On Monday evening Larkin went back to the vet for a checkup, and she was deemed healed of her ear problems! The vet didn't see any icky gunk in her ears so this means her special diet has been working. She will be on a vegetarian diet the rest of her life, but if it means she won't have her ear and mouth issues, we are happy to accommodate.

5. Childbirth education classes started last night. I had to attend last night's session by myself since we figured it wouldn't be a good idea for Germy McFlu to pass around his sickness to all the other moms and dads to be. Attending the class was just another way to help me realize and comprehend that the birth of our baby is imminent and very real. I'm still pretty nervous about giving birth but I think going to these classes and learning what to do (and, just as importantly, what NOT to do) will go a long way in helping to reduce my jitters.

6. I go back to the doctor already tomorrow. I am 30 weeks along as of today. I think the more frequent appointments are really going to help the rest of the pregnancy go by quickly.

That's all I know for now!

Baby Girl's nursery

2011-01-06T10:26:00.002-06:00

Blog buddy Kim at My Domestic Bliss posted photos of her son's nursery the other day, and that prompted me to get my butt in gear and post some photos of our baby girl's nursery for you to see. We've been working on the nursery since a couple weeks before Christmas and I've been adding and tweaking ever since then. The photos I have were taken over the past several weeks. There are still a few things I eventually want to add sometime in the next eleven weeks (the big thing being curtains) but this is pretty much how things will look when we bring our daughter home from the hospital!

We bought the furniture from JC Penney. This is the third time we have made a major furniture purchase from Penney's and we've yet to be disappointed. The crib is a convertible crib, so it can turn into a toddler bed with rails, a daybed, and eventually a full-sized "big girl bed." It cost more than a regular crib would have, but it will be used for years and years. Same with the dresser and changer...we went for solid wood and dove-tailing so that our girl can use these pieces for a long time.

I bought the bedding at Toys R Us; it is the "Enchanted" set by Just Born. I scoured the Internet for bedding and this was one of only two sets I liked in our price range. Steve hated my other choice, so picking this set ended up being a pretty easy decision! Now that I look back, I think my other choice would have been too loud and "themey" so I'm glad we went with this style.

The little rocking chair sitting in front of the highboy belonged to my Grandpa O when he was a boy. (When I was really little, I called my Grandpa and Grandma Ostrem "Grandma O" and "Grandpa O." I did the same with my Grandma and Grandpa Wiebel but "Grandma W" and "Grandpa W" never stuck. I still call my grandma "Grandma O" to this day and it sounds weird to refer to her as "Grandma Ostrem.") Since my parents are living in a tiny apartment right now with most of their belongings in storage, some of their more valuable possessions are being stored at my house until they move into a bigger locale. I decided to display the rocker in the nursery in the meantime because I thought it fit well.

I had been looking for a yellow lab "mini Larkin" for awhile. It seems like most yellow lab stuffed animals look nothing like labs, but this one does a pretty good job of recreating the features that Steve and I love most about Larkin. We ended up naming this doggie Biscuit because Uncle John bought his niece a couple Biscuit books for Christmas and this dog looks a lot like the illustrations of Biscuit in the books. Biscuit has since been relegated to a different area of the nursery, which I will show you in a minute. (Told you I've been tweaking.) I blogged about the moccasins a couple months ago; they were a gift from Steve's parents. They are too cute to store in a drawer until the baby can wear them, so I have them sitting atop the highboy.

I bought the artwork above the crib from Red Letter Words. It is called "Hannah's Prayer" and the words were spoken by Hannah in 1st Samuel. Fitting words for any nursery, but particularly fitting for us since my name is Hannah!

Like I said, I already rearranged the top of the highboy. I purchased a picture frame on clearance at Pottery Barn last February. Since we were in the process of getting ready to move from our old house, the frame got stored away and I just recently unearthed it from my decorating stash. Knowing how heinous it was to let a perfectly good PB frame be hidden away in a closet, I decided to use it in the nursery. One of my favorite songs ever is "Unconditional" by Willy Porter. I love all the lyrics to that song, but a couple of the lines have always called out to me, even before I got pregnant. I decided to frame the lyrics using my standard vellum paper/cardstock scrapbook paper/tiny brads method. Since I already had the frame and all the other materials, this project was pretty much free and only took me about 30 minutes to complete.

Steve bought me the Angel of Mine Willow Tree for Christmas, so that's now on top of the dresser along with the frame and the moccasins.

To the right of the crib, I placed a basket I already had and filled it with some more heirlooms. The pink quilt was made by my great-grandma when my mom was born. She was instructed to pass it on if she ever had a daughter. My mom always had it displayed in our house, but gave it to me after I got pregnant. Since I am having a girl it works out really well to have it displayed in the nursery. The blue quilt was made by my Grandma O and was my baby blanket. The bird rattle and bunny were Christmas presents from my parents, and Biscuit has since been moved from the top of the dresser to the basket.

My parents gave us/the baby the glider and ottoman for Christmas. I am happy to report that I put it together all by myself while Steve was at work, and it hasn't collapsed yet! The blanket on the glider was part of the crib bedding set I bought.

I would have had these displayed in the previous photos if not for the fact that I loathe ironing and put off that task until just a couple days ago. My mom gave me some of her dresses that she wore when she was a baby. I selected three of them, ironed them, and hung them from knobs on the dressers. I think that I eventually want to buy hooks and hang them from the wall so that we'll be able to easily open the dresser drawers, but for now this is where they are. The hangers are also from when my mom was a baby.

One last photo to give you an idea of how much of a clotheshorse I am. I haven't bought any new clothes for me in awhile (shopping for maternity clothes is just not as fun as buying normal clothing) and have been focusing on building the baby's wardrobe instead. I took this photo a few weeks ago so there are actually quite a few more clothes in the closet now. I do want to point out that these range from size newborn to a few pieces that are 12-18 months, so this spans over a year of clothes-wearing! I'm not a total freak, I promise!

