Preparing for 2

We hit the last trimester today, in doing so, I am reflecting on how unprepared I felt when we brought Elizabeth home. Not physically or with tangible things, but with the "4th trimester".  Sleep deprivation, managing it all, feeding, clothing and cleaning myself, let alone another human being made for some tears, overwhelming and pure exhaustion. 

I thought it would never get easier, but here I am, relaxing over a hot cup of coffee, having given myself a pedi, finished 2 loads, put away groceries, ordered Christmas cards, researched photo stuff that I needed to find an alternate print lab, cleaned out the fridge, put up some Christmas decorations, cut the hair and strings off the underside of the vacuum spinner, eaten & showered (huge bonus!) and enjoyed a quiet moment as E sleeps. It did get easier - much to my own amazement. :)

So...with 2. I'm taking the survival approach. Whatever we need to do to survive. I hope my dear husband can live off crummy food, wrinkled (hopefully clean) clothes and a narcoleptic wife for a few months.  I really can't imagine having 2 kids to do everything twice though. I look around and see other people everywhere doing it (somehow).  I guess the lesson to print out for my wall and paste on every flat surface in my house is: "It does get easier...whether you believe it or not!"

Why I'm a bad blogger...

Around the 5 month mark, Elizabeth was playing while I was typing, likely blogging on the floor of our dining room. I pulled her onto my lap and she hurled onto the keyboard of the laptop.  I quickly threw her off my lap (ok, well not threw, but you can imagine) turned it upside down and blotted like there was no tomorrow. It seemed to salvage all of the keys, but I didn't dare turn it on or use it for fear of squishing regurgitated breastmilk further into some electrical board. 

Later that night, or the next day, I forget, we discovered that the "o" doesn't work.  We tried everything to no avail.  Dave developed his own shortcut by copying and pasting each time you need to type an "o"...I took it to Best Buy's Geek Squad and they offered the sweet estimate of $135 to send it out and then they would call to give me the price to fix it..."if they can". Nice, huh? So, since I make a habit of throwing $100 bills down the drain, we figured we'd save the dough and just keep doing the copy and paste for each "o". 

Thankfully, we have an iMac for photography work, but when I'm on it in the office, I feel like I'm slacking on post processing stuff, so I don't play on that computer, just this beat-up-freakizoid laptop that can't spell "Mom".

Excuses excuses. My New Years Resolution is to be better at marking the milestones and the daily life of my expanding family.

Lesson here: don't let your kid near your computer. Duh, Mom.

Baby Girl Update

Well, one of our biggest struggles recently was a nasty cold...she was pretty cheery through it all.  I finally caved after she wasn't able to breathe through either her nose and mouth enough to eat or drink.  I wasn't able to get any liquids into her, so I knew it was time.  Poor sweet child, she suffered really badly through this cold.  And it went on for 2 WEEKS!  She cleared up her nose on the 13th day, and we finished off the antibiotic for her bad ear infection that was starting to blister.  BAD MoM! I kept thinking she was teething or something!

I guess it pays to keep your Mommy intuition in check. :)

Mommy tip: don't stress about your kid feeling dependent on a pacifier - anytime they have a bad cold, you can help them kick the habit.  Logic here: they can't breathe through their nose, so they need to sleep using their mouths to breathe - thus, they can't breathe and suck on the pacifier.  They choose breathing. :)

Missing Food Club

I haven't been ofor girl's night dinner/food club since September...BUT...the holidays are coming and they grant loads of recipe daydreams...that keep me nicely preoccupied on early chilly mornings. 

And, since Elizabeth easily consumes half of my plate each night, leaving Dave to sympathetically offer me some of his dinner, I'm growing excited by the notion that I can teach/expose her to some awesome flavors at such a young age. For example, the other night she gnawed on roasted asparagus spears, popping equally roasted cherry tomatoes, packing gobs of pinenut couscous into her palms while trading off on pieces of lemon pepper pan-seared bassa, scallops and shrimp. Food snob already! 

I secretly realize that she will likely turn a page and stop wanting anything aside from bread, cheese, cookies and ice cream in another 6 months or so, but I'm holding out hope that she'll skip that phase!

Back to Rachel Ray and Bon Appetit!

Happy Halloween!



How cute that they match?!



My sweet chub-a-lub

Breakfast Shot - Happy Baby

For the girl who was down to 3% weight for her age group, she's sure made up time & eating!  This is one of those photos that definitely captures her when she pulled her head back, offering the perfect view of a double chin, but I had to share...however unflattering it might be on us as we get older. :)

Walking, Talking & Teeth!!!

I've been getting really bad about updating recently.  Partly because we're almost ready to launch Dave's photo blog, Facebook page and a host of other things keeping us swamped...which is really exciting! 

We also were blessed with an insurgency of Slaugenhoups! From all points, Alaska, Maryland, and Clarion County. Very fun.

And...the purpose of this blog...to track our sweet baby girl's first year...has lots of updating to do!  We are finally walking (Well, Ellie took her first steps at Erin Vanderbeck's parents' house on September 25th.  She took a few steps toward Erin's cracker).  Shocking, right?

At breakfast last week, Ellie was eyeing up Killian (the dog) in the dining room while she sat perched in her high chair.  She blurted out as clearly as an adult would say it, "Doggie". Dave and I looked at each other and tried to replicate it, but she was entirely consumed by her breakfast at that point. The "Hi" and "Hey"s are back regularly too.

