Pregnancy Must Haves...

My pregnancy started off with lots of morning sickness... and midday sickness... and night sickness. There was a period  of time when all I could do to keep from vomiting was shove food into my mouth nonstop. When I was in this period, I literally ate something in between every patient that I saw in clinic (these patients took anywhere from 15-30 minutes). I would bring a big bag full of various foods along with me to work every day). 


I also had lots of cravings.... not really any of those weird (pickles and ice cream) cravings but they were still odd. Like one day I craved Chili's... as in the restaurant. And not just one item on the menu, I wanted 3 different things. So, I drove out to the 'burbs and got myself some Chili's To Go. Another time I craved fried mushrooms, which was odd because it's not something I really eat... ever. Most of the cravings were things that I would normally eat and I usually craved the same thing for weeks at a time. It's those special cravings that I couldn't have done without. I decided to make a little list of my early pregnancy must haves (These are for the first half of my pregnancy... I'll have a different list later for the second half later). 

1. Skyline chili (with noodles and lots of cheese) - by the way, you can only get this in OHIO. Luckily I had some stocked up from a good friend of mine from Cincinnati and I happened to go to a wedding in Columbus right around the time that I ran out of my stash. We found a grocery store that had it and stocked up again. There was one week where I literally ate this for every lunch and dinner. 

2. Tums - Gotta love the heartburn. And my love of spicy food doesn't help with the heartburn. Sometimes the Tums help a little. 

3. Ginger chew candy - GREAT for nausea. I highly recommend it. The problem is that there were times when the nausea was so bad that it came back IMMEDIATELY when I finished a piece of the candy.

4. The book "Ma! There's Nothing to Do Here." This book is SO cute. A good friend of mine sent it to me early in pregnancy... it was a WONDERFUL. P and I read it to our little guy quite often. It's from the perspective of a baby still in his mom's belly. 

5. SI joint belt - I prescribe these for pregnant patients at work all the time so when I started having low back pain early in pregnancy, I figured I better try one out for myself. It's great! Now I can recommend them to patients from first hand experience!

6. Pillows (lots of them) - Sometimes sleeping with a big ol' belly just isn't that comfortable. It helps to prop body parts onto pills. 

7. Hard pretzels - another thing I ate all the time. Yum. 

8. "Belly Laughs" by Jenny McCarthy. A hilarious, straight up, honest book about pregnancy. She talks about all the things that pregnant women go through and she doesn't hold back.. constipation, hemorrhoids, gaining weight, cravings, gas, baby kicks. I laughed out loud many times. She covered it all! And, it's a quick read... highly recommend it!

9. Goldfish crackers - Loved these pre-pregnancy, loved them even more since I've been pregnant. Only problem is... I can eat an entire container in one sitting. 

10. Panera french onion soup- which by the way, they serve at any time. One morning, I was at the hospital working and around 9 am have the most intense craving for french onion soup. I ran across the street to Panera and they actually had the soup ready! Thank goodness. French onion soup for breakfast... yeah, that's normal. 

11. Panera lemonade - drank this every day for the first few months I was pregnant. It's good. 

12. Finally, and most importantly.... a good support system. P has been amazing! He's such a good sport and always willing to go out of his way to make sure I'm comfortable or get my food cravings. Wonderful husband and perfect daddy! 

And by the way... GO CARDS!!!! (I'm currently watching a very stressful baseball game!)

Eye opener

I gained 10 pounds in 4 weeks. 10 pounds. WHOA. Time to cut back a little. I guess the one plate for me, one plate for the little man excuse won't work anymore.

We had some friends over for dinner tonight and decided I should make something a little on the healthier side. I was struggling with what to make and P suggested my special salmon recipe. It was one of the first things I cooked for him when we started dating. You know what they say... the way to a guy's heart is through his stomach... well, he was hooked after the salmon.

So here is my special salmon recipe...

You'll need: 

Salmon steaks (2-4)

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

3 tbsp soy sauce

5 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp minced garlic

1-2 tsp honey

In a bowl, mix mustard, soy sauce, olive oil, garlic and honey. Split mixture in half.