Like I said, there a few more things I want to add to the nursery before it is totally done, so I'm sure I'll be blogging about those additions in the weeks to come. Decorating the nursery has been a lot of fun, even if my office and other rooms of the house have suffered neglect because of it. Anything for my little girl!

Baby bump - 28 weeks

2010-12-30T14:27:00.000-06:00

I am very happy to report that I passed my glucose screening this morning! Eating leftover roast beef for breakfast paid off. Baby Girl's heartbeat was 148 (yay!), my blood pressure was 100/66 (yay!), and I gained a healthy amount of weight this month (ugh!). My iron count is low so I have to start taking an iron tablet every day. I have always had low iron so this did not come as a complete shock to me. Steve said maybe this means we should eat more steak - okay by me!

Now that I'm in my third trimester I will start going to the doctor every two weeks. Is it really possible that I am this far along in my pregnancy already? The day I found I was pregnant seems like ages ago, but on the other hand the time has just flown by. We start childbirth education classes on January 11th. As Michael Scott on The Office would say, I am in the terminal stages of my pregnancy!

Larkin's Christmas photo remix

2010-12-23T09:49:00.000-06:00

The reason why it looks like Larkin is giving me the ol' stinkeye is because the hat fell down above her right eye, causing it to close partially. But I assure you, she was not very happy with me. Well, I take that back - she was plenty happy with me at first, when she thought the hat was a new chew toy. Then I forced it on her head and she immediately swatted it off with her paw. This happened a few times (I was belly laughing the whole time because she was actually being quite funny) until I was sufficiently able to bribe her with a treat and got her to hold still long enough to snap a few quick photos.

Anyway, Merry Christmas...um, sorta...from Larkin!

Last minute gift idea! Mulling spices

2010-12-22T21:47:00.001-06:00

Are you scrambling for a last minute homemade Christmas gift? I got the idea for making mulling spices from a recent issue of Southern Living and made a bunch this week for Steve's coworkers. They turned out really well and the nice thing about them is that the supplies are ones you might already have in your house or else they are very easy to procure. So let's see how it's done!

For the spice bags, you will need cheesecloth, kitchen string or multipurpose string, wedges of orange rind, 3" cinnamon sticks, black peppercorns, whole allspice, and whole cloves. The cheesecloth should be cut into squares like so (Southern Living said to make 5"x5" squares but I thought that was a teeny bit on the small side so I made my squares a little larger):

Since I was making these for Steve's coworkers, he was coerced into helping me. (Actually, he volunteered to help me. Isn't he the best? This is why I keep him around.) He was in charge of peeling the oranges. He didn't want to be in the picture but his knee sneaked in. I told him not to worry; the oranges didn't make his knee look fat or anything.

Here are the fruits (haha!) of his labor.

The orange rind needed to be in smaller pieces than that, so I just used my kitchen scissors to cut each wedge into several pieces so that each section was about this size:

Next, it was time to assemble the spice bags. Each bag contains three pieces of orange rind, two cinnamon sticks, eight black peppercorns, six whole allspice, and six whole cloves.

Then I gathered up the corners of the cheesecloth and tied the bag tightly with a piece of string.

I wanted to give four spice bags to each recipient, so this project got to be a little labor intensive, but it wasn't difficult by any means. And once you get into a groove it goes by pretty quickly.

By this point my kitchen smelled a-ma-zing.

Next, it was time to assemble gift bags for each recipient. I found these super awesome treat bags at Target last year after Christmas. They are the size of a paper lunch sack but heavy like a large grocery sack. I didn't even look this year to see if Target sold them this season because I had stocked up last year, but I think I'm going to have to go see if they have any after Christmas.

I put four spice bags into each paper bag, along with instructions for how to use the bags. I just used the instructions that Southern Living had in their magazine. Suggested uses include making cider, maple syrup, home fragrance, and salad dressing. I got all fancy and printed the instructions on vellum paper and then attached them to a piece of cardstock using small brads.

I found these great gift tags at Michaels (in the same aisle as the stamps/stamp pads), and a "Merry Christmas" stamp in their $1 stamp section. Each tag got stamped with brown ink, and I just wrote "From The Turleys" on the inside of each gift tag.

I folded down the tops of each treat bag, punched two holes into the top of the bag and the corner of the gift tag, and tied everything together with some jute.

Way cute, huh?

My last step was to ponder what to do with all these peeled oranges.

I'm adding this project to Hookin' Up with House of Hepworths!

"Merry Christmas" or "Bah Humbug?"

2010-12-22T07:45:00.000-06:00

I'll let you decide what Larkin is saying.

Recipe: Allergy-friendly dog biscuits

2010-12-20T08:34:00.001-06:00

On Saturday, I made dog biscuits for my sweet doggie who has some sort of yet-to-be-pinpointed food allergy. Larkin feverishly wagged her tail in approval, and Steve and I liked them, too. Yes, we ate her dog biscuits. No, we are not crazy. There is nothing in them that I wouldn't normally eat myself. You could make them for your Christmas dessert table and no one would know they are dog food. They taste like eating hot oatmeal with cinnamon sugar mixed in.

I thought I'd share the recipe for anyone else interested in spoiling their dog or who just wants a simple, allergy-friendly cookie recipe. The nice thing about these cookies is that most of the ingredients are ones you would normally have on hand. The only ingredient most people might not have is oat flour. I actually had some in my cupboard because I bought it one time on a whim. Then I never found a good recipe that called for oat flour. So I was pretty excited when I saw that this dog biscuit recipe contained oat flour. Eastern Iowa people, I found oat flour at Stringtown Grocery near Kalona. But I'm sure you could buy it in the health food or bulk food section of many major supermarkets.

