melted smoosh

dear sweetpea, it's the morning of new year's eve, and you and daddy are still sleeping upstairs while i savor my coffee and watch the snow flurry and dance around our backyard. you turned one month old this week, and i'm still in happy disbelief that you're actually here. after several false alarms, you were born the day before Thanksgiving and the moment we laid eyes on you, we fell in love!  you have already grown and changed so much since you were born, and part of me misses your tiny newborn self, but i love watching you thrive. you have always been very alert and attentive to your surroundings, and now you easily track toys and follow us with your eyes if we move out of your line of sight. last week, you started to smile on purpose, especially if we're talking to you. and when daddy sings to you, you make your lips into an "O" shape to mimic him, and coo along.  Kaiser loves you and tries to give you kisses. he'll be so excite

at long last, our Sweetpea has arrived! we are overjoyed to announce the birth of our daughter, Margaret Kathleen. our sweet Greta weighed 7 lbs, 5 ounces and was 20 inches long. she is happy, healthy, and has us both wrapped around her perfect little fingers :) she did keep us waiting, though, arriving ten days past her due date and after two days of early labor that felt like twenty! i had been having mild contractions starting the week before her due date, some of which would come 5-7 minutes apart for over an hour and had me thinking that we'd be seeing some real action soon. November 17 came and went without any fanfare. at my 41 week visit with the midwives, they did a nonstress test (which she passed with flying colors!) and we started to talk induction. at this point, Mom had already been in town for a few weeks and was scheduled to fly back to Seattle on November 30. i knew how devastated we both would be if she missed Sweetpea's birth, so i asked the midwife what ou

bump watch: sweetpea is officially head down, thank goodness! annnd apparently not quite ready to debut in the outside world yet. i'm trying to relax and just enjoy these last days of pregnancy, but we're getting pretty impatient to meet this little one!  sweet pea: is more active than ever the last few days, with lots of kicks and squirms. at my 39 week appointment, baby landed a sucker punch right against the doppler wand that made the midwife jump (and made me laugh!).  image credit from  W hat to Expect When You're Expecting best moment:  finding out for sure that sweetpea is vertex (aka head down), as that's a prerequisite for delivering at the midwife center as opposed to a hospital birth. it's been quite the mental challenge trying to make informed decisions about our birth preferences, while still holding everything loosely knowing that the birthing process is unpredictable, and in the end, our goal is to have a baby, ho

bump watch:  dropping on down! and hopefully head first. at my appointment last week, the midwife couldn't definitively feel the baby's head, and so i'll be getting an ultrasound this week to rule out breech position. i thought i had gotten pretty good at identifying baby's back and butt, but there has been so much wriggling around the last few days that i just end up more confused. plus, i think Sweetpea's getting sick of all the poking -- every time i feel what i think might be a head (or a knee! or a foot!), baby moves again!  sweet pea: just keeps on  cooking! brain development is still going strong, which will help baby with easier breastfeeding and motor skills. i'm so excited to actually meet this little one!  image credit from  W hat to Expect When You're Expecting best moment: Mom's here! she arrived on Saturday night, and it's such a relief to have her here. and the nursery is finally done! we're rea

bump watch: i don't think sweetpea has fully dropped yet, but the bump definitely looks a little lower this week. things are moving the right direction!  sweet pea:  is the size of ... A BABY!!! thanks to the hilarious Amy at pregnant chicken  for pointing out that at this stage of development, the produce comparisons are pretty useless. the midwives estimate that our particular baby weighs about 7 pounds now, and are predicting an 8 pound birth weight if baby comes near the due date (only 14 days to go!). i'll be curious to see if they're right, since birth weight predictions made by ultrasound are notoriously inaccurate, but they are basing their estimate off of direct palpation.  image credit from  W hat to Expect When You're Expecting best moment:  this is long overdue, but at the end of september, Sabrina and Becca threw the most adorable Sweet Pea-themed shower! every detail was planned out, from the cupcakes decorated wit

bump watch:  definitely growing by the day now! at my last few midwife appointments, i've been measuring anywhere between 1 to 1 1/2 weeks ahead, although there's no talk of changing the due date. baby's just chubbing up and that is a good thing!  sweet pea: is FULL TERM!!! the ideal time for delivery is still as close to 40 weeks as possible, but it's reassuring to know that baby is developed enough at this point to thrive in the outside world. sweetpea  weighs an estimated seven pounds (probably a little more if he's a he, according to the gurus at What to Expect), and will keep adding ounces on over the next few weeks. baby's lungs are producing more and more surfactant, which lowers surface tension on the alveoli to support normal respiration.  image credit from  W hat to Expect When You're Expecting best moment: last night, Nick and i and sweetpea enjoyed an organ concert at our church. any time the low pedals sounded,

