Monkeying around in Chicago... now from Indiana!

Busy Bee

2012-01-11T17:14:00.001-08:00

DSC_8252, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Sir is a busy bee and won't sit still. I snagged him for a pic and he was all "DUDE! Must keep going!"

He likes to bang on my laptop too. Working, Mom!

Look who is one!!!

2012-01-09T10:57:00.001-08:00

DSC_8165, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

No concerns about lack of cake smashing around here. Emmett grabs the cake and smashes it right into his mouth!

At one year:
-Emmett is into EVERYTHING.
-He is cruising along furniture, and has two push toys he can walk behind.
-He can stand on his own when he doesn't realize he is doing it (once he realizes he is all AHHH and grabs for something).
-He climbed up on his car push toy onto the coffee table two days ago, resulting in a nice bruised noggin.
-Falls all the time
-Has finally learned to wave - with his whole arm!
-Make clicking sounds with his mouth and yells while smacking his mouth making an ah-ah-ah-ah sound.
-He can eat an entire can of mandarin oranges and has housed an adult sized serving of lasagna.
-He loves chef boyardee ravioli and especially loves to rub it in his hair - making it red and spiky.
-He looks like Ralphie from a Christmas story with the glasses.
-Took his first steps last week!

Scratchy Sir

2012-01-06T07:23:00.001-08:00

DSC_7965, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Emmett likes to scratch his noggin ALOT. Part of this is because he has the dryest scalp EVER. I also think he got into the habit of always grabbing onto his head when he wore his helmet. For whatever reason, he is always running his hands through his hair and rubbing his head.

Hubs laughs at him a little b.c his hands barely reach the top of his head. Go ahead. Put your hands in the air. See how big your head would be if you could barely hug it with your arms. Big. Babies are so weird!

That's right ladies...

2012-01-04T12:48:00.001-08:00

DSC_7972, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

eat your hearts out :)

I couldn't resist this onesie for E. Snarky baby onesies make me laugh.

New Year's Eve

2012-01-03T06:44:00.001-08:00

DSC_7959, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

On New Year's Eve we stayed home and knocked something off the bucket list by trying Dom Perignon. It was good, but let's just say I'd rather have four bottles of Tattinger Brut from Domaine Carneros by far! I'm glad that we tried it though, now we can say we've had it ;)

Other than this, the night consisted of having my parents over for a garlic pork roast, watching the IU game then switching over to the British version of Top Gear, and falling asleep on the couch around 10. I had a great time and I even put on jeans and a ruffly red shirt instead of my awesome purple yoga pants. Fancy!

Yearly recap!

2012-01-02T17:06:00.001-08:00

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before? Had a baby. Scored a job that offered to move my family to another state, bought a house.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for 2011? My only resolution was to step back and let Mike be the great Dad I was sure he would be. And I hope I’ve done that. I think I can do it more but overall I don’t think I’ve done a bad job.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Do I count? Yes. There were a ton of babies born this year – My friend Karrie had a little girl Kinley that is Emmett’s bff at daycare, and then Dora had Michael and Amy D had Everett. Another friend from high school, Sara, had a little girl in march. Also, my friend Tracy had twins (!!) this summer

4. Did anyone close to you die? Hmmm… I don’t think so?

5. What countries did you visit? None!

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011? Calm. This year was Bananas and crazy and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I’m looking forward to settling into our new home and getting some more chill time.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 1-8 Emmett was born, 4-4 I went back to work, 9-26 I started my new job, 12-13 last day in the condo, 12-20 we closed on our new house.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Keeping my head above water and trying to give my best to everything.

9. What was your biggest failure? Not being more strategic and aggressive about the pricing of our condo

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I got a couple of bad colds and also caught the flu but overall not bad.

11. What was the best thing you bought? A house!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? The husband. Not many couples relocate for the wife’s job, and he welcomed the relocation even though it probably didn’t mean the best things for his own career.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? No one really.

14. Where did most of your money go? Daycare, mortgage, moving

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Having a baby! Moving back to Indiana!

16. What song will always remind you of 2011 Baby Jamz – Mary had a little lamb, Adele – Someone like you, Sugarland – Stuck like glue

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner! I was extra pregnant this time last year but the Mommy diet is great! I’m thinner than before I got pregnant.
c) richer or poorer? Richer, kind of. Got out of the condo without losing our shirts so that is something.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Concentrating on work

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? I’m not really sure. I feel like I did a pretty good job this year of handling all the big changes, sometimes with tears, but I felt they were necessary. I probably could have been nicer to Hubs though J

20. How did you spend Christmas? In Evansville with the parents and siblings, with a sick Dog and a teething baby

21. Did you fall in love in 2011? Yes, in love with my tiny Emmett man

22. What was your favorite TV program? How I met your Mother, One born every minute

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? Nope.

24. What was the best book you read? The Hunger Games series

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? Sugarland

26. What did you want and get? A baby. Out of the condo.

27. What did you want and not get? Hubs around more

28. What was your favorite film of this year? Crazy stupid love

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 32. I went to work and had pizza delivered to work when I was leaving (they don’t deliver to the south side of Indy). I took it home and Hubs and Emmett and I had pizza and breadsticks while Dog ran around the yard. It was so perfect.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Really nothing. 2011 was amazing for me.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011? Shirts that were baggy enough to hide the end of the baby weight but tight enough to not make me look slubby. New job also has me getting back into the business casual. I wear lots of wrappy sweaters too.

32. What kept you sane? Getting ourselves unstuck in the Chicago hamster wheel and getting more room to grow our family in Indiana.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Ryan Gosling? Not sure.

34. What political issue stirred you the most? Honestly with all going on this year I tried to ignore the political issues. I get really annoyed about how none of the politicians can’t seem to figure anything out or work together though.

35. Who did you miss? My old friend Chicago and the girlfriends I had there. I miss having them around terribly. I also miss Hubs during the week but Sir Emmett keeps me soooo busy!

36. Who was the best new person you met? Emmett Jeffrey, Sir Cheeks!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. You can do it. YOU CAN DO IT.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Lil Wayne – How to love

See I just want you to know that you deserve the best, you’re beautiful
You’re beautiful

And I want you to know, you’re far from the usual
Far from the usual

Random updates

2011-11-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

I LOVE my new job. The company is great, the people I work with are SMART, so very smart, and good at what they do. I think I can learn a lot from all of them, and in my book that is a great situation - to be able to learn from your boss and his boss. I am super excited about the new job and feel so blessed!
The condo is still on the market. If there are no bites by December 9th, the relocation company will buy it from us. This is one of the greatest benefits of the relocation package - which is the best relo package I've ever heard of and one of the major reasons for our move. So as of December 13th we will be out of the condo regardless. We've had close to 25 showings and no takers. At this point, we pretty much think we will be taking the buyout offer.
We close on a new house on December 20th! We were going to wait until the spring, but found a house we love and couldn't wait! The place is 5200 square feet, with 2200 of it being unfinished basement. We love it because it has plenty of finished-off room for now and with the basement we also have room to grow into and stay and raise our family. Mike is overly excited about the man-cave possibilities! I have to say I am as well, as I'm currently planning a very girly office for the basement. :) Oh and the price of this house? 65% of what we purchased our condo for. Ridiculous!
Hubs and I are headed to the Purdue/IU game in Bloomington on Saturday while the small creatures stay behind with Grandma and Grandpa. I am so excited to hang out in my happy place of Bloomington while Sir and Dog are safely ensconced with grandparents. Perfect!
Life in Indiana is going so well that sometimes I have to pinch myself. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I think that whatever happens we are super excited to be closer to family! Speaking of that, my parents move to Indy on Jan 1st. My Dad is a pastor and got a church on the south side and my Mom got a promotion to manage a data center on the south side. So excited to have them nearby!!

10 months

2011-11-14T18:29:00.001-08:00

DSC_7512, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Hard to believe Sir is so big!

-He loves to stand up, and needs some propping up.
-Can crawl... but only backwards or side to side.
-Loves to yell DADADADADADA!!!
-Eats ANYTHING. Pizza, burrito fixin's, sweet potato fries, short ribs and mashed potatoes, anything you put in front of him. Not a fan of rice, but other than that loves pretty much anything.
-Is currently giving the daycare ladies crap by not drinking bottles well during the day. But he's eating so much real food that we're not overly worried.
-Is on the go... no more snuggling with Mama!

I love to....

2011-09-21T12:54:00.001-07:00

DSC_6891, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

clap and yell. You wouldn't know it by how sweet I look here!

So big!

Big news!

2011-09-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

WTH Mom? What do you think you're doing?

Wow, over a month has gone by with little to no word on the front here. Major big news....

We're moving! I'm no longer going to be Monkeying around in Chicago... I'll be Monkeying around in Indy! Hubs is from northern Indiana and I'm from southern Indiana. That means that Indianapolis is WAY closer to all of our family. And we have a ton of family and friends IN Indy. So when I was approached about a position that sounded like my dream job, we decided that I should interview for it.

And when I got an offer that we couldn't refuse... well, we didn't refuse it!

For now we have a rental house in Indy starting October 1st, our place is on the market, and I'm heading down for a week of orientation starting Monday. Emmett starts his new daycare on October 3.

It's going to be a tough couple of months with Mike traveling back up here for work alot, but I think it'll be worth it. Fenced in back yard for the Dog, more room for all of us. And the option to save more. I love Chicago but darn it is expensive. I just couldn't take it anymore - we weren't taking full advantage of the city having a kiddo and I was over paying for it.

So anyways, that is what is going on around these parts!!

Smiley Booboo

2011-08-24T09:06:00.001-07:00

DSC_6605, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Sometimes when I am having a rough day, I look at pictures of the booboohead alot :)

The sitting...

2011-08-16T09:00:00.001-07:00

DSC_6651, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

gets better and better every day. It's wild!

That's right, Emmett...

2011-08-10T19:07:00.001-07:00

DSC_6584, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Mommy DOES rock. :)

As an aside, I will never get over plaid pants/shorts on E. They are the awesome.

7 months!

2011-08-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Another month has gone by and our tiny Sir is 7 months old!

At seven months, Emmett:

Has been to TWO Cubs games. Luckily the Cubs won the second one. Emmett slept almost the whole time and I managed to eat chili cheese fries AND a chili cheese dog without any of it falling on E's head (he was in the baby carrier)
He is sitting up largely on his own. He still tumps over a decent amount, but he is doing pretty well overall.
Loves jaunts around town in his stroller
Has started (kind of) eating solids. I started him on purees and just recently ditched the purees and started the Baby-led weaning methods. He can pick up a piece of cheese, get it to his mouth, and bite off a chunk. The chewing and swallowing could be better but I think he's doing great for only doing the method for a few days.
He is OVER swings. Swings are for babies, Mom.
Loves his activity table, and just recently figured out how to walk himself around it.
Is loving not having to wear his helmet. He is so much more comfortable without it.
Has discovered his feet and spends alot of time trying to get them in his mouth. Unfortunately, his belly gets in the way of this objective.

While taking his 7 month pictures, I got an action shot of Emmett spitting up. This is how we see him much of the time! While gross, this picture TOTALLY cracks me up.

Michigan Vacation 2011

2011-08-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

I went to my grandparents' lake house every year as a tiny tot, and visiting that area (and Lark's Lake specifically) is one thing I would really like to make sure Emmett gets to do. I don't know that we'll go every year, but it would be nice to go at least every other year or every couple of years.

This year my parents rented a cottage about 15 minutes away from my grandparents' cottage. I love my grandparents' place but it's super small and definitely does not have room for all the family expansion that has happened recently with the addition of husbands (and a wife for my brother next month, woohoo!!) and Grace and Emmett.

So without further adieu, here is our vacation in pictures. First up, let's get some shots of the cousins together.
Emmett is very against looking at/smiling at the camera when there is anyone else in the shot. Diva baby.

OK, scratch that. Maybe he just won't do it when the other subjects are smiling/looking at the camera as well. "Let's take turns smiling, Gracie. That way they never get a really good one."
Emmett's Great Grandma and Grandpa Kovacs bought him this shirt in Hawaii and Gracie helped me pick out his outfit that day. I do think he totally rocked it.
Those crazy tufts of hair on the sides of his head are totally the reason why he got a haircut later that week.

On Tuesday of that week we headed over to my grandparents' lake to get in some water time. Here, my Mom (aka "Neemaw") is helping Gracie play in the sand.
My sister Katie poses with Emmett on the dock. He is more interested in her glasses than the camera.
Ok, now, this is probably one of the favorite pictures I've ever shot of the little man. Had to order one for my desk.
That night we headed to the Legg's Inn for a polish feast. Katie got pierogis and I got a pork kotlet and we split both of them. We also got some potato pancakes and a polish sampler that were amazing. Oh and the mozzarella sticks that Mike ordered were pretty fantastic too. Here Emmett is with Great-Grandpa Curley. Grandpa Curley makes all kinds of fun sounds that babies love. :)
Posing for a picture with my Dad and Gracie. Of course the other two are smiling so Emmett had to make a weird face.
Emmett wanted a bottle once we sat down so Mike volunteered for the job. Had to grab a shot of them both with their sunglasses on.
The next day Mike and I headed into Petoskey for a date night. We stayed at the Perry Hotel and ate at Chandler's. I would highly recommend both! Loved that the Perry was historic and close to downtown and we had a balcony with an amazing view of the bay. And Chandler's had a great selection of food and wine. Loved walking over there and the downtown area of Petoskey is so cute!