Allergy-friendly dog biscuits (recipe courtesy of Larkin's vet)

1 cup canola oil

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 1/2 cups oat flour or rice flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

3 cups old fashioned oats

Mix together oil, brown sugar, white sugar, and applesauce in a large mixing bowl. Add flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and oats; stir to combine. Drop by rounded tablespoonful (I used my cookie scoop) onto baking sheets and bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Here is a photo to show you what they look like.

We've only been giving Larkin one a day since they do contain a lot of sugar. Plus, they are called "treats" for a reason. Like I said, she really loved them. She is a total Daddy's girl so it was nice that I was able to find a way to win some attention and affection from her. ☺

Turley Times has been featured!

2010-12-16T15:30:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note to say that I was asked to be a guest blogger over at one of my favorite blogs, Beautiful Nest, today. I shared an easy yet adorable Christmas ornament craft that I discovered last year. While you are over there learning from my wisdom (haha!), stick around and check out all the projects the Beautiful Nest sisters have done. I am constantly bookmarking their projects so I can try them someday because everything they make is so beautiful!

My favorite Christmas songs

2010-12-16T09:10:00.001-06:00

I really love listening to Christmas music. I'm one of those nuts who hopes the local "official holiday music station" starts in on their Christmas playlist shortly after Halloween. I thought I would share some of my favorite Christmas songs with you all, and in the spirit of giving, I'll also provide YouTube videos to each song. Happy listening!

"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" - by Amy Grant

Really, her entire A Christmas Album belongs on my list. Not only is it my favorite Christmas album of all time, it is one of my favorite albums, period. We had this cassette tape in my house back in the 80s so I've been listening to it for a long time. The thing I love about this album (besides the beautiful arrangements and Amy Grant herself, of whom I've been a fan for years and years) is that it came out the same year as I was born, so like me, it is no longer a spring chicken; however, it never sounds outdated. Good on whoever produced that album because it totally could have gone down the dark and scary path of crappy 80s music, but instead, it sounds like it could have been made in 2010.

"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" has been one of my favorite Christmas hymns since childhood, and I love how Amy starts out by singing this song a cappella.

"Oh Holy Night" - by Mariah Carey

I was pretty much obsessed with Mariah Carey in grades 5 through 7. Guys, I had, like, all her cassette tapes and everything. It's no surprise I was pretty excited when her Christmas album was released when I was in 6th grade and I received it as a present that year. I loved listening to that album then, and even though I'm older now and my musical palette has become much more refined (Hanson is no longer a part of my regular music rotation, for example), I still love it.

"Oh Holy Night" has been another favorite Christmas hymn for years and years, and I've always been drawn to Mariah's soulful rendition. Now, if you asked my dad his opinion on her take on this song, he would respond with a grumpy, bah humbug-y, "WHY can't she just SING the freakin' NOTES as they're WRITTEN!" A fan of her vocal flucuations he is not. But if you are looking for a non-traditional take on this classic hymn, I don't think anyone does it better than MC.

"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" - by John Denver and the Muppets

As a child of the 80s, I of course love the Muppets, and though it took a long time, I am now a John Denver fan as well. (Publicly admitting this should do more than enough to appease my dad and make up for the fact that I like Mariah Carey.) The kid in me still dissolves into giggles during this segment of dialogue: "Piggy pudding?" "No, figgy pudding. It's made with figs." "Oh, sorry." "...And bacon." "What?"

"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" - by Brenda Lee

I have a story about the movie Home Alone. Like most kids my age at the time, I was so, SO desperate to see this movie when it was released. I mean, come on, an 8-year-old outsmarting two doofus robbers with a plethora of ideas from his proverbial bag of tricks? Sign me up. However, since I grew up in the sticks and trips to Cedar Rapids just to watch a movie were out of the question, I had to wait until it came to one of the "local" movie theatres (which was still about 30 minutes away). Which didn't happen until springtime. Around Easter, to be exact. When the nearest theatre finally started showing Home Alone, my mom and I went...only to find out that night's show had already been sold out. Disappointed does not even begin to describe how I felt. We did end up getting to go back to see it on the night before Easter. My mom was none too happy about that since we always went to the sunrise service at church and the next morning was going to be an early one, but I was very happy and grateful and appreciative that I was finally able to enjoy the hilarity of Home Alone during the holiday season (albeit the wrong holiday season).

Anyway, Home Alone is still my favorite Christmas movie and I make a point to watch it every year. Hearing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" always brings about images of cardboard Michael Jordan on an electric train and Kevin wildly flailing his limbs about in an attempt to fake out Harry and Marv.

"While You Were Sleeping" - by Casting Crowns

I can't say I listen to a lot of Christian music, so I'm not sure how I discovered this song, but it is amazing. Definitely pay attention to the lyrics, the tearjerker third verse in particular.

"I Need a Silent Night" - by Amy Grant

Amy Grant has put out about a billion Christmas albums, enough to warrant a greatest hits Christmas albums that was released a couple years ago. Said greatest hits album contained a few new songs, including this one. It's a good reminder to not get caught up in all the non-important aspects of Christmas and remember and celebrate the holiday for what it actually means.

And, bonus for me - I'm sure in a few months when I'm awake in the middle of the night with a crying baby, I will discover a new-found appreciation for this song as I will be desperately needing a "Silent Night!"

"Merry Christmas Baby" - by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

It just doesn't get much better than Bruce and the E Street Band, does it? This has to be the most fun Christmas song out there. I listen to it even when it's not Christmastime just because it's a great rockin' song.

The best version of this song is not the version you normally hear on the radio. It is the version I've included below, when The Boss, the E Street Band, and Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7 performed it on an episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien several years ago, complete with Conan playing guitar! I remember watching this performance in college and loving it. I mean, what's better than seeing Bruce and Santa Claus give Conan a George Foreman grill for Christmas?

