Oh Waiter! There's a fly in my soup!

This is what customers would say if I were the chef because I'd probably think it was one of the ingredients! Ok not really, I've gotten better at cooking since being married, but when you make cookies with confectioner's sugar instead of granulated sugar....you've got a problem! There are things I can make really well....grilled cheese sandwiches, pancakes, blueberry muffins are among the few. So a goal of mine while I'm now staying at home is to build my repertoire and skills of cooking. My poor husband has been such a trooper. Although I haven't burned too many dinners, the variety has been fairly limited. In hopes of getting some delicious, simple, and fairly healthy recipes from fellow friends, I wanted to share some of our favorites (selfish I know).

This particular one is from a cookbook called "Make it in Minutes" (my kind of recipes):

Pasta Fagioli

1 jar (26oz) Ragu chunky gardenstyle pasta sauce

1 can (19oz) white kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 box (10oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed

8 oz ditalini pasta (also called salad macaroni), cooked and drained. (reserve 2 cups of pasta water)

1. In 6 qt. saucepot, combine Pasta sauce, beans, spinach, pasta and reserved pasta water; heat through.

2. Season if desired, with salt, pepper and grated parmesan cheese.

Makes 4 servings

Variations: I've added chopped zuchini which will require a little more cooking to soften it, or you can pre-cook the zuchini and add it to the mix. I've also used white (navy) beans in place of the kidney beans just because I couldn't find the white "kidney" beans at the time. You also may want to use more pasta sauce if you'd like to have more of a "soup".

There it is! If you'd like to share a recipe I'll take it!! ;) Either leave it in the comment section or write it in your own blog for others to copy. Stay tuned for next week's recipe....my new

favorite salad!

*A note: the sugar mixup happened pre-marriage so Jon avoided having to taste those cookies!

Month 6

Today is the 6 month mark of when we welcomed our little girl into the world. I'd always hear so many people say, "it goes by fast, before you know it they'll be out of the house and on their own." I could never wrap my head around it but now I can. These 6 months have gone by sooo incredibly fast and while they have been the hardest 6 months as far as a "job" goes they have been the most exciting and fulfilling months ever.

Not much to report on these 6 months. I have certainly taken the time recently to hug and kiss her as much as possible and thank God for her. She truly is a blessing to us. She's started some other foods aside from rice cereal. We've tried Golden Delicious Apples, which she thinks are, in fact, delicious. We've also had butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and pears. Next on the list: bananas and peas. So far she likes them all! Fortunately, we were given a baby food maker that makes making baby food a snap! (could you follow that?) So I've been able to make all her baby food thus far mainly because it's fun but the freshness/nutrition is an added benefit. She's getting close to sitting up on her own and definitely does not like it when we leave the room. So in honor of her half birthday here is a photo timeline.

At the hospital

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

Hand-made flowers

Here is my latest sewing project step by step or at least close to it. I made flowers out of fabric to match Hadley's bedding as some decor for her room. I did my best to document with photos.

Step 1: Cut out a pattern.

Step 2: Fasten Pattern to washed and ironed fabric. I folded the fabric in half (right sides facing each other) so I could cut out the front and back of the flower at the same time. (and eat a cookie while you do it)

Step 3: Cut out pattern. I left about a 1/4" allowance around the edges for the seam.

Step 4: I marked one "petal" on both the pattern and both pieces of fabric to keep the edges matched up.

Step 5: Create a pattern for the center of the flower and fasten to fabric. (The center is only one layer.)

Step 6: Cut it out leaving approximately 1/4" seam allowance.

Step 7: Using fusable webbing and the center pattern cut out another circle, no need for a seam allowance.

Step 8: Place fusable webbing in the center of the right side of the flower. Place fabric center on top of fusable webbing. Using steam and an iron on low heat, iron the center, making it adhere to the flower. This helps keep the center in place when you sew it on. If there is a seam allowance on the center fabric, you'll fold it under as you iron. I found out this seam allowance was more of an issue than a necessity so on my next flower I didn't bother with it.

Step 9: Using a zig-zag stitch, sew around the edge of the center. I made the width of the stitch as wide as possible and the length very short to create a close stitch.

Step 10: Place fabric flower on batting and cut out. Another personal choice at this stage is whether to have a seam allowance on the batting, I didn't, hard to say if it would've helped. I used 3 layers of batting to create a puffy, 3-D look.