The next day we had brunch and came back to the cottage. My parents had some friends around who were visiting from Midland, Michigan. They headed off to see my grandparents' cottage and I gave Emmett a haircut.
Let's put the #2 guard on and buzz the sides here, son. You hold the mirror so you can see what you look like.

Then we headed into Mackinaw for dinner at Mama Mia's, a Stratton family tradition. Afterward, Katie picked up some fudge for her husband while we took pics of Emmett outside. Sadly, he is too little for ice cream!
Then we headed over to the bridge to get some shots.
After a drive and getting lost a few times, we ended up at the sand dunes over by Sturgeon Bay. Love this shot of Emmett and Mike both looking down the beach at my Dad and Gracie.
My Pops and Emmett!
And Mike pulled a total Dad Move and put Emmett down in the sand. As a Mom who hates messes, I would never have done this and cringed when it happened. But Emmett loved it so much that I was so glad Mike did it. Dads are so much fun aren't they? I'm glad Emmett has a Dad that sometimes doesn't think about messes and just thinks about how great of a time he'll have doing something.
(This doesn't mean you never have to worry about messes, Hubs! You hear me??) Mike buried Emmett's legs in the sand and Emmett was digging through and found his foot. The look of wonder on his face was so ridiculously awesome - he was like "HOLY COW that THING on the end of my LEG was UNDER HERE THE WHOLE TIME!?!?!" He looked up at Mike with this incredulous face I wish I'd gotten on video.

On Friday it was time to go home. But first we headed over to the cottage to get a little more lake time. Milly LOVED it there. Check out a beagle action shot....
Can you just leave me here with Grandma and Grandpa? I swear I won't howl anymore.
There is a tree in front of my Grandparents' cottage that used to grow out over the lake, but actually fell into the lake this winter. The root bulb the resulted was our playhouse in the summer. Here, Gracie and my Dad play on the roots.
Emmett got some more Aunt Katie snuggles and hung out on the shore.
Here is a pic of Gracie with that tree that goes over the water. Love this shot. I am totally submitting this in the photo contest at work!
So that's our vacation in pictures. It was so great. Maybe a tad too short and not enough time at the grandparents' lake but I loved seeing the family. Emmett was very sad to see us all part ways, he misses his fan club.

For more photos from the week click here

Reality check

2011-08-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

As Emmett gets older and my body peters out on the nursing efforts, I am forced to face a harsh reality that I haven't had to deal with in over a year:

My horrible eating habits.

I'm not one that particularly enjoyed being pregnant, but there was one thing I enjoyed - for seven and a half months I didn't have to worry about sucking in my stomach once. It was AMAZING.

During pregnancy, it was whatever would go down my food-hole and stay there. One week I ate only poptarts. The next week it was spaghetti-o's and macaroni and cheese. For the duration of my pregnancy anything with complex flavors would turn my stomach. Mike and I joked that I had a limitation of 5 ingredients per dish. It would have been funnier if it hadn't been so true. As a result, I only gained ten pounds during my pregnancy - and that was when they weighed me at my check-in at the Women's Hospital triage with my coat and boots on.

The minute I was told I could eat after I gave birth, I asked someone to get me a sandwich. I was starving.

The next morning, I woke up and ordered what Mike refers to as "the left side of the menu." My appetite was back with force. I got a southwestern omelet, chocolate milk, regular milk, grapes, and a blueberry muffin. That was my breakfast each day I was in the hospital.

Once we got home I ate like a horse. I ate ten packs of fruit snacks a day. A lean cuisine was no longer a meal, but a paltry crappy snack. Emmett ate every three hours and so did I. I think the Eating through Evansville illustrates my maternity leave eating habits nicely.

When I went back to work it got a little better, at least with snacking all day long. Although lunches have been bad. We go to lunch together every day. About once a week it's to a bar with phenomenal burgers. I order a cheeseburger with a side of mayo, the fries with asiago cheese on them and a side of ranch to dip them in. Oh and once I ordered the queso dip to start it all off.

Luckily with all of this, my metabolism has been extra high with nursing and taking care of the bambino. Clothes that I haven't worn since before my wedding fit. I have a whole section of "fat clothes" I put away altogether. Some of the jeans that I couldn't fit into before I got pregnant have had to be washed and dried to even stay up, whereas I didn't dry my jeans EVER before I got pregnant. I had to start using some of my inventory of belts.

Alas, I believe those days are about over. The pants are getting tighter. Last night after a ridiculously meaty pizza I sat on the couch feeling extra fat. Seems that a few adjustments are in order.

Next week I start a few adjustments. I am no fool. I know with a baby and not much time to myself I need a FEW indulgences. So here are my simple cutbacks:

Breakfast - Do something reasonable. No more McDonald's sausage biscuits (only $1! McD's just TRIES to mess up my diet!) and no more Anaheim panini's from Corner Bakery (zomg these are so good).
Drinks - Nix the caloric drinks. I've gotten lax. I drink a vitamin water with 150 calories or fruit juice or the like. Drink lots of water and no-calorie tea
Sweets - Cut. It. Out. Eat more fruit and drop all the cookies. I eat a lot of cookies.
Snacks - Try to have healthier snacks. BBQ cheetos from the vending machine, while good, are not very healthy.
Consider nixing the fries with that. So sad. But I need to cut out having fries with every meal we eat out.

Basically I need to stop being ridiculous and eating as many calories a day as Michael Phelps. I am going to allow myself to go to lunch with the coworkers and have whatever I want. But I need to be reasonable for breakfast and MOST dinners.

I'm at a weight I like. My clothes fit and I feel OK. I could be WAY more toned and fit but for now with Emmett sleeping from 8PM to 5AM or so this is what it's going to be. Maybe if he starts sleeping a little later I could feel rested enough to work out. But that's not going to happen right now. So for now I just need to make sure I don't add on a ton of weight!! Cut it off at the pass, so to speak.

We'll see how it goes.

Six month stats

2011-07-18T19:12:00.001-07:00

DSC_6282, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

It's hard to believe it's been six months. Six months? Really? Have I not slept for that long?

I kid, I kid.

Sir had his six month appointment last week.. here are the stats:
-27 inches long - 75 percentile
-17.5 lbs - 50th percentile
-whatever the head circumference was, it was 25%

As of Friday we are done with the helmet! There are some pretty amazing before and after pics, email me if you would like to see them. I have it in a pdf and am not sure how, if I even can post them here. But it's pretty awesome. We are so glad he doesn't have to have it anymore - he seems so much happier without it and I know I won't miss the weekly trips to Skokie where I have to leave at 6:45 AM. Holy crap, those were some rough days. My favorite was the one last week where he decided to wake up at 4:15, then I had to get up at 5:15 to get ready to head out the helmet doc. I felt hungover all day just out of lack of sleep!!

6 months!

2011-07-10T18:01:00.001-07:00

DSC_6234, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Look how big....

Baby fight!

2011-07-06T13:32:00.001-07:00

DSC_6059, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

We thought it was funny to put the babies facing each other over the lake weekend for the fourth. Mike and our friend Danny started narrating for them as if they were fighting. "I will stun you with my ninja moves!" We were having a good laugh over it.

The little one on the right is my friend Amy (she is right between Mike and Danny) and Tom's baby. His name is Everett. Isn't he such a cutie too??

Amy and I were due just a month apart with the boys, so we had a lot of fun being preggo together and now it's awesome to bounce ideas (and complaints about sleeplessness!!) off each other! :)

State of the Apes

2011-06-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

So many updates are all about Emmett, solely because that is my life these days. I love Sir Cheeks, but he is a time-consuming little man. Babies! They cry for a bottle and then barf it all over you! This is my life. Feed the bean, wipe spit-up off of him and me.... lather, rinse, repeat.

Here is my day:
6:00 - Up for the first time, if I'm lucky. Lately Sir has been waking himself up with coughing fits, and then crying for a bottle. Makes sense, what do I want after a coughing fit? Some liquids to ease my sore throat! Today was 5:15AM. I retire to the couch while I feed the bean. If it's after 4 we catch more z's on the couch. Before 4 I try to return him to his crib and crawl back into my own bed.
6:30 - Get myself and Sir ready
8:00 - Out the door. Drop bean at daycare, head to work.
8:45-5:20 - At work
5:15 or 5:25 train
5:30-5:40 - Pick up Sir from daycare, drive home while he screams in the back seat. How a content baby goes from being happy at daycare to wanting a bottle ASAP in the car I have no idea. It's obviously the evil car seat that bites him.
6:00 - Bottle Sir
6:30 - Feed myself
7:00 - Make bottles for daycare, do errands/chores like laundry or picking up the condo that constantly looks like a tornado hit it.
7:30 - Start Sir's bedtime routine. One person bathes and lotions the bean while the other cleans his helmet and preps a bottle. Then we play chicken to figure out who will bottle the little man. Each of us offers and then someone gives in and says "OK, you can do it." Haha.
8:00-8:30 - Sir drops off to sleep
8:30-9:30 - I get ready for bed, do other things I need to around the house, and get to sleep around 10.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

A couple weekends ago, I headed to my friend Tracy's to see her and her week-old twin boys! I was so excited to see them and oh my goodness they were so tiny! Just wee little men! One was about 5 lbs and the other was closer to 6. It blew my mind that at one point, Emmett was that small. My how things change. Sir turns six months old next week and is between 16 and 17 lbs! Carrying him is becoming quite the workout. And he's even bigger now after a growth spurt last weekend. Thank god that the spurt came on a weekend so that we weren't dying - he was up every two hours for a bottle. Geez. But the growing earned him one less week in his helmet! So that is positive :) The hope is that he will be done in two weeks!

Today is one of those days...

2011-06-20T12:49:00.001-07:00

DSC_5917, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

... that I just wish I could be a stay at home Mom.

I think I'd be a pretty crappy one though, truth be told.

The bean has a cough and so do I. I know my throat hurts and I can have hot tea, medicine, and cough drops. The bean just has to suffer. That thought makes me want to go steal him from daycare and cuddle him on the couch!

5 months old!!

2011-06-14T12:29:00.001-07:00

I can hardly believe that our little man is 5 months old already! I think I will say that every month as he gets older.

At five months, Emmett:

Can easily roll to his side from either the belly or back, and has completed the full rollover a few times
Likes to sit in his bumbo, finally. He used to hate the thing but now it gives him a new vantage point with little effort, so it's on the 'like' list
Scootches around on his playmat.... gone are the days where he stays in the place where you put him. He can scootch around in circles or off the mat altogether. He generally does this via flapping his legs around and rolling from side to side
Is getting really good at playing with/grabbing toys and can maneuver some of them to his mouth
Throws arm around you when you pick him up and hold him. It's such a simple thing, but so cute.
Loves to baby talk and hear his own voice. Loves to yell AHHH AHHH AHHHHH
He is still all smiles on changing table
Swings legs out when you pick him up - they don't just hang limply down when you grab him!
Is a charmer and loves to smile and make new friends
Has had his first couple of colds - the first one was Memorial Day weekend where he cried constantly and didn't want to be put down. He has another cold now that makes him stuffy and makes his eyes gunky, but his sweet and smiley personality is still there! Thank goodness. Both colds have him waking up for an additional bottle in the middle of the night, which we could do without.
Attended his first Cubs game on Memorial Day weekend!

I have to admit, when the doctor recommended the helmet, I cried a little bit. But now I'm glad that we worked swiftly to get the bean's noggin fixed. I was worried people would be weird about the helmet but pretty much everyone is super nice about it. It helps that Emmett is super cute with (or without!) it! :)

Sir swimming!

2011-06-14T07:32:00.001-07:00

DSC_5900, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Emmett went swimming for the first time this weekend! He wasn't a big fan when we first got in but once he got situated in his little floaty he was all smiles.

This thing has legholes below where he is sitting and he's supposed to sit up in it. But he was just too little. This will work for now!

Happy Sir likes his Bumbo

2011-06-06T14:13:00.001-07:00

, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Emmett used to hate the bumbo with a white-hot fiery passion. Now that he can hold his head up much better, it's more fun!

And check our Sir's helmet. He has a wonky spot in the back where it's a bit pointy. 6 weeks and some moolah later and Sir will have a perfectly round head again. Oh, babies!

Summer gear

2011-05-24T08:01:00.001-07:00

DSC_5759, originally uploaded by agstratt.

I love buying Emmett tiny versions of things Mike has...

Knockoff birkenstocks? Check.
Plaid shorts? Check.

The I love Daddy shirt was a post-poker, post-cocktail purchase in Vegas. My how times have changed, now when I have a few cocktails I peruse tiny baby onesies instead of cute dresses for myself!

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend was my first Mother's Day as a mother, and it was one of the best weekends ever! My Mom flew into town on Friday night and my brother Jay went to get her. I wasn't feeling too good on Friday so Mike let me get some sleep in after work. Jay, Kim, and Mom got there around nine and we hung out a bit before heading off to bed.

