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Monday, November 19, 2012

Maternity Monday: 28 Week Belly Photos & Baby Bookcases


I'm not sure how it's possible that baby Stormageddon will likely be here in 2 1/2 months.  Crazy!

We actually didn't get to the 28 week pictures until 28 weeks, 6 days - so really these are technically more like 29 week pictures, but close enough. ;-)


Finally wore an actual maternity shirt!
Is it me, or does this eggplant look smaller than the cabbage??
The view from the front!
...This one's a little blurry, but I was making ridiculous faces in the others. :-P

Now I'm really feeling the pressure to get the office-to-nursery conversion moving.  I did finally manage to get the crib put together (you can catch a glimpse of it in right-hand side of some of the pictures above) and the old bookcase moved to the storage closet, so that's a step in the right direction, at least.

Now I just need to get rid of my old desk so we can pick up a baby-friendly bookcase for the nursery.  We're probably going to use the ClosetMaid Cubeicals 6 Cube Organizer:


We'll put a couple of baskets (probably these purple ones) in there for toy storage, along with her already-growing library of picture books. ;-)

I've been awful about visiting/commenting on blogs lately.  Last week was kind of absurd.  Glen was barely around because he was commuting to New York City every day for his new job.  In addition to working my regular day job, I had extra library hours, played in a concert at a nursing home, went to Glen's comedy competition in Staten Island, sold my jewelry at a craft show, and drove up to Connecticut for a party with some friends from college.  I didn't have much free time to sit in front of computer, and when I *did* have the time, I picked my husband over my laptop.  Hopefully I'll have a bit more time to make the rounds this week!

Monday, November 12, 2012

Perfect Timing

I'm generally not the "I don't believe in coincidences" type, but the past couple of weeks is making me rethink that point of view.

About a two and a half weeks ago, we found out Glen's old car would need a new transmission.  Since Glen's old car was a '99 Kia Sephia worth less than the cost of a new transmission, we decided to search for a new-ish car.  The same week we were car-searching, Glen also applied for a job as an associate editor for Geekosystem.com.

Well, a week and a half ago, we were able to find a car that looked like it would work for us - an '09 Chevy Aveo hatchback.  We'd have preferred a Honda Fit or a Nissan Versa, but unfortunately our search was restricted to dealerships that were actually open after the storm, which meant our pool of potential cars was a bit on the small side, made smaller by the fact that we wanted to keep the purchase price on the lower side since we now have two (ugh!) car loans.  Luckily, we got a really good interest rate on both loans, so the payments are manageable for us.

...Made more manageable by the fact that Glen got the job!!  Apparently he beat out hundreds of applicants for the position, and now Dan Abrams is his boss.  So, yanno, that's pretty cool.  And it turns out it's actually a good thing Glen's car decided to die when it did, because Glen will be commuting to New York a couple of times a week, and I don't think the Kia would have put up with the 130-mile round trip commute for very long. ;-)

Oh, and since this post is pretty light on photos, I thought I'd share this picture I just took of Elvis.  This is what I was contending with while attempting to type this post:


Made it a little difficult to type, but I can't be mad at the guy for being so obsessed with snuggling his baby sister already. ;-)

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Maternity...Tuesday(?): This Produce Thing Is Getting Weird

Yesterday was crazy busy, but I have belly pictures AND recipe pictures to share.  The strange part is that the two are actually related.

Yesterday was the start of 27 weeks (third trimester, when did that happen?!?!), and last week we took 26 week belly pictures.  Technically, baby is the size of a head of lettuce, but we decided to substitute with a head of cabbage instead:

I think Stormageddon had a growth spurt these past couple of weeks! :-)

...Buuuut most of my maternity clothes are still too big.  Still usually wearing my regular clothes with a belly band. ;-)

Cabbage patch kid??

Here's where the produce thing gets weird though:

See, it seems wasteful to buy produce for the sole purpose of taking pictures, so every other week we end up eating our "baby."  It somehow seemed less odd when baby was avocado sized and we'd just buy a few of them, take a picture, return it to the produce basket and not know whether the avocado we'd just eaten was our "baby" from the pictures.

But it's not like we can just buy a bunch of cabbages and eat one as a snack.  So our cabbage baby got cooked into two delicious meals after those pictures were taken.

I used the first half of the cabbage to make creamy Thai sweet potatoes and lentils for dinner on Sunday night:


If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend you follow the link above and make it.  SO yummy!

Tonight I used the remainder of the cabbage in a halupki casserole:


The casserole is my mom's recipe, so I don't have a link (I tried to find an identical recipe online, but no luck, and I don't know offhand whether she got this recipe online or elsewhere), but if you want to give it a try, feel free to send me an email and I'd be more than happy to share the recipe!

UPDATE:  My mom saw this post and forwarded the link for the halupki casserole to me!  Our slow cooker is too small to fit the whole recipe, so I usually make it in the oven - 30 minutes at 375 degrees usually does the trick.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Hey Sandy

I can't decide whether the title for this blog post was painfully obvious, or if what it's referencing is a bit too obscure for it to be ubiquitous/cliche.  (Also, that's my second blog post title in a row that references Pete and Pete.  Seriously, my love for that show knows no bounds.)  But either way, Glen's use of #HeySandy on Twitter seems to have resulted in him gaining Mark Mulcahy (lead singer of Polaris and Miracle Legion!!) as follower.  So that's pretty awesome.

Anyway, by some miracle, we managed to survive the storm without so much as losing electricity.  The extent of the damage was a few branches in the yard and some shingles blowing off the roof of our already-falling-apart shed.  Our dog even handled the storm like a champ.  He spent most of it napping on the recliner, occasionally lifting his head to look around when a particularly strong gust of wind blew by.

In light of all the damage that occurred south and east of us, we are feeling incredibly grateful that all we have to deal with now is minimal driving in order to conserve gas, since the gas stations in our area are insane at the moment, and we'd likely waste as much gas as we'd be able to buy just by waiting in line.

Despite the fact that my area wasn't hit nearly as hard as the coast, there are still a lot of places without electricity.  My main employer has been closed since 2:00 on Monday and will be closed again tomorrow, so I've just been working at the library in the evenings.  Since I only live about a mile away, I've been able to cover additional shifts, which is a win-win for everyone.  The library has enough staff to stay open, and I get extra shifts, which means extra money, which is great since as I mentioned in Sunday's post, Glen needs a new car, and sooner rather than later.  (A venture that has been further complicated by the storm, since not a lot of dealerships are even open, and the one we were originally looking at was in one of the harder-hit areas of NJ.  We think we found one nearby though.  Keep your fingers crossed for us!)

And what have I been doing with my free days?  You'd think I'd be working on getting ready for my craft shows on November 10 and 17, or perhaps working on further converting my office into the baby's room, right?  But alas, I've been a lazy lump and have spent most of the past 3 days sitting on the couch and watching TV.  Tomorrow, I become productive again.  I'm putting it out here on my blog so I have no excuse to have yet another lazy day: I'm going to record my sales from last week's show and prep for my upcoming shows, move the rest of the things on my old desk to my new desk, and clear out my office closet to make room for baby things.  No excuses. ;-)
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