Salmon and Souvlaki

Any State Quarter Collectors out there?

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Laura

I need Arkansas (2003) to finish my collection. I’m not sure why I’ve never managed to find that one. Anyone have an extra one to send my way?

In exchange, I’d be happy to send you any of these below. And I actually just discovered that I have about two-thirds of another collection saved. You’d be well on your way to another collection if you want to buy my extra quarters!

This is what I have:

1999: CT, DE, GA

2000: all five (MD, SC, NH, VA, MA)

2001: KT, VT, NY, NC

2002: TN, OH, LA, MS

2003: IL

2004: all 5 (FL, TX, WI, IA, MI)

2005: OR, WV, MN

2006: NV, SD

2007: All 5 (MT, UT, WY, ID, WA)

2008: OK, AK, HI

2009: Guam

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Predicting

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Laura

There are many things on the Internet that claim to allow you to predict if you’re going to have a boy or a girl. One of them is the Chinese birth calendar/chart. I’ve found two sets of conflicting instructions on how to interpret this chart. One is age of mother at the time of conception. The other is age of the mother at the time of baby’s birth.

If we go by the first option, then we’re having a girl.

If we go by the second option, then if the baby is born before October 9th, we’re having a girl and if the baby is born after October 9th, we’re having a boy. (This strikes me as the fatal flaw of this particular way of interpreting the chart. If I have my birthday before Baby B is born, will he/she miraculously decide to change genders?)

We’ll see!

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Brave

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Laura

Tonight, we ate liver (free-range chicken liver that is) for dinner. I used this recipe and made homemade ketchup using this recipe. This was probably the first time in my adult life that I ate liver and the first time in my entire life that I voluntarily ate it.

Remarkably, we didn’t die. I mean, lots of sauteed onions and bacon? That helps! And I’m sure the baby is happy because I just gave him/her a big dose of iron. (That was basically the whole point of liver for dinner.) Nik was more than a little skeptical about the whole idea but even he says that dinner was edible.

And that ketchup? DELICIOUS. Much better than store-bought. I made it exactly to the recipe except that I substituted red-wine vinegar for cider vinegar (because we were out of cider vinegar). We may never go back to store-bought ketchup (because we actually haven’t bought it in a couple years anyway).

This blog post was NOT brought to you by the Ketchup Advisory Board.

(“Ketchup, for the good times.”)

Posted in baby, cooking | 9 Comments

Obligatory “She’s getting bigger” shot

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Laura

(at 35.5 weeks)

(And so is the baby. These days we have conversations about how we’re both feeling crowded and so really, we just have to make compromises. And no, stretching full-length isn’t allowed, Baby, no matter how much you want to do it.)

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All our bases covered

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Laura

The problem with not knowing if we’re going to have a boy or a girl is that I can’t do any gender-specific sewing. Rebel that I am, I decided to do a little bit anyway. We’ve been given many lovely blankets that I love but I thought it would be fun to have something right away which was made just for our baby, boy or girl.

So, if we have a boy:

or if we have a girl:

we’re all set!

(For the record, I am fully aware that there are many little girls who love dinosaurs, such as Meggan’s niece Molly but we’re going with broad stereotypes, just for fun.)

Posted in baby, sewing | 3 Comments

Cute and Little (no, the baby is not here yet)

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Laura

We made little zippered wallets from this tutorial for sewing club over the last couple Monday nights. Cute, easy, and fun!

Now I want to make a Tabitha bag to match my wallet.

(Recognize the fabrics, Leah?!)

Posted in sewing | 3 Comments

His and Hers

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Laura

Diapers bags are necessary when you have a baby (or so I’m told). So I decided to make two – one for each of us.

His and hers diaper bags, not to be confused for each other:

IKEA has fabulous fabrics that you can buy by the yard and many of them are home dec (i.e. heavier) weight fabric, perfect for projects like this. So we both have IKEA fabric bags. (And yes, the lining is the same on both bags.)

Here’s mine (made from this tutorial). It has lots of pockets, including a zippered one on the outside back, four Velcro pockets on the sides and front and 5 elasticized pockets on the inside.I had fun making this bag because it helped me realize how much I’ve learning about sewing (and how many sewing skills I’ve acquired) over the past couple years. I think I would have really struggled to make this a year ago but it was easy!

And here’s Nik’s bag, made from the pattern and directions in the book Handmade Beginnings. Nik’s is much less complicated than mine, with just one zippered pocket and some elastic loops on the inside. But he does have a matching changing pad!

We’re getting closer to being ready for Baby!

Posted in baby, sewing | 7 Comments

Baby Update

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Laura

I had a midwife appointment this morning and the baby is head down!

Hooray!

I know having a breech baby is really rare but I’ve read enough/known enough people with breech babies to be worried about it. So hooray for head down! I had my suspicions/hopes that this was the case because I’ve been feeling feet/hands on one side only for awhile now so it felt like the baby had settled into one more permanent place. It was nice to have that confirmed.

And in other news, I saw a new midwife today and she said that her instinct is that the baby is a girl. When she put her hands on my belly to check me, she said that she wanted to say, “Hello, little girl!” I’ve only had one dream about our baby this whole pregnancy and she was a girl in that dream too (with lots of dark hair) (and a blown-out diaper, but that’s another story). So we’ll see if she’s right. It would be nice if our baby was a girl because we just ditched our entire list of boy names last week and are back to square one with boys.

Dare we live on the edge and just not choose a boy’s name? That would be living wild, for sure!

Posted in baby | 4 Comments