Saturday I got my hair cut and attended a baby shower, then Mike and I headed off to date night. Fondue by ourselves and then drinks with some friends. I had SUCH a good time. It's was SO good to have some time with just Mike and I and not worry about the little man at all. My Mom is such a sweetie for letting us get out a bit while she watched him! She was such a big help with him that this weekend was really relaxing.

On Sunday we headed to brunch at Bakin' and Eggs, and then walked up to see Jay and Kim's new place. After walking home we grabbed a nap and just hung out. I took Emmett's 4 month old pictures and I think they turned out really well!

His eyes are still really really blue. I am beginning to start to think they may actually stay blue. I guess I won't know for a long time still, because they can still change, even up to when he's like 3 years old I think? But I feel like it would be hard to imagine them changing so much from being so blue now. But it could happen. I have to admit, I never ever thought I would have a blue-eyed baby!

He's such a happy baby... loves to laugh.
Emmett's new trick is being able to maneuver his fist into his mouth to suck on it. He's constantly checking to see if someone has stashed milk there. He cracks me up sucking on the fist, he is all loud smacks and gusto.
I got a few in the Bumbo too, although it quickly killed the jovial mood. He hates this freaking thing!
Mom and Emmett took lots of time looking through his black and white picture book. He loves that book, I'm so glad I sought it out on Amazon.
Emmett's other fun/new trick is using his voice. He's constantly "talking" to us now. Mom thinks he'll be super vocal and be talking early. I guess he gets that honestly, I'm kind of a chatterbox. But it's super cute. He sometimes uses it as a pre-cry, so it's nice to be able to get to him and get him what he needs without escalating to crying. :)

4 Months!

2011-05-08T17:14:00.001-07:00

DSC_5725, originally uploaded by agstratt.

I took Emmett's 4 month old pictures today. He is such a big boy and such a happy baby!!

Sir's name

2011-05-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

One of the nurses in the NICU asked us if we named Emmett after "the vampire in Twilight." She seemed so excited by the prospect that I felt kind of bad saying no. But seriously, the Twilight connection almost made us NOT use the name.

When we started trying to have a little one I bought a copy of The Baby Name Wizard. Swistle runs a baby name website, and loves this book. I read the baby name blog and had to get myself a copy. It's really a fun book - I would highly recommend it for anyone, even anyone not looking for a baby name. The book shows the meaning behind the name, the origin, a small graph of the name's popularity, the categories a name belongs to, and possible brother/sister names for that name. Each category is in the back and has a listing of names. So if you see that the name you like is in the "Antique Charm" section, like many of the ones I like, you can look in the back and see what other names fall into that category. It's super fun to look up all this information on names - one night we pulled it out while we had friends over and read the meaning for each person's name. Fun times!

So, I looked through the baby name book, writing down on a list any names that appealed to me at all. Once I did that, I looked at the categories each were in, and looked through those categories too. Once I did that I had a list of 7-10 girl names and about 5-6 boy names. I ran those by Mike and got some pretty solid vetoes. I suggested Mike do the same and he made up a listing of names. Then I got some vetoes (Herschel? Really?). We settled on a list of 3-4 boy names and about 5-6 girl names. Then we just let the lists marinate for awhile.

In the middle of all of this, my mom gave me a book my Grandma Stratton had filled out about her life. In it, there was a family tree. I noticed that one of the names I really liked, that was on our front runner list, was a family name. Although my Uncle Clyde goes by his middle name, his first name is Emmett. And his father, my great-grandfather, was named Dillard Emmett. To the family he was known as Nandad, but he went by the name Emmett. I knew Emmett was Clyde's given name, but hadn't known about Nandad using the name. I was thrilled to find out the extent of its use as a family name, because I really loved the name. And the family connection was such a great bonus that it overruled the fact that it was used in the Twilight movies.

In the meantime, Mike's favorite on the boy side was Wyatt. So over the pregnancy, our list really boiled down to Emmett and Wyatt on the boy side of things. We had a name picked out for a girl, but I'll keep that a secret in case we want to use that in the future :)

Emmett's middle name was much easier. I feel pretty strongly that middle names should be used to honor someone in the family (at least for us - of course not everyone has to do this!). You hardly ever use a middle name, and it means so much to have a child namesake. Why not use this as a time to show our family how much we love them? We tossed around the idea of using "Michael" but Mike felt that it was a bit narcissistic, and felt pretty strongly about using my Dad's first name, Jeffrey, as a middle name for a boy. One day he was like "Your Dad is a really good man. He loves his family and would do anything for any one of us. I really think we should use his name for a middle name." Once I knew how strongly Mike felt, that pretty much sealed the deal on the boy middle name.

With a girl name picked out and two boy names in competition, I had a strong hunch that the baby would be a boy. I would sit on the couch and point to my belly and say to Mike "You think there is an Emmett in here?" and smile. Mike was always unwilling to commit, and would just smile back and say "Maybe!" One day he admitted to me that he was waiting for a sign regarding what boy name to use. I laughed a little bit but thought we'd wait and see what happened.

Then, in December, the clouds parted and a sign was given. My brother's fiance, Kim, has a sister who was due two months before me. She had her little boy and the e-mail was sent out "We are calling him Wyatt." I did a little victory dance, knowing that the likelihood of using the name Wyatt was far less now. We talked about it a bit - not totally ruling Wyatt out but leaning FAR more towards Emmett.

We never did fully come to a formal decision... Mike just started saying "It's a good name" when I mentioned the name. And then when he was born and the doc asked me his name, I just kind of blurted out "Emmett Jeffrey." Thank goodness it was OK with Mike, because I love that little man's name!

Meat!

2011-04-29T08:06:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I sent Mike to the Paulina Meat Market to get steaks for dinner with my friend and her husband tonight. I hadn't realized he'd never been there, but he loved it! Of course, the place is major Old School.

One of the butchers, Tim, calls Mike's number, and he steps up. Mike described him as "Big guy. Mustache like a walrus. Hands like hams!"

Mike requests two 8ish ounce fillets for myself and my friend Dora, then decides on New York strips for himself and Dora's husband. He asked Mike what steaks he wanted from the selection out under the counter.

Mike says "Tim, you ever had a steak before?"
Tim "One or two."
Mike "Why don't you pick a couple out for me"
Tim "Smartest thing you've said all day!"

So Tim picked out a couple strips... we'll see how they are tonight.

I'm still laughing about the "Hands as big as hams!!!" though.

Bananas

2011-04-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

I remember touring a daycare about a week after Emmett was discharged from NICU, and thinking that the babies all looked impossibly round and big. Holy cow, giant Godzilla babies. My baby would never be that big!

To be fair.... look at what I was working with. This is Emmett on discharge day, at 5 lbs 10 ounces. He was swimming in his newborn onesie, just a tiny little speck of a man.
Look at those little spindly legs!

And now he is impossibly round and lovely. How time does fly.
The cheeks, they are kissable. He's getting to be such a big boy!

Baby laughs

2011-04-28T11:16:00.001-07:00

MVI_0174 a video by agstratt on Flickr.

I got a great video of Emmett laughing at Mike's grandma.... she was just cracking Emmett up!

I'm so glad that so many family members got to meet Emmett last weekend. I love showing our little man off!!

I think we need to get this kid some shades....

2011-04-27T08:31:00.001-07:00

DSC_5597, originally uploaded by agstratt.

or a hat!

Oh Emmett... this would have been such a good picture if you would have opened your eyes. Oh well.

Cop-out

2011-04-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

I've got a case of the Mondays, so it's internet meme time!

A. Age: 31

B. Bed size: Queen

C. Chore you hate: Cleaning bathrooms. Which is why we have a cleaning lady now.

D. Dogs: Millicent Underfoot Knowles, Beagle!

E. Essential start to your day: Emmett snuggles

F. Favorite color: Pink

G. Gold or silver: Silver

H. Height: 5'5"

I. Instruments: I used to play the flute, piccolo, and piano, but don't do any of that anymore. I just donated my flute to Chicago Public Schools actually!

J. Job title: Senior Auditor

K. Kids: Emmett Jeffrey, born 1/8/2011

L. Live: What does this mean? Where I live? In Chicago! At the top of three flights of stairs that kill my will to live in the city.

M. Mom’s name: Gayle

N. Nicknames: Apes!

O. Overnight hospital stays: Two times for acid reflux that closed up my airways, and when I had Emmett. I think I might have stayed when I hit myself with a car when I was 4, but I don't remember.

P. Pet peeve: Cabbies who honk to see if you want a cab. Is my hand in the air? NO! Go away. Cabbies that don't pay attention when you DO need a cab. Cabbies that drive super slow down sidestreets and don't allow room to pass. Pretty much just cabbies in general.

Q. Quote from a movie: Pretty much anything from Office Space, Anchorman, 40 year old virgin, or the Hangover. I even made a baby version of the Tiger Song from Hangover for little Emmett. It goes like this:

What do babies dream of, when they take a little baby snooze? Do they dream of drinking bottles or hanging out in their birthday suit? Don't you worry your pretty baby head we're gonna get you back to Lincoln in your pretty baby bed. And then we're gonna find our best bear Doug and then we're gonna give him a best bear hug. Doug, Doug, Doug, Doug Dougie Dougie Doug Doug! Unless we caught out without any Pampers... then there'll be poop on your butt!

Yeah, I had a little extra time on Maternity leave. Also, I named Emmett's bear Doug b.c I couldn't figure out any other way to make the song make sense. And Lincoln is a nod to the street we live on.

R. Right or left handed: Right

S. Siblings: Jay, 29 and Katie, 26

T. Time you wake up: All the time these days, with baby around. My ideal time for work would be 6-6:30AM although before he came along I got up at 7:30.

U. Underwear: They are awesome. haha.

V. Vegetables you dislike: Beets are so gross.

W. What makes you run late: Chores. I'm always trying to get too much done while I get ready.

X. X-Rays you’ve had: Teeth!

Y. Yummy food you make: Prosciutto-wrapped pork chops, goat-cheese stuffed chicken

Z. Zoo- favorite animal: Lions... love the Lion House at the Lincoln Park Zoo, esp when they roar at each other.

Funny post

2011-04-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

My friend Tracy is pregnant with twins and due in June. She wrote this post about some of the ridiculous comments she gets. I had to share because I thought it was hilarious!

Everybody was kung-fu fighting!

2011-04-20T13:26:00.001-07:00

10 weeks, originally uploaded by agstratt.

Looks like the bean is making some ninja moves in this one!

Working on my fitness

2011-04-18T08:25:00.001-07:00

If I lift him up like this a bunch of times each day, I'll be able to do it when he's a grown man, right?
Right? Kind of like this guy who lifted the cow at the Olympics?

Wedding pics

2011-04-15T08:50:00.001-07:00

My brother and his fiance are going to display pictures of their parents' and grandparents' weddings at their wedding in September. Since I've recently obtained and scanned a few, I thought I would share.

This is my Mom's parents. Look how young they are! My Great-Grandma Bastian (who immigrated from Germany) made this dress for my Grandma.

Here are my parents on their wedding day. My Mom wore my Grandma's dress for her wedding. I always knew that my Mom and aunt wore the same dress but it wasn't until I talked to my Grandma a few weeks ago that I realized that it originated with Grandma. I love it, and especially love the lace and the tulle overlay. Very classic. Look at my parents, they are babies they are so young. My mom was 19. Holy cow! Also, isn't my Dad's tux AWESOME?!

I marvel at how tiny they were when they got married... there is no way I would have fit into this wedding dress. Maybe if I had gotten married at 19 I would have been able to! But there would have been no way with me getting married at 27!

Happier things...

2011-04-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have been told that the last entry is super sad. Truth be told, it was a really hard time in our lives. I know I felt helpless, and in this weird limbo of no longer being pregnant but not really fully having our baby. I'm glad I got it out there, but there was alot of that time that was wonderful too. Emmett has been such a joy and is such a little lover, always DTS, or Down to Snuggle, as my brother says. Being in the NICU gave us some time to get acclimated to being parents in a gradual way instead of being thrown to the wolves. But honestly, sometimes I wish we'd been thrown to the wolves a little more, some things would have been easier to experience with the sink or swim method! With all that said, I can't believe our little man is already three months old. He's smiling and cooing and starting to laugh. I love his little giggle, it's infectious. I remember the 3-6 month age being my favorite when I babysat as a teenager, although Mike and I discussed favorite ages last night and we think every age will be our favorite. At three months, Emmett:

Hates tummy time. He has a foolproof way of getting out of it: spit up and then cry about wallowing in it. Of course we rescue him every time.

Speaking of spitting up, Emmett spits up ALOT. We have a ton of bibs and he goes through them about as fast as I can wash them.

Loves to swing. God bless swings. I bought one for upstairs because he loves them so much.

Loves his bottles and wants them to be prompt. Faster, woman! What is your problem, why do you not have the bottle prepared already!?!? NOW!!!!

Has a giant belly and big cheeks. The belly is huge right after a bottle. And his cheeks have their own gravitational pull.