Step 11: Using the markings on the one petal of the fabric (from step 4), match the edges back up and then fasten to the batting. Make sure the batting edges match up also since the fabric petals will be a unique cut.

Step 11: Sew along the edges with a regular straight stitch. I left one "petal" unsewn so I could flip the batting and fabric right-side out. Use your hand to push on the edges from the inside. I found it easiest to have the fabric on the bottom and the batting on the top so the batting doesn't get caught on the feed dog. (No pictures of this step.)

Step 12: Using a needle and thread that closely matches the main fabric color, do a whip stitch to close up the open pedal.

To the right is the whip stitch, hardly noticeable.

Step 13: Staple to the wall and enjoy! ( I don't have them all stapled to the wall obviously but they're all done!)

This picture makes these flowers look awfully weird and uneven, while they're certainly far from perfect around the edges they don't look as bad in person.

I created the two smaller flowers to accompany the big flower following the same steps (odd numbers are more pleasing to the eye right?). I then used regular staples to hang it on the wall. They were easy to hide close to the seam and they don't leave huge holes in the wall! There were a lot of things I may do differently if I did this over again but overall it was a fairly easy project. And again, while the flowers are do not have the perfect rounded petals they do closely resemble the bedding which also adds a more "kid-like" flavor to it.

Month 5

Yay! All Done!

So month 5 has come and gone, it went so fast. The biggest thing this month was the weight issue, which was explained in like the last 3 posts so feel free to read those. We did a weight check this last Friday, mainly for my peace of mind. Hadley was spitting up so much I thought for sure she had lost weight but turns out she gained 4 oz! So she's up to 11lbs 13oz and we're doing weight checks every two weeks now until the 6 month check up.

Rice cereal is going well, we're doing that twice a day now. She still is using her tongue a little too much to push the food out but we manage to get 95% of the food down. We got some literature from the Ped. that kind of alluded to not giving anything but rice cereal until she's 6 months but I think I may try a veggie or two in about another week, it'll be close enough to 6 months! She's still a great sleeper, although I think she's getting to a point where she wants to stay up a little longer during the day which is totally fine with me as long as she isn't cranky!

She's getting better at sitting up although I think we're still a ways off from her sitting up on her own. She's a rollin' over fool, mainly just from back to front. She can roll from front to back but I don't think she sees any real importance in doing that right now so she just doesn't.

Jon and I are loving being parents, and we finally went out on a date this past week. We did the baby dedication at church this weekend, this is not a baptism for those who are unfamiliar with it. It's where we go up on stage and dedicate in front of the church, family, and friends that we are going to raise Hadley up with godly principals and pray for her. The church gives you an envelope with a picture of your family in it, a "first bible", a certificate, and a card. It was very nice.

Family photo shown in church for the baby dedication

Yet another update

Here's an update on Hadley for those who are interested.

We've been doing weekly weight checks, longer feeding times, rice cereal (we just recently moved to two times a day), and added a 5th feeding at 4am. All this combined is helping her gain a consistent 3 oz each week. That puts her on the 5th% curve for weight and is keeping her on the curve which makes the doctor happy. The doctor would rather she be gaining more weight but he's happy that she's at least being consistent and gaining better than she apparently was.

She's still sleeping a lot which seems to puzzle the doctor a little bit but I think she's just a sleeper. We were given the green light to go to weight checks every two weeks until her 6 month check up but she has just recently started spitting up a lot (which had decreased for a short amount of time). I didn't know if it had anything to do with starting rice cereal but when I mentioned it to the doctor he didn't seem too concerned. Although he said I could keep my weekly weight check for this week in case the spitting up got worse he really thought it shouldn't effect her weight and therefore not a problem.

So...she's up to 11lbs 9 oz, rolling over like crazy, laughing a lot and loving rice cereal. I'm not so freaked out about this anymore, because she's developing fine and content when awake. Not to mention...she's almost 5 months old....WOW!!

Update

Here's the scoop....