"Born on Christmas Day" - by Brad Paisley

I think I've mentioned before that I have a ginormous crush on Brad Paisley. I say this as a happily married woman: I would like to check him for ticks. Brad of course gets bonus points for releasing an album of Christmas music. His version of "Away in a Manger" is awesome, but the best track is "Born on Christmas Day." He wrote this song as a kid and performed it on some sort of television show when he was 13. The song starts out with young Brad singing the song, and then it transitions to adult Brad singing the rest. A very cool and unique recording.

Baby bump - 25 weeks

2010-12-13T10:58:00.000-06:00

Last night was Steve's work's Christmas party. A snowstorm and blizzard the day and evening before threatened our plans, but the wind died down enough by Sunday afternoon that we felt comfortable driving into Cedar Rapids to attend. I was really looking forward to going, not only because Steve works with a really awesome group of people, but also because I realize that social opportunities like last night's will be few and far between once the baby arrives.

So far throughout my pregnancy, I've gotten by with wearing jeans, nice sweaters, and sensible shoes and being sufficiently dressed for home, church, wherever. But last night I wore a dress, pantyhose, and heels for the first time in many, many months. I am happy to say that I survived! However, the sizing chart on the maternity pantyhose I bought failed me miserably. Sometimes having legs as long as skyscrapers is the pits. Fortunately, we were sitting almost the entire time so I wasn't too terribly uncomfortable.

Since I was all dressed up last night I had Steve take a photo. Notice I was still wearing my comfy moccasins...if only wearing those babies everywhere was socially acceptable!

We both had a lot of fun at the party. The food was great, the conversation was great, being tucked into the cozy wine room at Biaggi's far away from the negative wind chill temperatures was great. I wish that we could have stayed longer but we had Larkin crated since the weather was not fit for her to be outside in her kennel. Next year we will make sure to get a sitter for the baby and the dog!

Mud bud

2010-12-10T11:28:00.001-06:00

I asked Larkin how she got mud on her face, but she refused to tell me. Hmph.

In other Larkin news, we are pretty sure she is going to become a vegetarian. As I've written about before, over the summer she developed a rash on her belly so the vet wanted her to go on a special diet. So we fed her (extremely expensive) venison and sweet potato kibble for a few months and the rash did not clear up. So we switched her food back to a more pocketbook-friendly variety. Once it started to get colder out her rash cleared up, so we are pretty sure the rash was caused by an environment allergy, not a food allergy.

However, in the past month or so Larkin's left ear has had a bunch of crud in it (it looks like coffee grounds and smells yucky), and she has been scratching at her mouth a lot. We figured the ear crud was just due to the unfortunate fate of a floppy-eared dog, but we didn't know what was up with her mouth scratching. We took her to the vet last night (who is new; he bought the practice from our old vet), who told us that both the ear crud and mouth scratching are probably due to a food allergy. Oh. So we got sent home with a host of medication to clear up both ear and mouth, and we also got a sample of some vegetarian dog food, which Larkin gobbled right up (not exactly saying much; she also eats dirt). The vet also gave us a sheet of paper with allergy-friendly foods. We never feed her table scraps or human food any kind, so this new diet is actually going to end up spoiling her more than hindering her. Last night Steve gave her applesauce which she loved. This morning we made her a baked potato (seriously, she is such a high-maintenance doggie!), and there was some trepidation at first, but she ate all of it and seemed to like that too. The "safe food" list we got from the vet also came with a recipe for homemade dog treats, and Steve has been all but begging me to make some for Larkin. Never mind the fact that I have Christmas cookie baking to do! No, instead, this weekend I will be baking treats for my million-dollar dog! ☺

Hopefully the new diet will help Larkin's ear and mouth, because I think both have been making her pretty miserable. I have to laugh at the thought of my dog becoming a vegetarian, though; if you were born on a farm in Iowa, you are usually NOT a vegetarian! And Steve and I are about as meat-n-potatoes as they come so we are finding some humor in the fact that our dog is probably going to be banishing meat from her diet.

One more thing - Larkin got weighed at the vet last night and she weighs 63 pounds! And she still has some growing yet to do! To put this in perspective, when we brought her home on May 2nd she weighed 10 pounds. That's a lot of growing in seven months!

Baby bump - 24 weeks

2010-12-02T19:38:00.000-06:00

I've been wearing my Christmas shirt lately because I'm afraid it won't fit by the time December 25th rolls around! 100% cotton maternity shirts are not such a great idea - I need something with stretch, man!

Anyway, since I wore my Christmas shirt today I made Steve take some photos of me in front of the tree. It had been awhile since I'd taken any bump photos.

I had my 24-week appointment this morning. Baby Girl and I are doing just fine. When I go back in four weeks I get to do the infamous glucose test. When I was waiting in the doctor's office the day I went to get my blood drawn to see if I was pregnant, someone else was in the waiting area drinking the drink for the glucose screen. The look on her face when she took her first drink was priceless. I remembered thinking how that would (hopefully) be me soon. Now it's almost my turn!

After my appointment I went to Target to add a couple things to our baby registry. I realized that I am starting to get "the look" from strangers when I'm in public - people cocking their heads, looking at my belly, and smiling. I'm going to cherish that look because I have a feeling it's going to be a lot better than "the look" I will get when my child is inevitably throwing a temper tantrum in public.

Santa and me

2010-12-02T08:56:00.000-06:00

Now that the holiday season is here, I have been thinking about popular Christmas traditions such as the arrival of Santa Claus, which reminded me of the day I found out there is no Santa Claus.

I was in 3rd grade, and it was a Sunday afternoon. It was sometime in either the fall or spring - nowhere near Christmas. I have no idea what prompted it, but for whatever reason my parents decided to come out with the truth. Needless to say, my naive 8-year-old self did not take it well. I started to cry, and began asking a host of "But what about how the cookies are always gone after he comes?" type questions.

Then the conversation really went sour.

Hannah [blubbering]: "I suppose next you're going to tell me that the Easter bunny doesn't exist!"