Likes to stare at toys hanging off his playmat and swings. Sometimes he hollers at them. We imagine he is saying "Hey guys! Where ya been all day!?"

Is starting to get more squirmy but still loves sleeping on my chest. I will miss that when it goes the way of the dinosaur for sure. I love a snuggly baby nap.

Is still too little to play fetch with Milly. Although that doesn't stop her from depositing toys at his feet while he is on his playmat. Poor Milly doesn't understand what he is all about!

Loves his baby bjorn-like carrier (We have the Cybex 2.0). He passes out the minute he gets all snuggled into it.

The weather is getting better here in Chicago and we are looking forward to lots more walks in the stroller and showing our little man the city. When we first started trying I thought that having maternity leave in the summer would be better, but it's working out pretty nicely that Sir will be a bit bigger to be toted around all summer! :) This is my second week back at work full-time and it's going pretty well! Last week Mike's mom came up to stay with E and this week my Mom is in town. Next week Mike will be home with Emmett because he accepted a new position with another company and will be starting that on May 2. Then Emmett starts his daycare on April 25th! I am excited to meet his teachers and get him into a routine. I am sure he will love it there. Maybe not as much as doting Grandma attention, but I think it will be great for us as a family.

The NICU diaries

2011-04-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

The first day they told us he was holding his glucose levels just fine… “He may come home a day or so after you are discharged” was the optimistic answer. I didn’t know that it was unlikely and unfounded optimism then. All I knew was that I would likely be going home from the hospital without my baby, without the little one we had waited so long to meet. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. But then again I didn’t have much of a choice.

The next morning when the doctors made their rounds, one frowned at me when I mentioned taking him home. “This week is a possibility, but I wouldn’t count on it. It’s more likely that he would go home at the end of next week, but we can’t really say at this point.”

He had just finished a feeding and had eaten 15 millileters (half an ounce). One of the other doctors pulled out an iphone and figured out the recommended feeding amounts. They put a minimum feeding amount of 35 mL on Emmett’s chart, noting that if he didn’t eat that much he would have to get a feeding tube.

The most he’d eaten was 15-20 mL. And even that much was always a struggle. Little Emmett was early, and he’d much rather take a nap than eat. Where was his floaty water to finish growing? He wasn’t a fan of this eating thing. I knew the feeding tube would happen. It wasn’t a matter of if, more like when. I hadn't known that he wasn't eating enough. I felt betrayed. I felt hopeless. I didn't want any tubes going into my baby. The monitoring wires were bad enough.

The group of doctors shuffled away as I burst out crying. I am certain I made them very uncomfortable. In between sobs I cuddled Emmett tight.

I couldn’t do the next feeding. I couldn’t even watch. I made Mike do it, but he would only do it if I promised not to be mad at him if Emmett didn’t eat 35 mL. I couldn’t imagine blaming him. But I could imagine blaming myself. So I went back to my room while Emmett had his lunch. God bless Mike, he got him to take 35 mL. I’ll never know how. He got him to do it for the next couple of feedings as well.

Of course, the nurses, even though they were saints, had less time and patience to coax feedings down his gullet. That night when we went home he got his feeding tube put in.

That night we were discharged. I had to rent a hospital pump from the gift shop and we got there just before it closed. I hate to think what would have happened if we hadn’t gotten there in time, how much harder the whole process would have been. My pump was to be shipped a month before Emmett’s due date, which wasn’t another week yet. The nurses on the postpartum floor said that you could rent them at the hospital, promising to bring me one or the paperwork for one. They finally told me that I would have to get it at the gift shop, and only informed me of that once we were leaving. Because we had a little one in the NICU, we didn’t have to leave until shortly before midnight on discharge day. We left around 6 so we could go home and walk the dog – this was the only reason that the gift shop was still open when we made our way home. Thank you, Milly.

The hospital we went to only served food on a room-service basis. You ordered the food and waited in the room for an hour before the food was delivered. No pre-scheduled deliveries at certain times. I am sure this is incredibly convenient for those whose babies are IN their rooms. For me, it was torture. Order food, wait for an hour without the little one. Counting the minutes until I could scarf down my food and make it back to the NICU. I felt like I had to choose between Emmett and feeding myself. A lot of times I put off eating as long as possible, or had Mike pick me up food from the cafeteria downstairs.

Once I got back from eating and the NICU room was too full – we already had 4 people total in the room. So I wasn’t allowed in. I stood in the hallway and sobbed. Every person that walked by asked if and how they could help me. The receptionist who had denied me entrance repeatedly asked me if she could do anything. I wanted to scream that the Mother should ALWAYS be let in, no matter what. Then, Mike sent out someone so that I could come back in. I felt embarrassed as I walked in to the room and everyone worried over me. I reminded myself that I’d just had a baby the day before, to cut myself some slack.

I talked to some friends on Facebook that had babies that were born around 35 weeks. Almost all the babies had been in the NICU for 2 weeks. I steeled myself for a stay of at least that long. I decided to look at each extra day as another day closer to bringing him home. He was going to at some point, of that I felt certain. He wouldn’t have that feeding tube in college. And if he did, it would be a sweet party trick.

I spent the days at Emmett’s side. I feel like he was in the NICU for months but in reality it was only 9 days. 2 days of which I was also in the hospital. I tucked a black and white picture of Mike and I into his bassinet. The cafeteria grill worker knew Mike’s order, I kept slippers at the hospital so I didn’t have to wear actual shoes all over the NICU floor. We sat in Emmett’s room and worked on our laptops and listened to the other babies in his pod cry. A set of twins by the window cried all the time. We marveled how all the crying newborns sounded like cats. We educated ourselves on NICU speak, how much he should eat per kilo, how much he should be gaining each day, what they expected of him before sending him home, things that may have delayed his departure. We talked to the nurses about everything under the sun related to Emmett and babies. We picked their brains constantly regarding how he was doing and what he should be doing. Each day we held him as much as possible and then said goodbye to go home and walk the dog, to feed ourselves, to catch some sleep. To wake up every three hours to pump. Every day I left him in his bassinet by himself I felt like I was failing. Failing to be there for him when he needed me. Of course, I was doing as much as I could. More than I had previously thought I could. We were the lucky ones, our baby was born just short of full-term. He wasn’t a one pound super preemie. He had no other health complications. It was crazy to feel lucky and unlucky at the same time. Hard to watch Dads wheel Moms holding babies in their wheelchair out to the car downstairs. People just going out into the world, while in the NICU, our world stood still.

Each day the eating got a little better, but still no one would comment on when Emmett could come home. Then, while I was at my baby shower with my girlfriends the Saturday after E was born, Mike sent me a picture of Emmett. The feeding tube was gone. The doctors planned for discharge on Monday, one week after I had been discharged. That morning felt like Christmas day. We had to wait around for the discharge papers to come through on the computer, and once they did the nurse walked us downstairs. Once we were in the car I couldn’t believe it. He was actually coming home. I kept waiting for someone to grab us and take him back, to say it was a mistake. But no one did. And just like that, the whole ordeal ended, our world began spinning again and there were three of us.

Where Mommy and Daddy met...

2011-04-12T07:57:00.001-07:00

DSC_5465, originally uploaded by agstratt.

This weekend we headed downtown to take pictures of Emmett in the building where we met. Mike saw me on the elevator and told his friend that I was his future ex-wife. I hope not! He meant it to be funny but I was super offended when I found out. At least we got the wife part right.

Emmett is also wearing a shirt that says "My Dad is a geek." We saw the shirt on our honeymoon and when I found out I was pregnant I got this onesie for Mike!

2 months old!

2011-03-21T15:01:00.001-07:00

DSC_5138, originally uploaded by agstratt.

This is my current favorite pic of the babe... I keep wondering if his eyes will stay blue but only time will tell.

Major good news - he got into daycare. What a huge sigh of relief. I have never been so happy to hand over every cent of my disposable income. Ahhh, the life of parenthood!

Emmett gets dedicated

2011-03-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

DSC_5041, originally uploaded by agstratt.

Here is a shot of Emmett getting dedicated. Our little man has the Stratton performing gene because he was actually awake for the entire thing. His Grandpa loved introducing him to the church!

He also looked super cute in his tiny white collar shirt and blue plaid pants.

Eating my way through Evansville

2011-03-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

This weekend we headed home to Evansville, IN and my number one priority (other than spending time with family) was to eat my face off. I have been making up for lost calories and consuming mass quantities of food now that I am no longer pregnant and don't want to throw up every five minutes.

Without any further ado... here is my Evansville food diary!

Thursday
On the way down to Eville I suddenly get hungry. The next McDonald's is in half an hour, but this hunger is dire. We stop at a gas station to get Combos, cheetos, and some chocolate Donnettes. I snarf the donuts and some cheetos and combos. Half an hour later we stop for McDonald's and I take down a crispy classic chicken sandwich with fries.

We arrive at the parents' house at 4:30. Dinner is at my favorite mexican restaurant, Los Bravos, at 7:30. I am starving already and eat a granola bar, a bowl of grapes, and a big glass of milk. I warn my mom that I may eat her out of house and home.

Dinner at Los Bravos is everything I hope for and more. I immediately order the cheesy bean dip since I can't have too much salsa (don't want to eat too spicy and piss little man off!) and a virgin strawberry daiquiri. I work on the dip and tortilla chips until our meals show up approximately five minutes after we put in the order. I eat 3/4 of the two enchiladas on my plate and the better part of my rice. I take home the rest of the enchiladas and the chicken taco that came on the side of my plate. Before leaving I smear the rest of the bean dip onto the chicken taco. Hubs laughs at me and asks who I am right now.

On the way home we see that the "Hot and Fresh NOW" sign is on at Krispy Kreme. I insist we stop and get a half dozen donuts. To be fair, I only ate one. Also, Milly had a half of one. She loves Krispy Kreme!

Friday
My mom makes a pineapple coffee cake for breakfast and I have a big piece of that and a glass of milk. Then, before heading out I eat the taco from Los Bravos the night before. The shell got mushy but it still tastes amazing!

On the way to visit with some friends we stop by Pizza King for stromboli and chips that are only sold around Evansville - Grippos. The grippos are thick with barbeque seasoning and they are OH so good. I eat half of my stromboli and save the other half for later. After visiting with the friends, we stop back by Pizza King to get a stromboli for my brother. While waiting for Jay's stromboli we spin through the drive through of a local ice cream shop, Lic's. I get a one scoop cappuccino cone and eat it while we wait. Once we get back to the house (around 3) I take down the other half of my stromboli.

Dinner is at 6 at Rafferty's, which is a chain restaurant with classic Americana food. There is not a Rafferty's in Chicago, I think the chain is mostly in the south. There I order a cup of baked potato soup and the chicken finger salad. Lest you think that the salad is healthy, just know that it's topped with fried chicken fingers and the dressing is a combination of honey mustard and HOT BACON GREASE. And lo, it is good.

After dinner my brother and his fiance hit up Coldstone. I request a small berry ice cream.

Saturday
My dad hit up Cracker barrel at the break of dawn and brought back a massive blueberry muffin. I eat part of that before our family breakfast at 9AM. At breakfast I eat a biscuit and a large serving of breakfast casserole.

For lunch, we order Kipplee's. Hot ham and cheese, pizza, and dough dogs (tiny hot dogs with dough wrapped around them). I eat a little bit of all of that, and graze on some hot ham and cheese in the afternoon. My sister heads to Lic's with a friend and she asks if I want anything. I request another one scoop cappuccino cone.

Dinner is rolls, green beans, and my mom's lasagna. I eat two servings of lasagna before falling asleep on a chair in the living room with the baby on my chest. It's pretty much how I roll these days - eating and sleeping with the baby cuddled up on me!

Sunday
I grab a Cliff Bar on the way to church at 8:45. After church I wolf down more hot ham and cheese at home while we pack up. Then we stop at Sonic on the way out of town where I get a cheeseburger, tater tots, and a large cherry limeade.

Man, I love eating in Evansville! I think I am definitely making up for lost time with the eating!

Groundhog Days

2011-01-31T20:20:00.001-08:00

DSC_4717, originally uploaded by agstratt.

My days are like the movie "Groundhog Day" but in increments of 3 hours instead of 24. Feed kiddo, change him, hang out/sleep for a bit and then start it all over. But I love it! I'm loving being around our little man all day. And it's cold outside, so it's nice to not go out there!

Birth story

2011-01-18T19:07:00.000-08:00

I was drying my hair when I felt a little bit like I'd wet myself. Weird... I thought... I didn't think I had to go. But whatevs... maybe baby kicked my bladder or something. I pottied again, put a pad in just in case I did it again, finished getting ready and headed off to work.

In the car on the way to work I called Mike. "Call your doctor," he told me. So of course I hung up and called my friend Tracy, who has a two year old. "Go home, change into fresh underclothes. Roll around in bed, stand up and if water comes out then your water probably broke." I headed back home to try this out, but once I got home and used the bathroom again I realized what was coming out was tinged pink. I knew at this point that something was happening - what, exactly, was the big question. I called the Doctor's office and left a message - the on-call doctor called me back almost immediately and told me to head to triage at the Women's Hospital. I called Mike, told him I was heading to the hospital (he then convinced me to bring my hospital bag, which was mostly already packed, with a listing of what else I needed on top of the bag, so I quickly tossed the other items in the bag and headed out).