At the weight check today she had gained 4oz in the last 3 days which puts her at 11lb. I made the mistake of saying something like, "well ok, we'll just keep up feeding for longer periods" out loud and the nurse kinda freaked out and started asking me all the questions like "why would you need to do that?" and I was trying to explain things to her. When I mentioned that Hadley was sleeping 11 hours at night she again, freaked out like she shouldn't be sleeping that long, to which I immediately said, "If I wake her up, she'll be too tired to eat anyways, so I just let her sleep." I had been feeding her for about 30 minutes, and the doctor suggested supplementing with a bottle after nursing to see if she was still hungry. I was a little leery about doing that because I was afraid she'd get even more lazy and only take the bottle. So I decided to try to see if she'd eat for longer than 30 minutes. She kind of did but it was a bit of work, however she didn't want the bottle after eating for 45 minutes or more so I thought that was a better option. After seeing she gained weight with these longer feedings I figured we'd just keep it up, as crazy as it seems to feed her for close to an hour.

The doctor called later this afternoon and said he was glad to see she put on some weight, I was filled with relief. He then followed it with (this is a summary) "So we need to fit one more feeding in during the day since she's sleeping so much at night, which probably means feeding her every 3 hours during the day (we were doing every 5) because sometimes babies sleep so long because they don't get enough calories and they go into a calorie depravation mode and sleep." At these words my heart sank and I started having thoughts that I had deprived my baby of calories/nutrition for the last two months because I thought she was just a good sleeper. "We also need to have you come in for weekly weight checks for the next few weeks to stay on top of this and make sure she doesn't fall behind again." We do like our doctor but this certainly has been a struggle....she seems happy, developmentally on track, and she is growing, just not very much in the weight area so it's hard to see what the big deal is.

I think this week, until the next weight check, we're going to just stick with longer eating times and see what that does, if it doesn't work then I may have to pump and we'll just do strictly bottles....I'm not sure I'm ready to do formula since we've worked so hard at this breast feeding thing. Although it's hard to know what's best for Hadley, like should we just do bottles so she'll get more and we won't have to question how much she's getting? Aye, aye, aye (is that how you spell it??).

On the rice cereal front, we finally tried it tonight and she did ok. Her little tongue kept pushing it out so I think we'll take it slow until she gets her tongue working right to keep the food in. She seemed to like the taste, at least she didn't show any dislike to it. I'll put pictures up on facebook later.

Month 4

Enjoying Tummy Time

Our precious little girl has passed her 4 month mark this last weekend. We still think she's the cutest girl around. We often find ourselves talking about the little things she does, like the faces she makes and we like to go look at her sleeping away in her crib. She's getting longer and we thought she was growing just fine but the doctor didn't like her lean figure. At her check up she received her vaccines and we got to ask our long list of questions but the majority of the time was spent talking about her weight. At 2 months she weighed 10lbs 3oz and at 4 months she weighed 10lbs 12oz, gaining a total of 9oz. Not so good. The doctor even weighed her again for us and it came up the same. The doctor has seen this before in babies her age, but he seems to think that either I'm not making enough milk or she's not sucking very well (i.e. she's a lazy eater). Soooooo, back to getting weight checks. We have to go back this Friday to check it and if she hasn't gained any weight, we'll talk to the doctor again about what to do. Possible options from there are going to strictly bottle feeding (breastmilk or formula). The weird thing is she has been seeming completely satisfied after eating sooo......???? Until Friday, she's nursing and then we're offering her a little extra out of a bottle (more pumping for me!! woohoo! I'll do what I have to do).

I'm handling it a lot better this time around then when we had this problem in the first few weeks she was born. It's still easy to let thoughts creep in like 'I'm not doing enough' or that 'she's been deprived of proper nutrition for the last two months and can that effect her long term?' But I just pray about it when I get these negative thoughts and realize that most likely this is just an issue of her being kind of lazy. I certainly feel for those parents who have to deal with more serious issues and constant doctor's appointments.

In a more positive note, this has been a fun month. She's almost rolled completely over from back to front, she just gets her arm stuck under her. She still enjoys tummy time most days and will smile at most everybody. She'll laugh on rare occasions and then Jon and I work so hard to get her to do it again and she stares at us like we're from another planet. We are going to try rice cereal tonight, which I'm excited about. Hadley's also gotten really good at grabbing things and she's starting to stare at her hands when she grabs them. She's great at sucking her thumb when she wants it, which makes falling asleep much more peaceful and she does great sleeping in her crib. Finally, she looovvvveeess books. If you read a book to her she'll get really excited and talk up a storm while you read, I think she's trying to read with me but....she just stares at all the pictures, I'm glad she's liking it already, hopefully that will continue. I'll write an update about the weight issue and how the rice cereal goes!

Just waking up from a nap, but it looks like she's saying "uh oh..."

Taking a short nap on mom's lap.