bump watch: this week marked the first time i got the "swallowed a watermelon?" comment (at the mall, from a young man determined to sell me salt scrub for $129. his persistence did not pay off.) sweet pea is measuring right on track ... cantaloupe, watermelon, or whatever you want to call it. sweet pea:  in the past month, baby's development has mostly focused on brain growth and chubbing up. at my 32-week appointment, the midwife estimated that sweet pea weighed 4 1/2 pounds. now baby weighs around six pounds and has reached his or her birth length, between 19-21 inches long. sweetpea's circulatory and immune systems are fully developed. every week from here on out ensures that baby's lungs are mature and that the brain and nervous system are well-regulated. keep on cooking, baby! image credit from  W hat to Expect When You're Expecting best moment:  taking the stroller out for a walk with Kaiser. granted, i was pushing around

bump watch:  at this stage of pregnancy, it's not only bump-watch but also stretch-mark-watch. so far so good when it comes to the tummy, but i spied an unmistakable angry purple line on my thigh the other day ... oy. as for the bump itself, sometimes it takes on a life of its own with sweetpea's rolls and turns!  sweet pea: weighs 3.2 pounds and measures 18 inches long, the size of a very hefty head of lettuce. baby is busy, busy, busy -- hiccuping, swallowing amniotic fluid, sucking that little thumb, and twisting and turning every which way. now that baby's starting to run out of space, his or her movements are usually less dramatic, but occasionally a wallop of a kick makes my stomach look like something out of an alien movie.  image credit from  W hat to Expect When You're Expecting best moment: passing my three hour glucose tolerance test with flying colors! and meeting with our new pediatrician, a diminutive Russian woman

bump watch: i have to say i greatly enjoy watching people subtly try to figure out if i'm pregnant or just fat. you can just see the wheels turning. my favourite of all was a patient who just could not look away from my belly. i was about to jump in and put her silent question to rest when she said, "you look like you're glowing!" how clever was that? still, it's mostly the 90-year-old ladies who beam up at me and ask if i'm "expecting" without a qualm. it won't be so great when i'm rocking the postpartum belly, but for now, i'm loving it. sweet pea:  is a rocking, rolling, jiving dance maniac! part of my childbirth class weekly assignment is to do daily kick counts (you mark off a box corresponding to the time it took to feel 10 kicks -- normal is up to 2 hours). without fail, sweetpea gets those kicks in within 20 minutes -- sometimes 5 minutes if he or she really gets going! at 17 inches long and 2.9 pounds, there's not quite

   bump watch: helloooooooo, belly! it is large and in charge for sure. and my belly button is such a weird shape. it looks kind of like a big grin. no stretch marks yet (all that protein is good for something!). sweet pea: is as long as a cucumber at 15 inches from head to foot, and weighs 2 lbs 4 ounces. baby is continuing to kick and flip, and this week's new trick is hiccups! the first time i felt them, i thought it was a series of kicks at first, but quickly realized they were too regular and all in the same place to be anything but a hiccup. (does it make me a bad mother that my first thought was "go home, baby, you're drunk"?)  image credit from  What to Expect When You're Expecting best moment: definitely, without question, the surprise baby shower that my amazing friends and family threw on Saturday! it was so great to share that afternoon with family from out of town. and Sweetpea got some pretty sweet swag :) it was also w

can i just explain how dearly, dearly i love surprises? from my perfectly pulchritudinous purple 18th birthday party, to Nick visiting me in Ireland over Thanksgiving break of sophomore year, to Nick's amazing proposal, to my bachelorette party, it seems that almost every special occasion in my life has been preceded by several weeks of intense planning on the part of my friends, and somewhat embarrassing cluelessness on the part of yours truly. the past month has been no exception. and truthfully? i don't want to start snooping around or suspecting that when people invite me to estate sales   or take my picture next to a statue in the park, they have ulterior motives.  long-haired Nick with pajama-clad me, in Galway circa 2005! short-haired Nick with a very shocked me, in New Orleans circa 2009! Gordon Ramsay's gun show with a horrifyingly-pleased me, in Shadyside circa 2012! bottom line, there is just nothing quite like a well-planned surprise

if you haven't yet had the immense pleasure of watching a KitchenAid pasta extruder attachment in action, let me tell you -- it's surpassed only by the gustatory delight of eating the homemade pasta that results. in this case, bucatini tossed with a plethora of sauteed vegetables and coated in a homemade cream sauce. and what better to serve as a palate cleanser than homemade lemon basil sorbet? nothing. that's what.  bucatini with vegetables and cream sauce made up by our very own selves! 12 oz bucatini, cooked and drained 1/2  of a large  onion , chopped 8 oz sliced mushrooms 1 cup cooked corn, cut from cob 1 cup green beans, trimmed 1 bell pepper, sliced 3 shallots, minced 1 TBSP minced garlic 1/2 TBSP crushed red pepper flakes 3 TBSP butter 3 TBSP flour 2 cups milk, room temperature 1 cup nonfat Greek yogurt 1/2 TBSP salt 1/2 TBSP pepper Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a medium skillet. Saute onion, garlic and shallots for 5 minutes, or u