On the way to the hospital I stopped and got a bagel with schmear from Einstein's, and then promptly got stuck in rush-hour traffic on the way to the hospital. I didn't have any contractions at this point, so I wasn't too worried about getting there fast. My dad called when I was in the car on the way down there, and I freaked out that he knew I was headed to the hospital (he'd happened to call Mike when Mike was heading out of the office). "Don't tell anyone!" I exlaimed to him. I was terrified that people would think I was in labor and then we would just find out I peed my pants. That would have been awesome.

At this point, I was 34 weeks and 4 days. After 34 weeks, the risk to the baby of staying inside after your water breaks is greater than the risks of being born a bit early. So when I got to the hospital and they confirmed my water had broken, they brought me up to a labor and delivery room. My doctor stopped by - she happened to be at the hospital - and told me that her colleague was on call and would deliver me. She jokingly said "I wasn't supposed to see you here yet!" when she walked into the room. We discussed starting some pitocin to start labor and I had been dead against the use of pitocin. I asked her to check my dilation to see if I'd started progressing at all first and she balked a bit - they don't like to check too often after your water has broken b.c they don't want to introduce germs to the baby's environment and I was just a bit crampy/didn't have real contractions yet. But she checked and at that point I was 3cm. We agreed to start just a bit of pitocin to get my labor going - the nurse mentioned that pitocin can be dialed up to 40 or so and I was on 2 or 4 most of the time. So I didn't need a whole lot to really get the contractions rolling.

And rolling they did. I didn't want the epidural until I really needed it, and so I did the full blown labor thing until I was about 5cm dilated. The contractions were coming pretty close together and were not pleasant at all.... I demanded that Mike stand by me and that my Dad (who had jumped on a plane only half an hour after talking to me - when I'd told everyone to wait and see if I was even IN labor or not before doing anything... hahah) not talk at all during contractions. I even yelled at him a little bit when he got chatty during a contraction. Hey, I was in labor! I get to yell right?

Around 5cm I finally called Uncle and got the darn epidural already. Dadnd Mike had to step out of the room while the anesthesiologist attending and resident did their thing. I really didn't feel anything at all (they do topical anesthetic before sticking you with the needle) and the nice nurse we had held my hand. I was a bit scared but it ended up being total cake. Relief washed over my midsection and my legs went numb. I went from writhing in pain to being on top of the world. I had to actually look at the monitor to see when I was having a contraction. Since it was around 2:30 and Mike hadn't had lunch yet, I sent him off for a cheeseburger and fries while I was on Cloud Epidural Nine. Thank goodness I did this too, because it was going to turn out to be a long day.

Three cheers for epidurals

Getting in some reading after the epi

The nurses kept fiddling with my pitocin, dialing it up to a 4 or 6 and then back to a 2-3 after the contractions came too fast. I was feeling a short pain in my right side but it was nowhere near as painful as the early contractions. That was the only indication I had that I was having a contraction at the time. I will just say I expected to be in ALOT more pain during labor, epidural or not. By 5 or so I begged the resident to check how far I was dilated. I simply needed to know if I was going to be in for another hour of waiting around or another half day of waiting around before pushing. I was 8cm and fully effaced, so things were definitely in full swing. About an hour later the doc himself swung by, pronounced me 10 cm dilated and gave the nurse instructions to start the pushing. At this point I didn't really feel the urge to push (as the doctor said "You have a really good epidural") but that doctor said we could get things going anyway. My nurse, Autumn, who had been helping out in several rooms, notified someone else to take over her other rooms and prepared to start the pushing process. We loved this labor and delivery nurse - I have a new respect for the nursing profession after this whole experience!!

This chart told me when I was having a contraction

I'm told that usually people are allowed to push for about 3 hours. I pushed for 5. I was not tired and in a great mood to just meet our little one. I didn't want to have a csection after a whole bunch of pushing, so I just kept begging to keep going. We tried pushing in about every position in the book. We could see a bit of change but the whole effort wasn't really going very far. At one point I made a whole lot of progress, and we got to the point where the nurse said she thought I was far enough along to avoid a csection. This made me pretty happy.

At about 5 hours of pushing, the Doc came back in and talked to us. I had been pushing for two full hours longer than he usually lets people, he could tell we were pretty tired out. He indicated that he could use the forceps and get baby out. At this point I was pretty convinced he was right and that baby wouldn't be arriving without some sort of help - I'd been pushing with all my might for 5 hours, Mike was exhausted, I was only OK b.c of all the adrenaline, and our nice L&D nurse had had to go home and she was replaced with one who wasn't very helpful or encouraging. So we looked at each other and knew that it was going to have to happen this way... he was sunny side up, facing up and just not coming out.

The minute we acquiesed to the forceps, the room jumped to life. The doc's resident came in to help position the forceps, the anethesiologist came in to redose my epi, and a team of pediatricians came in to attend to the baby since he was almost 6 weeks early. There were literally 20 people in the room as they positioned my legs up on some platforms and got me all medicated and positioned. I felt really bummed that I hadn't been able to push baby out on my own, but happy that he was going to make his way into the world like NOW. I also needed some more encouragement what with the Doc not being my doc and being very matter-of-fact/quiet and the nurse who wasn't friendly. And Mike was looking pretty exhausted. So I asked him to go get my sister. I needed someone in Hyper Cheerleader on Crack Mode. He and Katie stood at my side as the docs got all done and positioned and we waited for the next contraction.

The next contraction came and I pushed 5 times...and the docs pulled him right out. Katie was perfect, going nuts and hollering encouragement "You're doing it! You're doing it! It's out! He's perfect! He's perfect! Oh my gosh! You did it!" I collapsed, so relieved that Dos had made his way into the world, and so happy to have labor all over with.

The team of pediatricians attended to Dos, now christened Emmett Jeffrey, while my doc and resident finished delivering the rest of the "junk" and sewed me up. The doc wouldn't say how many stiches I had, which clued me into the fact that there were kind of alot. At this point my epidural was so well-supplied that I didn't much care.

They laid him on my chest and we all met each other as a family.

When he came out I immediately started crying.... more crying came when they put him on my chest

I love the look on Mike's face here.... our first moments as a family

We had an hour with him before they whisked the little one off to the NICU to be monitored and watched. Any baby under 35 weeks goes straight to the NICU. We were just 4 days short, delivering him at 34 weeks and 4 days. Now that we are home I am so thankful he had such great NICU staff to watch him and make sure he was 100% healthy. But at the time being away from him was SO HARD.

After I'd been sewed up, my Dad came in and told me he didn't know we were thinking of using his name as a middle name. His lip was trembling and he looked really touched. Katie told him he should just cry it out, and he pulled it together. So cute.

I wish I could say that we all just headed to our postpartum room after that, but right before they took Emmett to the NICU I got a really bad case of the shakes and could not get warm. I shivered for about two hours before finally dropping off to sleep and shaking it. It was pretty much the most awful part about the whole experience; I wanted someone to pitch me out the window it was so awful. My sister tried to feed Emmett a bottle; I was afraid I would drop him b.c I was shaking so bad so I wouldn't hold him while I was shaking. The nurse brought me a turkey sandwich but I was so messed up I couldn't eat it.

About two hours later they wheeled me down to the postpartum room where a nurse helped me clean up and into bed. She was amazing, and was the night nurse most of the time I was there. She was great. Thanks, Nelly!

Only two hours later I woke up with the realizations that a) I was going to need pain medication for awhile and b) that I had a son. I suddenly couldn't wait to see him. I ordered room service breakfast and prepared to go meet him, updating my facebook status to say that he had been born in the middle of the night. And the rest isn't really birth story...

Our first family photo

2011-01-12T12:52:00.001-08:00

IMG_0036, originally uploaded by agstratt.

Our little Dos came a bit early... more later but right now I'm getting in my cuddle time in the NICU. He's doing well but any baby born under 35 weeks goes straight to the NICU. We hope to have him home by next week. Maybe then I can post about his birth!

Emmett Jeffrey, 1:45 AM on 1/8/2011. 5 lbs, 12 ounces, 19 inches long

A small recap

2011-01-05T08:38:00.001-08:00

The holidays were great! I didn't take much time off, but I accomplished SO MUCH over the two week span around the holidays that I didn't really care. I mean, how productive are most people usually over those two weeks? This time I got a huge amount of work-work done and also got the baby's room in Major Order. I finished the quilt my Grandma Stratton started like 20 years ago and addressed a bunch of baby announcement envelopes. Mike also took a large chunk out of his honey-do list and only has a few things left on it - none of which stress me out at all (OK, yes I would like the keg out of the baby's closet before Dos shows up, but it would make for a funny story as well. "When we brought you home Dad still had a year-old keg of skunked Bud Light in your closet"). He would only have one thing left on the honey-do list if someone else in the condo building hadn't already had the ladder... so he couldn't get up on the roof to pull the cables for the satellite back up there. Woe, poor boy, such is life. Maybe this weekend.

Mike and I both got new Kindles for Christmas and are LOVING them. They are awesome. I also got a Flip HD to take videos of Dos and Mike got some media server add-on thingy that is supposed to be super cool and I should probably understand but don't fully. I let him handle these things. As long as I can watch my Bravo on the TV I don't much care what is going on with it.

I was convinced this past weekend that I was entering my "uncomfortable phase" and maybe I still am, but it turns out that Monday I just felt really EXTRA crappy. I was only slightly uncomfortable this weekend so hopefully that is more of the norm than what happened on Monday. On Monday I was in pain and crabby with Milly and then came home and slept on the couch for two hours after work. I only got up to drink more water and then go back to bed. I was worried that the next six weeks would be like that. Thank goodness, I got some of my chipper disposition back, even if I still am a bit uncomfortable. That is to be expected, I guess. The tiny human in me is getting to be not-so-tiny, even the doctor agrees that it is a bit larger than expected. They are measuring Dos again next week for size, so we shall see how that goes!

Also, the world is ending. Last night I went to Jewel and they weren't taking credit cards, then this morning McDonald's was cash-only. What. The. Heck. Luckily I've had Parent Christmas money on me, so no biggie. But still!

2010 Recap

2010-12-31T07:52:00.000-08:00

Here is the quiz that I've been doing for a few year's from Linda's website.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

Put together a crib. Ordered/picked out a ton of baby things. Suffered through months of nausea and exhaustion. Basically lots of baby-related things.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Here were my resolutions:

Get to work on time. This means prior to 9:00. I am constantly missing the 8:45 train and then have to take the 8:55 which not ONLY has a mean conductor but also puts me in at right after 9. I already messed this one up on Day 2, but am going to make a concerted effort to show up on time!
Go to Digital 2 class. And by go, I mean actually sign up for the class and attend it this year
Save money. Hit our savings goal for the year that Mike and I set.

I think I've gotten a bit better at getting to work on time, even if I'm consistently getting there right at 9... at least I'm not rolling in around 9:30. I did go to the Digital Class, which was great. And we've done a good job of saving money as well. We hit the savings goal we wanted to, and then I took $500 out of that account to pay for the water damage to the floors we found when we redid the hardwoods. So we're basically there, I just need to transfer $500 back in!

As for resolutions for 2011, I have no idea. Maybe to not be a total control freak when Dos arrives and let Hubs be the involved, awesome Dad I know he will be. The only thing that would get in the way of that would be my own neurosis.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Mike's friend John and his wife Fran had a baby in September, my friend Jiyon gave birth in June. My brother's fiance's sister had a little boy just a few weeks ago. Lots of babies are on the way for 2011 as well!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Hmmm.... we've been pretty lucky overall. A close family friend died, which stunk. He was a really great person. And Mike's aunt died about a month ago.

5. What countries did you visit?

This was the year of domestic US trips, I don't think we went anywhere out of the country really unless you count the British Virgin Islands for a brief lunch stop over Thanksgiving! We went to Vegas in June, Boston in July, Napa in August, Baltimore in September and the Virgin Islands in November. I also took a trip to FL in April to attend a wedding with Emily, which was a crazy good time. Another trip to FL in September to visit my friend Dora, who is due the day before I am!

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

A real live human baby! On the outside of me! Also, I have been missing my waist for awhile now, that will be good to hopefully have back one day.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

June 10, when we found out about Dos. Sometime around September or so when I felt like Dos would definitely stick around.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Oh man, I feel like I didn't achieve that much this year. But I think I've realized how very blessed I am, which is probably a big achievement. I did work very hard to relax and try to let the baby thing happen when it happened, and I did enjoy a lot of the year because of that.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Getting hella frustrated with the babymaking process in early 2010. Not having faith that it would work out.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Had a few colds, but nothing major.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

We got a new TV in January. New appliances this spring, which are pretty darn nice. I think the appliances probably win - the new convection oven and I are homies for sure. Redoing the hardwood floors was a pretty great thing to spend money on, and we took a ton of vacations. All good things!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Hubs for always being willing to deal with preggo complaints, hormones, and drama around food, and for not constantly rolling his eyes at me when I'm being difficult.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Politicians because they just seem to like to argue rather than actually do their jobs.. Other than that, not really anyone. This is totally the same answer as last year.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgage. Bills. Savings. Vacations. Regarding allowance, I bought a ton of new clothes, including maternity clothes. I figure if I have to lose my waist I might as well feel somewhat cute in my clothes.