[moment of silence]

My parents: [hysterical laughter]

Hannah: [starts bawling]

Maternity clothing: A primer

2010-12-01T10:35:00.003-06:00

Last night Steve told me that yesterday, one of his coworkers asked him where I buy most of my maternity clothes. Knowing he likely had know clue where all my new duds have been coming from, I said, "Did you answer correctly?" He replied, "I said, 'I have no idea,' so yes!" I had been planning to share some of the wisdom I've gained about maternity clothing for the benefit of others who might be reading this and would find the information useful, and if by chance Steve's coworker reads this, her question will be answered, thus making this blog post doubly useful!

Here is what I have learned about maternity clothing so far:

1. Gap has the best maternity jeans, hands down. Okay, let me rephrase that: Gap has the best maternity jeans, hands down, in my price range. I don't own any Rock & Republic maternity jeans (or any regular Rock & Republic jeans, for that matter). I'm sure they are fabulous. But I ain't buyin' any of those. Baby needs nursery furniture. But anyway, my Gap maternity jeans are my favorites. I'm sure the fact that I have been a Gap snob for 10+ years contributes to my opinion on this matter, but seriously, they fit better than any other brands I own or have tried on. Every time I'm wearing non-Gap jeans, I wish I was wearing my Gap jeans. Old Navy is definitely a cheaper option, but for the most part, their jeans just don't make the grade. I have a couple pairs of under-the-belly jeans from Old Navy that are okay, but the pairs of "full panel" jeans I have are intolerable. For one thing, they are NOT a full panel. Maybe it's because I'm tall and my torso is longer than normal, but the top of the panel only hits me mid-belly and it is just so uncomfortable. Also, their panels have an elastic band at the top of the panel, which can dig into your skin and will cause you to adjust your jeans all day long. The panel on Gap's full panel jeans are all stretch without a dumb elastic band on the top, and they cover my entire belly and stay put throughout the day.

So, to sum up point #1: Gap is the best. Buy Gap maternity jeans. Yes, they are more expensive than other brands. Yes, you are only going to wear them for a few months. But I am a firm believer that clothing can be a good investment. If you buy quality pieces that aren't going to fall apart instantly and fit you well, it is worth the cost. Plus, you are pregnant and are already feeling weird and uncomfortable. Why bother with poorly fitting clothing that is going to make you feel even more uncomfortable? Another reason why I love Gap is because I am tall and have to buy long lengths. Gap's long sizes are actually long enough for me, as opposed to other brands, whose "long" pants look like they would be the perfect length for my 5-year-old niece.

2. Old Navy's maternity clothes have been a bit of a disappointment for me. I touched on this above with their craptastic "full panel" jeans. But some of the other maternity clothes I've bought from Old Navy have also been failures. I wear tank tops under pretty much everything, because I like to layer, and also because I am always cold so having an extra layer of clothing can never hurt. So when I became pregnant, I immediately started stocking up on Old Navy maternity tanks. I figured, I love their regular tanks, so I would also love their maternity tanks, right? WRONG. Their tanks are 100% cotton and clearly not preshrunk, so they all shrunk to the size of my pre-preg tanks. So far, they have been working out only marginally, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be wearing them much as I get closer to 40 weeks. They are just for layering, so it's not like anybody would see my belly hanging out the bottom of a tank top, but the idea of tugging down my shirt all day does not appeal to me. I also bought a cotton hoodie from Old Navy that I may as well wear long after the baby gets here because it shrunk too. Boo.

I am normally a pretty big Old Navy proponent (Steve should be their spokesperson; everything he wears is from Old Navy), so I don't want to move on without saying something positive about their stuff. I have a couple of very nice maternity sweaters from Old Navy that fit wonderfully and are of great quality. I never dry my sweaters in the dryer so I think that has helped them avoid the clothing shrink-ray my other Old Navy clothes fell victim to. But I felt I had to put it out there that if you are thinking about buying 100% cotton maternity clothes from Old Navy, buyer beware.

3. Fortunately, I found a solution to the Old Navy tank top shrinky-dink problem. Target sells amazing layering tees by Liz Lange that fit great and didn't shrink in the wash. I bought a whole slew of them in early fall when all their summer stuff was being clearanced out for just a couple bucks apiece. I wear these shirts daily. They are very thin and the white shirts are see-through so they aren't the best to wear on their own, but since they are so thin they are perfect for layering under sweaters and other shirts. I just love 'em!

3. I don't know why it embarrasses me to admit this, but a large percentage of my maternity tops were purchased at Sears. Whenever I talk about how I bought something at Sears, I always preface it with, "I don't normally shop at Sears, but..." I think I just need to admit that yes, I am a Sears shopper. Some of their stuff is not good at all, but they do have good sales and some nice brands to choose from. Anyway, Sears has a pretty decent selection of maternity clothing. Sometime back in late August or early September, I was in Sears and happened upon an enormous selection of winter maternity clothes on clearance. Why they had merchandise suitable for the upcoming season on clearance, I do not know, but I was able to snag a ton of sweaters and long-sleeved shirts for a really good price. I went back last week and they had even more sweaters on clearance. So if you have steered clear of Sears for years (hmm, pretty much that entire phrase rhymed), give them another chance if you are looking for nice but well-priced maternity clothes.

4. The jury is still out on whether or not the "buy your regular pre-pregnancy size" adage is true. The maternity clothes I have bought in my pre-preg size are fitting so far, but I'm only 24 weeks along and still have a lot of growing to do. I'm starting to wonder if a few of my shirts are really going to stick with me through week 40. I would say that if you are trying on maternity clothes early on in your pregnancy and are debating between two sizes, definitely size up. It can't hurt!