Marinate salmon in ½ of mixture. Let mixture and salmon sit for at least 10-15 minutes. Cook in skillet on stove on med-high heat. If you buy a piece of salmon with the skin, place it skin side down and cover the pan. Cook until the salmon separates from the skin. If there's no skin, you can flip the salmon while cooking... covering it is optional this way. 

Using a separate small skillet, cook the second half of the mixture until it gets a little thicker. It smells amazing (it almost caramelizes). Make sure to stir often. Spoon remainder of mixture on top of the salmon before serving. 

Hope you love this as much as we do. I served it with couscous (Near East, roasted garlic and olive oil), asparagus with lemon squeezed on top, and the broccoli from my last post. 

A broccoli recipe and some pregnancy stuff

The whole baby-moving-thing really baffles me. I read in all the books that when you start feeling the baby move, it's really hard to know if that's what you're feeling or if it's something else (like gas, for instance). I kept thinking I would know for sure. It feels fluttery right? Or like bubbles? All the books also say that it's hard to describe the feeling. Well... the books were right. You have no idea at first. I kept thinking I felt something and I would stop what I was doing and wait to feel it again and then... I didn't feel anything. It's really confusing... until that one moment when all of a sudden, you know exactly what it feels like. And... it IS HARD TO DESCRIBE!! It's a little fluttery at times but I kinda think it feels like a little thud deep inside your belly. And now, EVERY time I am sitting down, I feel him move. It's kind of a weird feeling... it makes me want to get up and move around to get my mind off of it. Don't get me wrong, in a way I love it and it's amazing, but it really is weird! I have a wild man on my hands, folks. You know it's bad when the ultrasound tech calls him "uncooperative" because he's moving so much it's hard to get measurements. Or when the tech says "good thing you can't feel him yet, he'd be driving you crazy, he's moving so much." Haha... wild man! 

On another note, last night I made dinner. We've been so busy, it's been a long time since I've cooked a meal. I decided I should grill since these beautiful warm days are definitely numbered and I'll be kicking myself later for not spending more time outside when it's cold and snowy. So I made brats and corn on the cob. I had some broccoli that I wanted to use but didn't feel like steaming it again. I made it in the oven with some stuff thrown in (recipe adapted from Barefoot Contessa)... it was so good. 

You need broccoli, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic cloves (I used 4... I love garlic), a lemon, and fresh grated parmesan cheese. 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash the broccoli and dry it very very well. Cut into florets. Dry it again. Put it on a baking sheet covered with foil. Pour some olive oil, salt and pepper over it. I just eyeballed these. Move the foil around on the pan to toss the broccoli in the oil. Peel then slice the garlic cloves and put those on top as well. 

Stick it in the oven for about 20 minutes. The broccoli will get a little crispy with brown edges and the garlic gets brown as well. After taking it out of the oven, zest the lemon over it then cut the lemon and squeeze some lemon juice on top. Grate some parmesan cheese over it. Mix it and grate a little more cheese on it. 

Sorry I forgot to take a picture of the finished product but man... it was good. 

Nursery: Project #1

Where to start for a baby's room... Thank goodness for blogs. My mom sent me a link to a picture of a nursery and I continued to browse the website further... it was great. The website is http://projectnursery.com/. The amazing part of this website is under "Project Gallery" and it contains hundreds of nursery pics. A lot of the ideas I've found so far came from this website. For instance, there is an adorable monogram made from crayons. I plan to make this once we decide on a name... so watch for this post in the future.

I've seen a few other letter monograms made from crayons.... here's the other example.

I think I prefer the one without the labels.... but it's still TBD.