15. What did you get really excited about?

Baby Dos! Vacations... naps!

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?

Like a G6

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? happier
– thinner or fatter? Um, fatter around my middle but thinner in my arms and legs. I lost a bit of weight at the beginning of pregnancy and it seems that the only place I've put it back on is around the baby-carrying area, thank goodness. I still have 6 weeks left so we'll see how that goes!
– richer or poorer? richer, just slightly

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Working out. Man, this is my answer every year. I really fell off the wagon though, I tried a few times a month or two ago but the belly just gets. in. the. way!!

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worrying

20. How did you spend Christmas?

We went to see Mike's family. We started the day with Grandma K at 11, Grandma H's at 12:30, then hit up a third set of grandparents for dinner at 3. Holy Christmas, Batman! Then it was back to Mike's parents' house to hang out with the older two nephews and watch them open a few presents (and beg to open even more :)).

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?

Yeah, I think I've fallen in love with this baby. I'm so guarded that it's hard; I know that not everyone who gets pregnant ends up with a baby, even those as far into the process as we are. But as we get closer it's getting easier to feel like it might actually happen, and I feel like once I see him/her it will all come rushing to me.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

How I Met Your Mother. Top Chef (normal season and AllStars - hated Just Desserts). Glee (oh how I love Glee!!)

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No. This is the same answer as last year....I can't say I really hate anyone. More like I really pity some people, people who do my loved ones wrong. Because they don't get to have the awesomeness that is my loved ones in their lives.

24. What was the best book you read?

I really liked Three Cups of Tea, and I read a ton of baby books. My favorite was by Dr Oz, and was called YOU: Having a baby

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

The Script - love the song Breakeven

26. What did you want and get?

Pregnancy. Husband not travelling so much!

27. What did you want and not get?

Baby Dos a bit earlier... I guess shim is on his/her own schedule. But the timing works out really really well for us - especially for me at work. So I guess shim knows what shim is doing!

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

Really liked Inception. I also liked going to see Sex and the City 2, even if the movie wasn't all that great. We went to the Icon theater on Roosevelt and I had some amazing dirty martinis and good times with the gals. The movie was a bit secondary to the event as a whole though!

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 31. Went to lunch with the coworkers at Rivers, ate entirely too many chocolate cupcakes, hit up dinner with my future sister-in-law at CPK, then came home and fell asleep on the couch. It was awesome.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Not quite sure... as I said I've felt incredibly blessed. Maybe less things breaking around the house? haha...

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

Whatever fits and looks remotely cute. Lots of Target, Old Navy, and Gap maternity clothes.

32. What kept you sane?

Does HGTV count? I did try acupuncture early in the year and that was pretty awesome. I actually saw a therapist for a few sessions and really appreciated being able to talk to someone about some things I was going through. I think everyone would benefit from a few therapy sessions a year. My Mom also keeps me sane by listening to me complain or mock whatever is going on at the time.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I don't know, they are all a bit crazy.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

I have no idea. I get kind of fired up at people just wanting Obama to fail. I mean, why would people want our president to fail? Don't they get that that has an affect on them regardless of their party orientation?

35. Who did you miss?

My Grandma S. Still missing her, years after she passed. I guess the whole baby thing makes me really wish she were around. I know she would be so excited for us.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

Can I say Gracie? She's not a baby anymore, she's a little girl, and I feel like she's a whole new person!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

I still haven't learned this fully, but it's that sometimes I can't just fix things, as much as I want to.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Oh, I have no idea!!

Yay, holidays :)

2010-12-23T20:18:00.000-08:00

Hubs and I are off to Indiana tomorrow with beagle in tow, but just wanted to send along some holiday greetings! Hope everyone has a very merry holiday!

By Less Ordinary Designs

Misc update

2010-12-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

It doesn't really seem like Christmas. There, I said it. Maybe it's because we went to the tropical vacation route for Thanksgiving... maybe because Mike and I were too lazy to put up any Christmas decorations save for one little stocking with a question mark on it (which is a tradition in my family when a baby is due - my mom used it for Jay and Katie and my niece... and I asked to borrow it before thinking that THEY might want to hang it up for Dos, oops :)) and one knick-knacky plate thingy that my Grandpa gave me from one of Grandma S's many collections.

Regardless of "feeling like Christmas" or not, all our presents are purchased and wrapped, and I'm looking forward to seeing the wrapping paper fly when all four nephews tear into their stuff. That is always a fun time. We gave Grace her presents last week in Fort Wayne and we got her a pillow pet, a little puppy toy, and some clothes. "A pill pet! A pill pet!" she kept exclaiming.... so cute!

All along, I've said that Valentine's day will be here before we know it and Dos will be here. The impending holiday is making that all the more real. The doctor has said Dos is measuring a little larger than normal, so I started to get worried that shim might come a little sooner than expected. So I moved up my audit-finishing timeline to January 15th, to hopefully ensure that my work is done before baby makes his or her appearance.

Yesterday we had a pretty chill day and I washed all of Dos's linens and diapers (we're going to try to cloth diaper when we're at home... the daycares won't do it). I felt really accomplished and like I got alot done. Then I couldn't get to sleep to save my life last night. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness and having these crazy dreams that the hospital wouldn't let us bring Dos home because we didn't have the crib mattress yet. Nevermind that the kid won't use the mattress for the first couple weeks AT LEAST and will sleep in the bassinet attachment of the stroller. Nevermind that the only thing you HAVE to have is a car seat. Or nevermind that there are these things called STORES that will sell you things that you do not have pretty much whenever you want it. Or that I am not even worried about the things we still need to get for Dos - after our last shower I plan on just adding the last few things to an Amazon list and having them shipped to us. I think my obsession with the mattress is that it went up $20 in price on Amazon like THE DAY I was going to order it and it's been ticking me off mightily ever since. I keep waiting for it to drop again, but I fear I'm SOL and I'm stubborn enough to try and wait it out :)

So anyways, that's what is going on here. A trip to visit Mike's family for Christmas, then we settle in to wait for Dos. I am excited to meet the kidlet, but not overeager... I'm liking that the kid is contained right now and the punches I get all day long amuse me. Let's just hope that shim waits until at least January 15th!!

Tada!

2010-12-17T08:20:00.001-08:00

DSC_0092, originally uploaded by agstratt.

Gracie has been taking gymnastics classes and when you say Tada! she will strike a gymnast-at-the-end-of-her-routine pose. It's kind of awesome to just yell TADA whenever.

Gracie and the candy

2010-12-17T08:18:00.001-08:00

DSC_0046, originally uploaded by agstratt.

One of my baby showers was this past weekend and Gracie ate about a hundred of these little candy baby bottles. I was cracking up at her standing here next to the table, like "what? I am totally not interested in this candy. What are you talking about?" trying to be all nonchalant. Hilarious!

St John - Day 6

2010-12-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Since Mike and I flew out at the buttcrack of dawn on Friday after Thanksgiving, the actual holiday was our last day in St John. This worked out pretty well. Originally we planned on Mike and I making dinner that night, but then my Mom and I got the idea to try and put together an impromptu Thanksgiving meal. We left it largely up to the Fates - if the grocery had the things we needed we would go for it. If not, it was going to be a signature April meal of goat-cheese stuffed chicken :)

Well, the fates complied and everything we needed was available at the store! After breakfast was over that morning, my Dad and I got to work on two pumpkin pies and baked those asap. Then my mom prepped the turkey breast she'd bought at the store and put that into the oven to roast while Mike and I peeled/cut up potatoes for the mashed potatoes. A couple days earlier Mom had cut up bread and set it out to dry up a bit for the stuffing. I cut up the celery and onions for the stuffing and Dad made some broth to make it as well. We were pumped that the turkey breast came with some junk (technical term that is, junk) to make gravy. So we didn't have to try and backdoor it as much with broth as we'd originally planned. Mom had purchased peas and corn to have with dinner as well, so I put some peas on to boil for an hour or two since Mike likes them mushy (everyone else got fresher peas!).

Around 2:00 or so everything was ready and we sat down at the table on the deck to eat our grub.
Everyone agreed that for something we didn't get too stressed over, it was really good. It helped that everyone pitched in, but really we didn't spend too much time cooking the meal. Mostly it was checking on things and then laying out on the deck some more! Plus, having a Thanksgiving meal with a view like this one was a great experience.

After the big meal, there was copious amounts of laying about and relaxing/napping. We took a belly shot for the week.... love the background. This will be fun to put in the Belly Book I've been using to document the pregnancy :)
This was the location of some of the laying around. Deck time!!
Later that afternoon I decided to finally get around to taking pics of the sunset. I had to have taken close to 200 over the course of an hour, watching the sun go further and further down. Here are some of my favorites.

So beautiful, and such a nice relaxing vacation!!

St John - Days 4 & 5

2010-12-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

This vacation is not going to have as many posts as my vacations normally do... mostly because we chilled out alot more than normal!

On Tuesday we decided that a day in the beach was in order, and headed to Trunk Bay. It's rated consistently in the top three beaches of the world, and once we got there we could see why:
Amazing! Luckily, Dad kidding around with some cab drivers in the parking lot netted us a parking space and we sauntered in. You paid like $4 each for everyone to get in, because they had some pretty decent bathroom and shower facilities. I'll pay $4 not to pee in the jungle, so that was fine by me.

We basically laid on the beach and chatted and caught some rays. Oh, except for Dad, who rolled in the sand. Hahaha!
Here is a pic of he and my mom getting some swim time in. The boys spent some time snorkeling about as well. I had no interest in snorkeling, and very little interest in getting in the water (for some reason I was worried it would hurt Dos). But after some prodding from Mike I ended up in the water for a little bit.
For lunch we hit up the snack bar at the beach. Once we got home we got all cleaned up and headed into town for dinner. We started at this SoGo's place that looked pretty shady, had appetizers and drinks and decided to bail. Then we went to this place called The Fish Trap which was much better. The hostess insisted that I am having a girl and asked me to "bring her back to see us sometime!" So funny - I crack up at people that are so insistent upon Dos's gender being one way or another... I suppose they have a 50/50 shot right? We'll find out who is right in February!

The next day we rented a boat that departed from the nearby Westin's docks. Our captain, Stan, stopped by a good place to snorkel while the girls filled out our customs paperwork.
Then we stopped in Jost van Dyke to clear customs. Here is the police station that processed our paperwork.
Here we are waiting to clear customs. You can tell it was pretty hectic.
After clearing customs, we headed down Main Street to Foxy's bar. Dad was enthralled with "Main Street". About 80 people total live on this island!
Getting a drink at Foxy's.... love this pic of Mike...
Then we all got back in the boat and headed around the island to Soggy Dollar Bar. It is dubbed this because there is no dock so you have to swim in and then pay for your food/drinks with soggy money. Good thing I got over my reservations about swimming the previous day! The food at Soggy Dollar was just bar food, but it was really good all the same. I had a jerk chicken sandwich that was super tasty, and the onion rings were massive and the batter they had been fried in was nice and doughy. Hard to explain, but I highly recommend for a good midday meal!
After getting back in the boat at Soggy Dollar, we set off to find the small beach where the Corona commercials are taped... then settled on Sandy Key and some pics. It was this super small little island with nothing on it, so we swam in to hang out a bit. We cracked up b.c as we swam in we noticed Jay up on the beach trying his darnedest to crack open this big coconut. Jay was obsessed with cracking open coconuts on vacation, it was pretty funny.
Wednesday was "Jay and Kim dinner night" where they grilled some grub and we ate out on the deck. Delish!

St John - Days 1-3

2010-12-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

We started vacation on Saturday by getting up at the buttcrack of dawn and heading to the airport. Hearing horror stories about TSA groping patdowns and security lines of hours, we decided we should get to the airport arond 6:00-6:15 for our 8:20 flight. We had a cab pick us up at 5:30 and dropped by down the street to pick up Jay and Kim.

Of course, we were through security in about fifteen minutes. Figures.

Jay and Kim flew American and we were on United, so Mike and I headed to the Tuscany at one end of the B gates for breakfast. Why, you ask? Because there were pictures of divine-looking french toast hanging all over advertising the place. Count me in.

Once we were about done with our food, the parents and Grandpa Stratton showed up for breakfast, so we chilled out there until our flight.

The flight as a whole was pretty uneventful, and we got to St Thomas around 3 o'clock. We hit up a cab to the Red Hook ferry and took that to St John. We ended up getting the 4:30 ferry, which was then met by our rental car company and our villa company. The villa lady followed us to the rental car place, where we put my Dad and I on the driver list (me being the backup for sober-driving purposes). After that we headed to the villa, and were greeted with this place:

Pretty nice, if I do say so myself. The place was pretty cool and had four bedrooms and four baths. The downstairs bedrooms had their own baths, which was nice, but you couldn't reach them from inside the house. It wasn't too much of a pain to go outside down to our rooms, though.