5. Some women, for whatever reason, want to stay in their pre-pregnancy clothing for as long as possible. I was totally not one of those people. Once my jeans started getting tight and my stomach was hanging over my waistband, I moved on to maternity pants. No "rubber band trick" for me. I hear it works great for some gals, but I tried it and was not convinced. For one, you have an unsightly uneven bump caused by not buttoning your pants. Plus, why deny yourself those few extra weeks of wearing elastic waistband pants? Once you start wearing maternity pants you will wonder why you tried to smush into your regular pants for so long.

One reason women give for holding off on buying maternity clothing is that they don't want to spend the money, and yes, maternity clothing is typically more expensive that regular clothing. But I guess my answer to that is: if you have to buy maternity clothes at some point, why not buy them sooner and then you can at least wear them longer and get your money's worth? It is difficult when you have to transition between seasons and don't want to buy a bunch of clothes for one season you won't get to wear for the long haul. This happened to me - my belly started to bulge out pretty early while it was still summertime but I knew I wouldn't be able to wear summer maternity clothes for very long. What I ended up doing was buying just a few pairs of maternity shorts and capris and wearing them with my bigger, blouse-ier pre-pregnancy shirts. Then, when the shirts stopped fitting, I bought a few simple maternity t-shirts to wear that I knew I could use for layering in the fall and winter. But like I said, some women can and want to wear their "normal" clothes for as long as possible, and I say as long as that works for you, good for you! I have been missing my pre-preg clothes this winter and wished they still fit me.

6. I'm a pretty modest and private person, so I'm only going to touch on this next topic briefly. Maternity underwear is NOT good. The person who invented it clearly hates women and wants them to suffer. I've found it is much more comfortable to wear normal underwear but just size up. And, to quote Forrest Gump, "that's all I'm gonna say about that."

7. eBay is a pregnant woman's friend. There are tons of people trying to unload their maternity clothing in order to make a buck. Sometimes on eBay you have to watch out for people selling clothes so ratty they are best suited for the burn pile, but the nice thing about secondhand maternity clothing is that since it is worn on such a limited basis, you can find some really nice stuff in excellent condition. My best eBay maternity find was my winter coat. I had been doing some searching on the Gap and Motherhood websites and the cost of a winter coat I knew I was only going to wear for a few months was just too high. I was fortunate enough to find one of the coats I saw on Motherhood's website being sold secondhand in like new condition on eBay for super cheap. What I would have paid $80 for at Motherhood only cost me $14.50 on eBay! I was so excited. You may strike out on eBay, but it absolutely cannot hurt to check there first before dropping serious coin on something full price at a normal retail outlet.

8. I'm not going to say that maternity pajamas are a waste of money because every woman grows differently and wears different kinds of pajamas, but so far, I am glad I didn't buy any maternity pjs. My regular elastic-waist pants are doing a good enough job of stretching out to accommodate my expanding belly. I normally wear flannel pants and a t-shirt to bed, and most of my t-shirts have been fitting. And I can always raid Steve's drawer if I need to wear a larger shirt (or bigger pants, for that matter). I would say that when you find out you are pregnant, don't run out and buy tons of maternity pajamas because your regular pjs could work out just fine.

Well, I hope I was able to impart some tidbits of wisdom to at least one person out there. I guess if I had to sum up maternity clothes shopping into one rule of thumb, I would say that comfort should be your #1 concern. I like being fashionable just as much as the next person, but when I started carrying around a 20-pound basketball of fat and fetus in my belly, I realized it would be much more beneficial to forgo trying, and subsequently failing, to look like pregnant Heidi Klum (because, let's face it, she looked better pregnant than most of us look normally) and be comfortable instead. Amen.

My new necklace

2010-11-29T21:15:00.000-06:00

This was one of the first gender-specific items I bought after we found out we are having a girl. It arrived today. I loves it.

From thevintagepearl.com if you need one in your life, too!

Disney Live

2010-11-23T15:28:00.002-06:00

Last Friday night I took my 5-year-old niece, 4-year-old nephew, and sister-in-law to Mickey's Rockin' Roadshow, a Disney Live production that was in town at the US Cellular Center. I won the tickets via a Twitter contest sponsored by one of the local television stations. The first person to correctly respond to a Disney trivia question won the tickets. The question was, "In the movie "Toy Story", Buzz Lightyear meets the toy aliens at what restaurant?" The answer, of course, is Pizza Planet. My swift typing skills and knowledge of useless trivia (which proved to be not-so-useless in this situation) got me the tickets. Steve graciously gave up the chance to go so my sister-in-law could go with her daughter, and my other sister-in-law's oldest came along too.

Fortunately, my niece and nephew were in the exact perfect demographic for this particular Disney show. If they had been a couple years older I think they would have found it to be a little boring. (I'm sure the 8-year-old boy sitting next to me thought it was a snoozefest.) But they had a blast, and I did too. It was fun watching my niece wave to Cinderella as she made her entrance onstage, seeing my nephew watch the first half of the show with eyes wide open and mouth agape, and laughing with my sister-in-law as she imitated Sheldon, the hyperactive emcee of the show. My niece and nephew were also really excited about the snow cones in sippy cups they got at intermission, which were fairly reasonably priced by Disney merchandising standards, yet cost a small fortune. But they loved their sippy cups, they had a great time, and that's what matters, right?

I took some photos at the show. If you have kiddos they might have fun looking at these!

Free holiday cards? Oh yes!

2010-11-22T17:28:00.000-06:00

Many of you may have already seen this promotion on other blogs, but in case you haven’t I wanted to share. Did you know that Shutterfly is offering 50 free holiday cards to bloggers? I know, right? Pretty awesome! Even if you do not blog, most of the cards I have looked at are currently on sale so you can still get a good deal on some beautiful cards.

I like including a photo in my Christmas cards every year. The past couple years I ordered photo Christmas cards from a different photo website and they were…just okay. This year I wanted to go for something a little more artistic and a little less like all the other prefab cards out there that all look the same. Shutterfly’s products definitely fit the bill.