Finally!!!!!!! a tooth! After a very restless night in the pack 'n' play in Aunt Molly and Uncle Michael's house, I felt a pointy part on her lower left gum.  After months of applying the 'she must be teething' label to a bad night's sleep, we finally made it!  We can stop saving for dentures. Dave can stop losing bets to me about when a tooth will pop. And yes, she walked before she had teeth.

Clearly, I owe better posts on all of these things, since they're all such a big deal in kid terms, but I need to grab some photos too.

Hope everyone's doing well and enjoying fall! 

Just a quick moment to say thank you. To God, my husband, my family and friends

This week I've been reminded of how short and fast life is. We all need this little reminder. Even if it only has me telling people that I love them more often.  I need that.

The other stabbing reminder from this week is how lonely the world can be.  I memorize very few quotes, but one from Mother Teresa sticks out.  "The United States is the poorest country in the world, because it's the loneliest."  She went on to talk about how the old, the homeless and the diseased live alone. They tend not to commune and families don't pay enough attention.  Don't get me wrong, life is busy and hard just as of is.  I just feel grateful and appreciate the inner push to reach out and give "warm puzzles" to more people, more often.

*ask my Dad about the "warm fuzzy" reference. It's a good one.

Daddy day

Chips, pizza and beer. Oh and football.

Sweet girl

Getting older is such fun!  We ran tons of errands and drove almost an hour to drop something off and she was perfect.

My sweet baby girl...so much fun to take her out!

9-month Doc Appt.

Height: 27.5 inches (50th %)
Weight: 17 lbs. (25th %)
Head Circumference: 45 cm (55th %)

And here's the sleeping viewpoint.

Oh, the joyful faces we get when we look into the backseat.

Food Club - without the Original

So Heather started this food club - Here's the post: Food Club from Poblete Post

And she gave me the nod that I would get an invite to the next club meeting...so when she mentioned it was Philly Restaurant Week and she had already made reservations, I was over the moon excited! Well, she had to cancel (for very good reason) and Laura (another original) had already bowed out, so it wound up being Meghan and my dearest friend, Ally (a fellow city foodie).  We showed up at Zahav in Old City for our 7:30 reservation.

I was so giddy for this treat out for girl's night that I could hardly contain myself!  Restaurant week has the set menu (for any out of towners) $35 for 5 courses here. Wahoo! Love it. OK, clearly I miss city dining! haha.

Here's the link to their Restaurant Week Menu: http://www.zahavrestaurant.com/

We dined on the following: An amazing spread of the 'house salads' I wish that I knew what came with these, I should have taken my restaurant critic flip notepad to jot them all down, but a 2 tiered stand of 3-4 dishes contained on each layer made up this course (also accompanied by an ever delicious large bowl of hummus and fresh made pita.)  Highlights from the cold salad course were: the seemingly roasted eggplant, (I personally liked the okra, although I think I sat alone on this fav.), beet and walnut, a julienned carrot with just the right sweet and tang, tabouleh with the whole parsley leaf.

The Salatim - Salad Course

For our next course, we enjoyed: the crispy haloumi (Israeli cheese) yum with a date glaze; the chilled corn soup, which was good, but must have hit us with a dose of cardamom, so not the most natural of flavors for the night; the fried cauliflower (wow!); fried lamb (kibbe) also yum; and my personal (isolated) favorite of crispy sweetbreads...ooh so good. Meghan was brave and tried them? I think? Ally admitted they weren't so bad. :)

The main dinner course (which came out as more of a small plate, much to our delight, because we were beginning to slow down!) was compiled of the hanger steak (too rare for Meghan - and I'll admit, it was far more rare than I prefer my cow.) The branzino, which was pretty tasty; and an Israeli traditional dish, the Merguez, a lamb sausage. This course was good, but nothing spectacular. 

Finally, dessert (we were nearly stuffed!) We chose one of each. So the waiter adorned our table with: cashew baklava - incredible!;  almond semifreddo (rivaled the baklava - imho); and hte halvah mousse with chickpea praline and berries - now that I think of it - I could down a bowl of the mousse right now! Delish.

We opted out of coffee and tea, but we did try the muddled mint lemonade.

Overall, a nice little Israeli feast - we sent Ally home with leftovers.  Ahhh...how beautiful it was to get dressed up and enjoy a night out with the girls.  We missed you, Heather!

*A special thanks to my amazing husband who, along with my mother-in-law, made it all possible.* xoxo!

Overdue

Wow - sorry for the overdue posting here - I'm going to have to make it short, since Ellie's on her way up from a nap. 

I realized it's been almost a month since I last posted!  Crazy. Quick synopsis of the big things that have come and gone:

• Trip to Germany and Austria (basically the reason I went missing on the blog for a month). Lots of funny stories from this trip that deserve their own post.
• Baby play dates that get so much better each week!  Because the 'play' date actually involves 'playing.'
• Dave has been shooting a LOT. So there's lots of post production that I need to get on - thus, my time normally spent blogging went toward my 'other job'. Which I enjoy just as much, albeit keeping me away from my fun social avenues. :(
• Switching rooms around in the house so that Ellie now has almost an entire room to be safe and play in.  I'm sure the commitment to the kid is much to Annie's chagrin, but it's nice that I can be in the kitchen and keep an eye on her destruction.
• David has been super Dad.  He took on watching Ellie all day yesterday from awakening to nearly  sleeping - he was exhausted when I got home and said, "I don't know how you do it every day." (HUGE GRIN HERE)
• She's started sleeping through the night!
• Nana visited and saved Mama on a few occasions.
• Oh yea, and we're pregnant!

All of these items deserve their own post, so I'll have to get on that!

Glad to be back!

xoxo