Once getting our stuff in, we headed to dinner at the Lime Inn and then Mom/Dad picked up Jay and Kim from the ferry. They'd had a connecting flight, wheras ours was direct, so they were a bit later. It worked out well actually, since the car we had the first night only fit 5, and the parents picked up a larger car the next day that fit 7.

Sunday we pretty much just laid around the pool at the house and then headed into town to watch the Colts game ("game day baby!" says Jay). Monday we decided to take a drive around the island. It rained off and on throughout the day so we basically drove around the whole island, ate a lunch of cheeseburgers at Skinny Legs (the cheeseburger smell made me queasy, so I didn't get much down. But I did have a nice after-lunch snack of Goldfish and Berry Berry Skittles that helped), and settled on hiking to a small beach off the roadway called Salt Pond bay. It was so nice, and overall not very crowded at all. I didn't take my camera to this place since it was a bit of a hike and I didn't want it to get soaked. The boys snorkeled a bit and the girls and Gramps laid on the beach and caught some rays. Perfect start to vacation, esp since our bedtimes mysteriously migrated to around 8-9 PM (which was 6-7PM our time... not sure how we started that!). At least I was getting lots of sleep!!

Doughnut sadness, nicknames

2010-12-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

With the end of Thanksgiving has come the day that I have dreaded... I am pretty sure that Dunkin' Donuts has discontinued their pumpkin doughnuts. So sad. It's become a Friday tradition for me to drop by and snag one on Friday (along with a Boston Creme for the Boss). They only had them about half the time though, so when I asked for it, sometimes I got greeted with "No." Not "We're out" or "Sorry, no more".... just NO. The Dunkin guys in the train station are such odd ducks. But so sad that I won't get my pumpkin doughnuts on some Fridays anymore. Ahhh, such is life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike refers to me as "Upper Management." It totally cracks me up - when people ask us if we can do dinner or hang out, he says "let me check with Upper Management." So funny. He's been telling me that the Sportsguy refers to his youngest kid as "The CEO." Want to guess what Dos's second nickname will probably be? It's good that I think that nickname is pretty funny as well.

2010-11-29T07:58:00.000-08:00

Holy whirlwind, Batman. The last half of November has been crazy for us.

Nov 10 was my birthday and we celebrated by bowling with some friends on the Friday following the bday. The actual birthday was fun - there were cupcakes that I brought to work but made Hubs make (although I frosted... artfully piped-on swirls of frosting are not exactly how Hubs rolls). And then my whole group at work went out to lunch and the Big Boss picked up the check. I had a lobster pasta dish that was super good! Then that evening my brother's fiance Kim and I went to dinner at CPK because Hubs was playing flag football. Good food, cupcakes and getting to bed by 9 - sounds like this preggo's idea of a good birthday time!
Saturday after the bday, a couple college friends came in from out of town. One of the girls is in a surgery residency and is super busy so we hardly get to see her - but she was in town for a medical conference. So she brought her boyfriend and we all got to meet him! We headed to dinner on Saturday at Lucia's (VERY good, and very reasonable since it's a BYO. Here is a pic of all of the girls from that night! So cute.

Can you spot the three preggos?

Sunday my friend Amy M (from Michigan) had stayed with me and we are both pregnant so we woke up at the buttcrack of dawn. We snagged breakfast and then she headed out of town. All week we'd been moving the little stuff in the living room to either the guest room or the upstairs den, and once Amy took off my brother came over to help Mike move all the living room furniture into the guest room in preparation for the hardwood floors to be redone. After they finished I took Jay home and then headed to Logan Bar and Grill for lunch with our out-of-town surgeon friend and some other gals. I got down a good part of a bratwurst sandwich with sauerkraut, yummy! The rest of the day was finishing moving crap upstairs or stashing it in the kitchen cabinets, and then Mike and I went through our benefits information and decided which plan to be on. I did some major research and figured out how we could save some healthcare dough even after Dos is born. Now that is grownup stuff, dude, going on an HMO with your husband and baby. Crazy. For dinner we took the out-of-town friend and her boyfriend to Pequod's pizza, our fave pizza in the city. I think they enjoyed it, and I enjoyed eating pizza and spending some more time with them!
Monday Hubs and I started working on putting plastic over the cabinets/windows and making all the edges airtight. I lobbied hardcore for putting the plastic over the windows since our blinds cost like a million dollars, are cloth, are impossible to take down without breaking, and cost major cash money to clean and/or fix after I break them trying to take them down. So putting plastic over them and taping everything securely seemed to work best.
Tuesday was batten down the hatches night. Everything was moved up or to the guest room and the taping and plastic was finished. We sealed off the door to the upstairs and started using the upstairs entrance to get in and out of the condo.
Wednesday was Hardwood Day. We had scheduled to have the floors refinished AND have some of the kitchen floor replaced. I realized earlier this year that if we didn't do this project before Dos, then we would NEVER get to it! The hardwood guys showed up at 7:30 AM. Oy. I wasn't even there when they got there since they'd said they would be there at 8. Milly and I were in the process of retrieving Milk Chugs and chocolate Donettes from the gas station. But Mike let them in. Thank goodness he stayed at home for his 7AM conference call b.c when the hardwood guys started taking up the little bit of hardwood they were supposed to replace in the kitchen (from an old dishwasher leak it was all warped and messed up) - they discovered some pretty decent water damage to the sublayers/subfloor. The guy who ran the crew kept looking at me and pointing at the floor and saying "This big problem" or "This bullsh*t". I got that he couldn't just put new hardwood over the water damage and expect that to fix it, but he wasn't giving me any options. At one point, I wanted to say, "Look, you fix floors. I write checks. Let me know how much the check needs to be and I will let you know if that is OK or not. Let's talk options." Instead I went up and got Mike who ran through some possible repair scenarios with the guys. Finally they agreed upon a plan and a price and they got to work. Yay! They were pretty good too... they started the lacquer around 3 so I scrammed and headed to my friend Amy C's house, since that is the smelly part. I came back around 5:30-6 to close up the condo and make sure everything was OK and they were done. It looked great! I grabbed a few more things and headed to spend the night at Amy's since the fumes were too much for Dos.
Thursday was a normal day at work, and Mike worked from home at our place and left a bunch of windows open to air out all day. By the time I got home it was definitely OK for me to be there. So I helped Mike with a little cleanup and then we head to watch the Bears game with friends. I stayed with Amy again that night, just to be on the safe side with fumes and Dos, and Mike and Milly stayed at our place.
Friday night Mike and I stayed at our own place and finished packing for vacation, cleaned up lots of hardwood dust, and worked on washing the walls. There was dust everywhere! But we got it pretty cleaned up, enough to make me stop twitching at least.

That bring us up to Saturday the 20th, where we got up at 5:00AM and left for the airport for the last pre-baby vacation. That is another post altogether, but let's just say that we had 6 days in St John and they were fabulous! Pics and vacation recaps coming soon!

Glucose test update

2010-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

I passed, I passed! So excited!

It was not a fun test, let me just tell you. I thought I was going to barf a couple times and was so thankful that Mike could accompany me to keep my mind off things.

But yay, no special diet for Dos and I!

Pic from the weekend's wedding

2010-11-09T19:14:00.001-08:00

IMG_0466, originally uploaded by agstratt.

A pic of Hubs and I. I was worried that this dress was way too bright for a wedding but I ended up getting alot compliments and I loved it!

Pet Peeves.... these are my feet, dude.

2010-11-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

When it comes to pet peeves, I have about a million of them. One of them that got triggered this morning is people stepping on the back of my feet.

Plain and simple: If you are stepping on the backs of my feet, you are WALKING TOO DARN CLOSE TO ME.

Geesh.

So I started thinking this morning... I don't know that I ever step on the backs of someone's feet when it's not intentional. I mean, I like to give a flat tire with the best of them (esp to the Boss as we walk to lunch). But to unintentionally step on someone's feet? Really? Do you have to be walking that close? This isn't Europe and this one foot of space on either side of me belongs to ME.

I don't know, what do you think? I just really don't think there is much of a reason for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news:

My dentist did not yell at me today like I had anticipated. I've been horrible about flossing, mostly because I usually fall asleep on the couch around 9 and am prodded up to bed by Hubs. So I figured I would get lectured thoroughly. I'm very glad that wasn't the case!
I failed my one hour glucose screening last week (just *barely*) so now I'm carb-loading as instructed by the lady doctor today, tomorrow, and Thursday, and then fasting and going in on Friday for the full-on three hour screening. Wish me luck, if I fail I am majorly screwed, as carbs are about the only thing I get calories from these days. I find it laughable that someone who has gained ONE WHOLE POUND (woo!) during pregnancy may be put on a diet and exercise plan. I may get out of this pregnancy 10-20 lbs lighter than I went in. Wouldn't that be a hoot. It sure would save me time at the gym next spring.

We're off to another wedding this weekend, and I'll be sporting this dress in fuchsia. It's super bright, but oh well.

Pic

2010-11-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a pic from that wedding last weekend!
Go, Forever 21 dress. Nothing like spending 22.80 on something to wear out for a fancy night :)

Halloween!

2010-10-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

Another year, and not one trick or treater. Oh well! More candy for me! Here is a pic of me in the Juno costume.
I don't know what it is about the bump, but it makes me make STUPID faces when I'm getting my picture taken. It's like I figure people are looking at my tum rather than my face and forget to smile or even try to look presentable. I have Mike take like 50 pictures so I end up with ONE that I'm not making StupidFace in. Oh well.

Check out this sexy beast

2010-10-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

Check out this picture of Mike in his flag football shirt... aren't these the most hilarious uniforms?Arrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Weekend recap!

2010-10-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend had a couple fun outings.... Friday night I went to the Bulls vs. Pacers preseason game with my friend Stacy, and Saturday we had a wedding!

Friday, I picked up Stacy and headed downtown. As I told her, "If I have to be sober, I might as well also be convenient and drive." Parking around the stadium was $20 and we split it - and it was the only $10 I spent all night really (aside from the $10 I threw in for pizza with Mike beforehand....hmmmm, Pequod's) - so it was super reasonable considering a cab one way would have been $12-$15. The owner of her company is obviously really important because they had a skybox on the first skybox level right in the middle of the court. It was awesome. I could get used to that kind of treatment! The skybox didn't have food because they just do the full service food for regular season games, but there WAS a dessert cart that came around and a fridge stocked with all kinds of beverages (adult and otherwise). Stacy opened a bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay that I'm sure was awesome and we sat in nice cushy chairs and watched the game and chatted about everything under the sun. When the dessert cart came around Stacy got massive pieces of both carrot cake and brownie cake (I don't even know what this thing was, but it was HUGE and covered in caramel and chocolate). I opted for a chocolate sundae with vanilla ice cream and a huge sugar cookie shaped like a bull. I helped Stacy a bit with the carrot cake and once I was all sugared up, Dos started his/her Tiny Baby Party dance. I took the cookie home for Mike, who loved it. I also may have had part of the cookie for breakfast on Monday. So good! Check out how awesome the cookie looked -

Saturday the wedding we went to was downtown at 1, then the reception was out in the suburbs starting at 6:30. It was nice that the wedding was downtown, because I had a couple hours at home in between the two events. I took Milly out and headed to pick up Stacy, another friend Amy, and then Mike from downtown (where he was studying) and got out there right as cocktail hour was starting. The wedding was at this really nice country club and was really well done - the food was good and the music was fun as well. Although I sat at my table alot of the night (being on my feet is not so fun with Dos!) I had a really good time. There was a fun photobooth and we ended up staying until the end. Bonus part of staying until midnight - almost no traffic the whole way home, so we were at home in bed by about 1. Still, that's later than I usually stay up so there were copious naps on Sunday. But that seems to be pretty par for the course these days for Sundays. In a couple weeks, after his test, Mike can join the Sunday Me/Dos/Milly nap party. I can't wait :)

I took some pics of me and Mike on Saturday on a friend's camera, so I'll post those when she uploads them. But until then here is our photo strip from the photobooth!

Funny conversation.....

2010-10-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

The other day I was walking back from lunch with a friend and saw some of the guys who work downstairs outside having a smoke break. So I stopped to talk to them. The one guy asked if I was bringing in my kid for Trick or Treating at the office on Friday.

I was like "Um, I think it's not quite old enough for that."

He replies "How old do kids need to be to dress up and trick or treat?!"

I say, "Maybe.... born? haha."

He says, "You don't have any kids yet?"

To which I reply "My doctor tells me there is one in here" and pointed to my belly.

There was a chorus of "Congratulations!!!" and "I didn't know you were pregnant!" pretty enthusiastically. Fun and funny :)

Random notes

2010-10-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

I feel like I haven't had much to write about lately, but I've still been doing some fun things.