Like I said in the last post, I really want to incorporate a lot of color into the baby's room. Another website I found had melted crayon art... which is apparently very popular right now (big surprise, I've never seen it before... haha). Spearmint baby (http://www.spearmintbaby.com/) is where I found the first example of my project today.... the melted crayon art. There are tutorials all over the web, but here's what I did:

What you'll need:
Canvas (I used a 16x20 inch canvas)
Crayola crayons. I bought 2 of the 64 packs. There are certain crayons you won't use so you'll likely need more than one pack. I also read on another blog not to try to use the cheap crayons because they don't melt appropriately... stick with Crayola!
Hot glue gun
Hair dryer
About an hour

I started by going through all of the crayons and deciding which colors I didn't want to include... I decided not to add the browns, greys, black, peach, etc. This was purely a personal preference and I decided beforehand that I would do the colors of the rainbow for my canvas.  Here's what I had left over in the first box:

Then... because I'm a little crazy and I really wanted it to look good, I sampled all of the crayons I had to get them in the correct order... roughly I did ROY G BIV. After testing the crayons, I eliminated 2 more colors that I didn't think looked very bright.

The crayons didn't fill the 20 inch canvas side to side, so I ended up using 15 crayons from the second box. I decided to add more orange, yellow, green and a few extra blue. As you can see below, there seemed to be a lot of reds and violets compared to the other colors. There were a lot of blues as well... but I figured since this is for a boy's room, it would be good to have a lot of blues.

After adding the additional colors, here's the order I had: 

Next, I warmed up the hot glue gun and started gluing the crayons onto the canvas. The tip should face down and they should be as close together as you can get them. Decide ahead of time if you want a certain part of the label facing up... I went with the Crayola label up. Start gluing. It's been a LONG time since I've used a hot glue gun... the glue cools quickly, so get them on the canvas fast.

This is the canvas with all of the crayons glued on:

Next, find a place to melt the crayons. Warning: They do splatter off the canvas. I did this part outside so I didn't get wax all over the house. Line the ground with newspaper or paper bags and make sure to put them behind the canvas as well. The canvas should be tilted against the wall with the crayons at the top. I adjusted the tilt during the heating process but I'm not sure it really made much of a difference.

Here's a pic of my belly (mid project) for your entertainment (and yes... I'm HUGE):

So the camera flaked out a bit during this part of the process, but basically I did sections of heating with the dryer on high and hot. I occasionally turned it down to low blower when the wax was splattering too much or if I wanted to concentrate on a certain couple of crayons. I did the red and orange together... concentrating on this section until they started to melt (seemed to take 3-5 minutes for the first section, then more like 2-3 min per section after that). I then did yellow and green, followed by blue, then indigo and violet together. Here's a horrible picture (wrong camera setting) after round one:

I wanted more of the bottom of the canvas to be covered so I made a second pass over the colors. I basically heated them until the tip of the crayon was all melted. Some colors melt quicker than others.

After the second pass, you can see there was a lot more color:

There were some sections where chunks of wax accumulated so I heated those again as well (which will also help the wax to run all the way down the canvas):

I kept reheating until I was happy with the distribution of wax. Notice the splatter onto the paper on the wall:

Here are some closeups of the final product.

I love this canvas and think it is a great start to the baby's room. I hung the finished product in the hallway to give you a better idea what it will look like:

Let's try this again...

I've tried this whole blog thing before and since I haven't posted in months.... I guess we can say it failed. My last blog was going to be devoted to food, recipes and restaurant reviews, but I've now found something that I love even more than food... my baby boy. P and I found out we were expecting at the end of June. I'm now 20 weeks along and we found out about 2 weeks ago that we will be having A BOY!!! Pregnancy has been an interesting adventure to say the least and I'll try to talk a little bit about it on here for my friends who don't have kids yet. I also really wanted a place where I can start to come up with a plan for the little guys room... somewhere where I can organize my ideas and design the perfect nursery.

Our guest room aka P's mancave... soon to be nursery.... is already painted a pale blue. For ease, and since we're renting, we're planning to keep the color the same. More details on the room coming soon, but I don't plan on having a "theme". I just want the room to be bright with some classic boyish pieces. I'm working on the first piece of artwork for the room as well and will post it when it's finished.