Here are a few of my favorites:

I love the whimsical font on this card.

This card is very chic!

I was drawn to the nativity silhouette on this one.

I am a sucker for anything tree/bird related!

Simple but so cute!

I loved the nativity silhouette on this one, too.

I thought the black/white/red was striking on this one.

There are so many more cards to choose from on Shutterfly's card and stationery page, if you are looking for more card ideas! And if you aren't in the market for holiday cards right now, there are so many other occasions for which you could create photo cards. I'm already thinking about birth announcements for next spring! Click here to see other card designs from Shutterfly.

If you are a blogger who is interested in participating in the free card promotion through Shutterfly, click here to get started!

Puppy pajamas and my favorite Etsy shop

2010-11-22T10:09:00.000-06:00

Steve is getting really cranky because I haven't yet blogged about the present we bought for the baby last weekend. So in order to keep the troops happy, here I go.

Last weekend we went to Des Moines and of course went to Bass Pro Shops. (This was the only way I was able to finagle a stop at two different malls later in the day.) Steve wanted to get something outdoorsy for the baby so this is what we found - camo pajamas with flowers and puppies on them!

It looks like there are little Larkins all over these jammies!

The pajamas came with a matching fuzzy pink bathrobe. Our girl will be snug as a bug in a rug next winter.

While I'm on the subject of adorable dog-adorned merchandise, I wanted to fill you in on my favorite Etsy shop, hands (or should I say paws?) down. No one is paying me to say this; I just really love these products and had to share. The shop is called The Lab and it sells handmade Labrador Retriever-centric products, all of which happen to be totally cute and well-made. With the arrival of Larkin into our lives this year, I couldn't help but load up on some merch once I discovered this shop.

I bought this onesie right after I found out I was pregnant. I am totally going to have the baby wear this for newborn photos. The front features a felt yellow lab applique.

But the best part of this onesie is...wait for it...

...a lab applique on the butt! How cute is that?!

Then, when I found out we were having a girl, I bought this bib, which I know will eventually be destroyed by spit-up, slobber, and a variety of pureed vegetables, but will be totally adorable nonetheless.

It's very subtle, but the bone-shaped velcro closure totally makes the bib.

In addition to making the cutest baby attire you've ever seen, The Lab also sells a variety of other Labish products. I bought this Christmas ornament, which I was really excited to hang on the tree yesterday. The seller includes a little metal tag on the collar, on which you can write your doggie's name.

If you love dogs but your favorite pup is of a different breed, The Lab also sells bone-shaped ornaments with custom lettering, so your dog's name can be proudly displayed on your Christmas tree.

I just can't say enough good things about this Etsy shop. Everything I've bought has been shipped extremely quickly and it is all so carefully and professionally made. Perfect for yourself or for a gift!

My blog has definitely been heavy on baby and Larkin stuff lately, but I promise I do have some other topics to blog about in the upcoming days, include a DIY project I (sort of) completed! It is majorly awesome, I promise.

Steve's two and a half girls

2010-11-17T14:41:00.001-06:00

Look at how great Larkin is at posing for photos!

Okay, now that I got that lie out of the way, I will divulge the truth. I decided to see how well Larkin would do with sitting and posing for the camera with its timer on. I want to do a Christmas card photo and I was trying to find out if I could get away with setting the timer and snapping a quick photo of Steve, Larkin, and me, or if I would have to bring in reinforcements (aka someone to take our picture). I really thought that it would be easier to do it ourselves since Larkin tends to get a little crazy around people other than Steve and me, but after today's experiment I'm changing my mind. Girlfriend would not sit still. She isn't in the big part of the house very much so she wanted to sniff. And take the treats I was bribing her with before I told her "okay." And bring her toys in from the sunroom. And lick the camera lens. And lick me. And do pretty much everything except what I wanted her to do, which was to sit still and look toward the general vicinity of the camera. The photo above is the one good one of the bunch of otherwise horrible photos.

It was a frustrating experience, but when I uploaded the photos onto my computer, I had to laugh. And then remind myself that even though she is so smart and obedient, she is also just a puppy and still does puppyish things. But I think the look on my face in this photo says it all. I was throwing my hands in my lap in disgust and saying, "Oh, Larkin!"

Not all of the bad photos were Larkin's fault. This one would have been really good if not for the sun shining in through the window.

But do you see her left front paw dangling in the air? She was plotting her escape. ☺

Bargain shopping

2010-11-10T17:36:00.004-06:00

You guys, I am so sick right now! Steve was sick all week last week, and yesterday morning I woke up with the same cold/sore throat ickiness he had. I had a horrendous night's sleep last night but I spent the whole day resting in bed and I am feeling a little better now. The thing that stinks about being sick while pregnant is that you can't take any of the really effective medicine. If I wasn't pregnant I would totally be rocking the DayQuil/NyQuil, but I've been having to stick to Robitussin DM, which hasn't done squat for me.

Well, enough of me complaining about being sick. I mentioned last week that I had been doing some bargain hunting for baby clothes. I wanted to share some of my favorite finds. Most of the stuff I've found has been at our local consignment store chain, Stuff Etc. Each item for sale has a date on it that indicates when it was placed on the sale floor. After 60 days, the item is 50% off. After 90 days, it is 80% off. Suffice to say, you can find some real deals if you shop the clearance racks.

So here we go...Oshkosh, like new condition, 49 cents.

Children's Place (came with matching bloomers), like new, $3.19.

Old Navy, new with tags, a "splurge" at $3.99.

Oshkosh, like new, 25 cents!

Old Navy, like new, $1.50.

I got these onesies at a garage sale. They look like they were never washed, let alone worn, and they were a quarter apiece!

Baby Gap, new with tags, $1.20. I think the baby will wear this next year on the 4th of July!

Baby Gap, new with tags, 60 cents.

Carters, like new, 60 cents.

My favorite part is the back...

