Yummy Goodness

Recently, I have been having to urge to bake. And I have. I love baking, but the past few weeks, I've been wanting to bake something just about everyday. Not good on the budget or belly! I have refrained myself from doing it everyday, but I have baked something about once or twice a week. Still not good on the belly, but oh well! Craig loves what I make, but he's probably not loving the fact that I am making all these things! In the past three or so weeks, I have made snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies, a pumpkin pie (totally made from scratch, even used a real pumpkin!), cinnamon rolls, and I have all the ingredients saved and ready to go, to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies in the near future. That's a lot of stuff! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we have not been sharing. We didn't finish eating the pumpkin pie, because Craig didn't really like it, and I couldn't eat the whole thing myself. It was not sweet enough for him and I don't have a blender or food processor, so it was a little stringy. I thought it was really good. I'm very proud of myself because it's the first time I have ever made a pumpkin pie, and I did it from scratch. Crust and all. With no help from my mom.

On top that, I have been in the mood for reorganizing things and deep cleaning. But that's where it stops. After my usual chores around the house, I'm just too tired to do these things. But, I did do a craft! *gasp!* I am not crafty, and usually have no desire to do crafty things (hence the reason my house is not really decorated). I got tired of Ella's hair clips and bows just floating around the house and getting lost. So, I made a hair bow holder. It's very rough looking, but I think for me, it turned out pretty okay.

So that's what I've been up to recently. Ella is still as cute as ever! She turned 17 months old yesterday (only one more month until nursery!) and woke up saying two new words and calling herself 'Allah'. Her new words are 'morning' (as in Good Morning) and 'button'. She has a very large vocabulary. She can say 'nana' - banana, 'bapes'- grapes (her two favorite fruits), 'tink-oo' - thank you, 'welcome' - your welcome, 'here go'- here you go, and she calls Craig 'Daddy', and calls me 'mama', 'mommy', and 'mommo'. That was just a sampling. She says lots of other things, and mimics lots of words. She loves to talk, sing, and dance too. She is growing up so fast! Here she is kicking back and relaxing with her giraffe.

I just had to share this last picture. Ella made a TV friend yesterday. His name is William, and he was on The Price is Right. He caught her attention from the moment he was called out from the audience. When they announced his name, what does she say? "William!" About five times. When he made it up on stage, she could not take her eyes off of him! It could have been his very bright lime green shirt, though. I was trying to take a picture of her to send to Craig, but I could not get her attention so I could actually take a picture of her face! She acted as if I was not even there. It was so funny. She came back to life the second his turn was over.

Now I must go eat a cinnamon roll because I was writing about it!

Fragile

I swear, I must be fragile these days.

Yesterday I had a bit of a scare. My back and stomach was pretty achy and a little crampy. At first I thought it was just a reaction to the major stomach problems I had the night before. It was pretty bad. I thought I was going to die in pain. But then I remembered I had these stomach problems a few times when I was pregnant with Ella and had no side effects the next day.

I really started to worry when I realized that was most likely not the reason I was feeling this way. I couldn't stand up for very long without my back and stomach hurting, so I decided to rest and stay seated as much as I could. Unfortunately, Ella decided to act up a bit and continuously get into things (which is not common for her), and then I had to clean the kitchen because it was bugging me. So, it didn't go as planned.

As the day went on, I started to think that maybe it was braxton hicks and I was fine, but thought it was a little early for those. And I was having some pain, and I didn't remember if braxton hicks could be painful. Then I started thinking contractions. Not good. I'm only 22 weeks along. But then I ruled that out partially due to denial, but also that it didn't really feel like contractions.

The rest of the day, I took it easy as much as I could. I had a lesson to teach in the afternoon, but she didn't show up (which is very unusual without a call). We could have used the little extra cash, but it was a small blessing because I don't think I would have lasted through the lesson. Dinner was very hard to cook, but thankfully we had something in the freezer that was very quick to cook up. At this point, it was very hard to stand for more than 10 minutes at a time.

We had to go get dog and cat food, so even though we were both feeling pretty yucky (Craig got a flu shot the day before and had a reaction to it). While in the parking lot, I was rubbing my lower back and hit a spot that was extremely painful. It was very close to where the kidneys are. So then I immediately thought I had a kidney infection. But I wasn't showing any other symptoms. But who knows. The last and only time I had one, it had already turned into a pretty bad kidney infection before I even knew anything was wrong. Apparently, I don't feel UTI symptoms. Sorry, too much info.

Thankfully, by the time we left the store, I decided it wasn't a kidney infection. The pain was on my muscle. It wasn't until I was giving Ella her night time milk that I finally figured out what was wrong with me. As I was handing the cup of milk to her, I remembered that the day before while doing dishes, I was trying to unscrew the lid off of a sippy cup that had sat out too long. It was very hard to get off and I tried about five times before it finally came off. Then I remember thinking that I should be careful so I didn't hurt my stomach muscles. I got the lid off and didn't think anymore of it until last night.

So, my pain and cramping I had yesterday was from trying to get the lid off the sippy cup. I accidentally strained my muscles. I am better today, thankfully.

The moral of the story: if you are pregnant, and can't get the lid off of something, whether it be a jar or a sippy cup, do not try to continue to get it off. Wait until your husband comes home to get it off for you. Even if there's old milk inside and are wanting to add it to the load of dishes in the dishwasher.

Halloween and a Birthday!

This is a little late, but we've been pretty busy since Halloween.

We had a great Halloween this year. In the morning/early afternoon, we went to a birthday party for a nephew and had lots of fun with family and Ella had a blast playing with her cousins on her daddy's side. She's such a little social butterfly and it's so cute watching her play with other kids/babies. Total opposite of me, thank goodness!

That night, we went over to my sister's house and went trick-or-treating with them. We didn't collect any candy for Ella because we think she's still a little too young (next year, Ella), but we dressed her up and watched Matthew and Grace rake in the goods! We dressed Ella up as a bear this year. So cute! It's the same as last year, but we didn't get pictures last year, it still fit her this year, and money was very tight to get her a new costume. So it all worked out! We had lots of fun all day, and Ella was completely exhausted by the end of the night!

She did not enjoy getting dressed in her costume!

Yesterday was Craig's birthday. He is so old now! Just kidding! He turned 32, but I don't see him at that age. He seems to be more like 28 to me. And he says he feels 25, so that's all that counts. It doesn't matter how old he is. All that matters is that he's a wonderful person, husband, and father. He does so much for our family and makes so many sacrifices for us! Ella and I love him SO much! And our little boy will too, when he is born.