Ruffles! Yay!

Carters, like new, 25 cents.

LL Bean, like new, $3.00. It's size 12-18 months so she won't be able to wear it until forever, but it was so cute I couldn't help myself. How adorable will this look with tights and little boots?!

Those are my favorite finds so far. It's so much fun to find something in such excellent (or even new) condition for so cheap. And I think it makes Daddy happy, too!

Baby's first moccasins

2010-11-08T07:48:00.000-06:00

Getting your first pair of Minnesota moccasins is sort of a rite of passage in the Turley family, and our baby girl already has hers thanks to a surprise gift from Grandma Turley on Saturday. Aren't they the cutest?!

They look so little, but I have a feeling they won't fit her until next fall or winter - just in time for the chilly weather!

Thanks again, Grandma Turley!

Thursday

2010-11-06T07:00:00.003-05:00

I promised more of a baby update yesterday and I didn't deliver, so I'm hoping that being wide awake and blogging during the 6:00 hour on a Saturday morning makes up for it. Yawn. Okay, maybe I'm not wide awake...

Thursday's ultrasound was, in a word, amazing. It's still a little hard to fathom that there is an actual person hanging out inside of my body, but seeing the baby on the screen made it much more realistic. The ultrasound tech started showing us different parts of the baby's body, starting with the head, then moving down to the heart, stomach, spine, and bladder. Then the ultrasound tech said, "Were you interested in trying to find out the sex?" and Steve and I answered with a resounding "YES!" Luckily the baby was moving around a lot so we got several good looks at the area and were told that "it" is definitely a "she!" I'm so glad I don't have an it-baby anymore and can use gender-specific pronouns to describe her! Her stats: Heartbeat was 133, weight was 12 ounces. I still have my March 23rd due date and the doctor said I am having a "textbook pregnancy." Those are words I like to hear!

We got several photos printed off for us, and the tech also gave us a CD with a few more pictures and even a short little video so we can watch her heart beating again. So. Cool. Some of the photos we were given were 3D images...it's really amazing how clearly you can see the baby in those photos compared to the normal fuzzy ultrasound images. Here is a little peek! As you can see, we've got a thumb-sucker!

Steve took Thursday off from work, so after we were done at the doctor's office, we had the rest of the day to hang out and run errands. One of the first stops we made after the ultrasound was Dick's Sporting Goods, where we bought the baby her first fishing pole and tackle box. Steve said that we need to start her early. ☺

After I found out I was pregnant I had been going to some garage sales to look for some baby clothes (since I figured there would be a lot more garage sales happening in the summer and fall as opposed to, say, December in Iowa). I was really really picky and only bought stuff that was in perfect condition AND really cheap since I knew one way or the other, I wouldn't be able to use everything I bought. I also scoured the sale racks at Stuff and found some amazing deals...I'm talking brand new clothes with the original price tags still on them for under a dollar. The pile of girl clothes I had accumulated was more than double my boy pile, so I'm glad I will get to use most of the stuff I found. Maybe next week I will blog about some of the stuff I found and motivate you to do some bargain shopping too! It really is amazing what you can find if you look at the clearance racks!

Today we have a family gathering at Steve's grandparents' house, and then I think I am going to run over to Toys R Us to see if they have a certain style of crib bedding I saw online. I'm glad the waiting is over and I can do more shopping now. ☺

It's a girl!

2010-11-04T22:00:00.000-05:00

Just a very quick note to say that we are having a girl! More tomorrow!

Talented

2010-11-03T18:43:00.001-05:00

Larkin is now catching small treats in her mouth at an impressive rate of accuracy. My dog is officially more talented than I am. The video would be better if I did not have to perform the tasks of videographer and treat-thrower simultaneously. Larkin is so skilled, she could probably videotape herself throwing her own treat and catching it in her mouth!

Baby bump - 20 weeks

2010-11-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

I thought this shirt was ginormous when I bought it over the summer. It's not so huge now! And I still have a lot of growing to do!

Well, tomorrow is the big day! Tomorrow morning I have my ultrasound and will hopefully have some big news to report! Steve took the day off of work and we are planning to do a little pink or blue shopping after we're done at the doctor's office.

I'm also looking forward to seeing what my little guy or gal looks like, and to know that (hopefully) everything is well with the baby. Yesterday I saw that the singer Lily Allen had a miscarriage and she was six months along. How devastating. I know that her misfortune has no effect on my pregnancy or the health of my child, but it was definitely a wakeup call to not take things for granted.

Hopefully I will be checking back in tomorrow with some boy or girl news!

Trying something new

2010-10-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

Larkin got to have a special treat tonight.

This was the first time we allowed her to hang out with us in a room in the house other than the sunroom. I didn't want her roaming about, so we were making her stay on the pretty red pillow we bought her. Steve is still trying to get her to stay without getting up and running around. A lot of "sit-down-stay" repetition and maybe a treat or two, and she just might get the hang of it. She is tired so I'm hoping she will just decide to lie down and take a nap in front of the fireplace...that's my idyllic vision of what I would like to have happen, anyway. ☺

Baby bump - 18 weeks 5 days

2010-10-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

Self-photography is not my forte.

ORB jack-o-lantern

2010-10-21T08:59:00.001-05:00

I stick mostly with fall decor, as opposed to Halloween decor, in my house, because of my hatred of Halloween, which I touched briefly upon last year. Children begging for candy and adults in trashy costumes just does not do it for me.

However, when I saw this tin jack-o-lantern candle holder for only $1 at Stuff a couple weeks ago, how could I resist?

You gotta love that toothy grin!

Since I bought it used, it had some scratches on it that I wanted to cover up. A good coat of ORB spray paint gave it a fresh look. Along with a tealight and some fake leaves, my new little treasure is now sitting atop my piano.

I am adding this post to Hookin' Up with House of Hepworths and Weekend Bloggy Reading at Serenity Now!