This past weekend on Friday I hit up dinner with the ladies. We have been trying to do a monthly girls' night out, and this month we hit up Las Palmas. It was pretty good, but next time we're going to have to go somewhere with less intricate tastes and more carbohydrates... if I am going to eat that is! The girls seemed to enjoy the margaritas and the chips and guac were super tasty. I had a good time regardless of whether Dos would let me eat or not!
Saturday Ronda was in town and we went to see Michael Birbiglia. He was super funny and the Vic was great! I had never been to the Vic even though it's within a half mile of my place and super easy to walk to. I'll have to hit that up in the future - it'd be a great place to see a concert b.c it's super small.
After the comedy show at the Vic we headed to The Crossing to meet up with my friend Peter who was in from out of town. It was pretty nice, but started to get crowded around 11, so we bailed. I am totally fine going out all preggo, but when I start to get weird looks from 25 year olds or have to wait a long time to go to the bathroom, it's time to go! I turn into a pumpkin at midnight :)
A couple weekends ago I visited some friends in Indy and they entertained my Olive Garden craving by heading there for lunch. What can I say, there isn't one anywhere near me! I wish I could have their breadsticks (with alfredo dipping sauce) and salad for every meal. Heaven. I could take or leave the soup, although the chicken gnocchi soup is pretty tasty. That night we ate at the Cheesecake Factory and OMG their pecan pumpkin cheesecake is awesome. The first layer is a pecan pie which then had pumpkin cheesecake added on top. It was amazing.
A group from my Dad's church came up last week and we hit up Pequod's and the Million Dollar Quartet at the Apollo. He had a coach bus full of like 60 senior citizens. It was so much fun! The music during the show was so loud that Dos decided to have it's own Tiny Baby Party and was kicking super hard. At least we know that Dos likes Johnny Cash, Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis now. Duly noted!
Last night I had a full-fledged craving and talked Mike into driving me over to North and Western to procure some Pizza Hut. OMG so good. Did you know that they have garlic dipping sauce like Papa John's now? Not exactly the same, but a good enough substitute (no Papa John's in the city makes me a very sad panda). And lo, it was good. Most I've eaten for dinner in a while. We left Milly at home while we went to pick it up so we could eat some pizza in the car without a beagle snout in the pizza box. Poor Milly got some pepperonis when we got home, don't you worry.
As you've probably gathered from a few of these comments, dinner (and eating in general) is still pretty hit or miss for me. I can eat like 1/2-1/3 of what I used to be able to eat. Breakfast is pretty reliable, but lunch is shaky and dinner is usually only barely tolerated. I'm making it through with plenty of snacks and have finally gotten back to my pre-pregnancy weight. It's not so much nausea anymore, as I feel like I had a lap band put in with the addition of a giant gag reflex. Too much food makes me feel like I am going to die. Oh well. This, too, shall pass.... right? I guess if it sticks around it will be much easier to lose weight in the future. Haha....
This weekend I'm heading to a Bulls preseason game with a friend on Friday, and then a wedding on Saturday. Should be good times! I'll have to post pics of myself in my maternity dress on Saturday - dresses make me look humongo!

I think it's official...

2010-10-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

Dos has popped!
El bump is definitely out. I'm still able to wear some of my pre-pregnancy tops, and those hide the bump a bit more. But it's definitely crossing over from "Is she just getting fat?" to "Oh, THAT is what is going on...."

I like my little bump :)

On related note, buying maternity clothes is more fun that I thought it would be. I'm finding good stuff at the Gap, Target, and online. Did you know Forever 21 has a maternity line now?

Groupon thoughts

2010-10-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my friend Emily and I took a Knife Skills class at Kendall College using a Groupon. And this got me thinking about Groupon (the class was awesome by the way, would totally recommend Kendall College for this kind of stuff).

I used to buy Groupons all the time. Until I got pregnant, I bought one for about everything I was interested in. Any restaurant that I wanted to try, anything that interested me. Since I got pregnant, even thinking about food sometimes made me want to throw up. So I pretty much stopped buying the things because I didn't want to look at the offer of the day and possibly get nauseous just looking at the picture on the thing. Today's is for Erwin, which is a pretty good restaurant. But still I hesitate.

Firstly, there has been all this stink about Groupon hurting businesses. Like, if the Groupon is worth 20K, then Groupon gets like 10K of that and the restaurant gets 10K to serve 40K worth of food. Since restaurant markups are so big alot of the time, sometimes they can still cover their costs. But sometimes they can't. And that's where the drama comes in, b.c people say they hurt restaurants more than help. Which, in my opinion is a pretty dumb argument. I mean, if the restaurant is going to make poor business decisions, this just speeds up the Darwinism component to owning a restaurant. If you are going to go out of business you are going to do so with or without Groupon in my opinion.

Secondly, the other thing I've noticed is that alot of establishments that use Groupon are freaking MOBBED after the promotion. I mean, how could they not be? They just sold like 4,000 coupons. Oy. One of our favorite brunch places participated (in a very intelligent way I might add, but selling a $15 coupon for $7, which is only an $8 discount on what is surely at least a $35 brunch), and I can hardly bring myself to go back there after 9AM because it is so freaking crowded. Plus I bought a massage on Groupon, and the soonest appointment open was three months from when I called (and then the massage therapist called in sick and I had to reschedule for three months AFTER THAT, it was so freaking annoying). So now when I think of buying a Groupon for a restaurant I factor that into the cost. As in "Is this $20 discount enough to deal with massive crowds and stressed waitstaff?" Alot of the time it just isn't. Because again, it's probably not somewhere I would have gone ANYWAY, so it's probably not that much of a deal. It's not a good deal if the coupon encourages you to go to a dinner you probably wouldn't go to in the ordinary realm of your life, spend $70 you wouldn't have anyway, and also makes you have to deal with five million yo-yo's crowding the place.

Anyway, what do you think of Groupon? Have you had good or bad experiences? Or both like me? I like it, but I think I'll be a far less quick to pull the trigger on buying Groupons in the future.

Pie, take 2.... a better result!

2010-09-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

This week another sugar/pie pumpkin was delivered in our CSA share. It was mocking me. "Make me into pie," it said. "Pie that doesn't taste like baked squash," it said.
Since I clearly let myself be bullied by pumpkins, I had to take on the challenge.

First I pureed the pumpkin according to this recipe. Then I used something similar to this recipe to make the pie (the actual recipe was from my Better Homes and Gardens basics book, which I can't find a link to online. The only main difference was that it called for 5 oz evaporated milk and 1/2 cup regular milk instead of the regular milk that the link indicates).

It took ALOT longer to cook than it should have... cooking time was 50 minutes, and it probably took closer to an hour and a half. But it was a "deep dish" pie and homemade pumpkin puree has more water content than the regular canned stuff (because of this, I left out half the regular milk to make it less watery).

But it turned out OK! Better than OK even. So good that Hubs stood over the counter, eating pie and letting Dog have some scraps too. She was going crazy over the pie. Milly loves pumpkin, as we put some canned pumpkin in her food as a natural remedy to aid digestion when she is having problems.... so now she thinks that anything that smells like pumpkin is beagle food.

Let's just say it was hard to not have pie for breakfast! Thank goodness there wasn't another pie failure. I would have just caved and bought a frozen pumpkin pie and called it a day!!

Tip from Dad

2010-09-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

On Friday, we had plans to have dinner at Deleece once my parents got into town. My brother picked the place and I'd never been there. So I pulled up the menu quickly to see what they offered.

"Oh no..." I sighed, as I noticed about four dishes immediately with truffle oil in them.

Truffle oil is my pregnancy kryptonite. The smell of it turns my stomach and even thinking about it makes me want to puke. If someone at the next table has something with it on their dish, that's it, I'm done. I won't be able to eat anything the rest of the night.

A bit dramatic? Maybe... But it's not like I have alot of choice in the matter. My eating weaknesses are one thing I've had to come to terms with in carrying Dos. I've NEVER been a picky eater before, so it has been super hard to deal with. And no, it doesn't always go away after the first trimester!

As I explained this to my Mom and Dad, my Dad piped in with a tip: "Do you have any VapoRub? Bring it to the restaurant with you."

I was a bit puzzled, and he explained further.... "It's a trick I learned when I was a cop. When we had to carry or deal with dead bodies. You just put some VapoRub under your nose and that's all you smell. Nothing else!"

Genius. So now I have VapoRub in my purse. And am cracking up that my Dad gave me a tip to stop the nausea that he learned from being a cop!

Random updates

2010-09-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite food bloggers posted about how to make homemade pumpkin puree the day AFTER I needed it. Oh well, now I know. And knowing is half the battle right?
I went to Tampa last weekend to visit a friend. We went to the outlet mall and I got all manner of cute maternity clothes and bought a couple sets of tiny onesies. I figure I'll pick up a few basics when I can for good prices, right? But OMG the newborn ones are SO SMALL. It's hard for me to realize that I'll have something that tiny in February. Well, husband was 10 lbs 12 ounces when he was born, so let's HOPE that Dos is little enough to fit into the newborn onesies! For my sake!
This weekend we had the fam up to visit for my brother's engagement party, and my Dad installed a new light fixture in the kitchen. The previous fixture, one of the tiny glass shades on the mini pendant fell down and broke. Do you know those tiny shades come with either a .75 inch hole or a 2 inch hole? Mine required a .9 inch hole. Finally I gave up and bought a new light fixture. It's soooo much nicer-looking than the last one. Love!
Dad loves to go to the diner up the street for breakfast when he is here. I love that he loves to go, because I get to have a Country Skillet. Hash browns, covered in cut-up country fried steak, eggs, and sausage gravy. Oh and with a side of biscuits and gravy. I split one with my mom and we still had 1/3 of it left to bring home. So tasty. Let me just formally recommend S&G if I haven't already. It's been around forever and it's a Chicago classic.
The brother's engagement party was a ton of fun. We had dinner at Pequod's, our favorite pizza place in the city and then headed to Zella's. Don't go to Pequod's if you don't want to split the bill evenly between all the people there, because the bill came and it was just a strip of adding tape with a bunch of numbers and no descriptions regarding what was what. I crack UP that we have ordered pizza there hundreds of times and they ask for our phone #, name, and address Every. Single. Time. Only pizza place on the planet to not have a computer system, but the pizza is so tasty I could care less!!
On Tuesday of the pumpkin pie disaster, I also made a pretty tasty butternut squash soup. I would probably make it with 4 cups stock next time, as it was a little soupy. But it was good! And very simple.
I've started feeling Dos move around the past few weeks and it's bananas. Shim likes to party right after I eat. I figure my stomach must be kind of loud in the digesting and wake Dos up. That's right, wake up during the day, baby! Day is for being up, night is for sleeping!
Milly has been such a good little puppy. Yesterday she curled up next to my mom on the couch and took a good little beagle nap. Such a cutie!

Hmmm, that's it for now! Hope you all had good weekends!

Disgusting

2010-09-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

Dudes, I made the two worst pumpkin pies on the face of the planet last night.
DO NOT USE this recipe. It is partly my fault b.c I totally didn't read the reviews. But it was one of the only recipes I could find that started the pie from an actual pumpkin.

They look pretty though don't they?

Darnit, now I'm craving a pumpkin pie. A not-disgusting one.

Updated to add - they were awful b.c they tasted awful. The recipe didn't include any sugar or cinnamon, and it just tasted like baked squash. Gross!

Snickers cupcakes

2010-09-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my coworker's birthday, and you know what that means... CUPCAKES!!

I found an amazing recipe for Snickers Cupcakes and sent it to to the coworker along with links to the cupcake sections of a bunch of other websites (my go-to's are Smitten Kitchen, Annie's Eats, and Martha Stewart). Luckily she picked the Snickers cupcakes! I was so excited to try them and I'm pretty sure they won't disappoint.

First I baked the cupcakes. As I took them out of the oven, I smacked one against one of the wire shelves in the oven. Of course since that one was messed up I HAD to eat it. Even without the frosting or filling, it was amazing. This might become my fallback chocolate cake recipe... even if it's a bit on the complicated side, I think it would be worth it.

After letting the cupcakes cool, I made a hole in each one with an apple corer. I chopped up Snickers bars, made a homemade caramel sauce, and mixed those to make the filling. Here are the cupcakes all filled.

There was a little filling left, so Mike and I had some out of the bowl with a spoon. OMG, good.
After filling, I whipped up the frosting and iced them, then topped with more chopped Snickers bars. The frosting looks a little janky, as my icing tip and I got in a fight. I think I need to buy more large tips - I lost my tried and true guy, and the other ones I have are for more detail. Here I come, Joann Fabrics, for more icing accessories. After seeing the cupcakes all gussied up, I am looking forward to trying a finished one tomorrow!
As an aside, I know alot of people diss on the KitchenAid mixer, but I know for a FACT that I would not cook 90% of the things I made if I had to mix manually or with a hand mixer. There is just something about being able to toss ingredients in the stand mixer as it works that is awesome. If any of you are on the fence about a stand mixer, I say go for it!

Dreaming

2010-09-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy dreams are super awesome. I keep having variations of the same dream - I go out, get drunk and then realize at the end I'm pregnant. Oh noes, what do I do?! Obviously this is not something that is going to happen but it’s still funny that is shows up in my dreams so often.

Last week I dreamed I was in Bloomington, IN, where my alma mater (Indiana University) is located. I dreamed that for some reason I was there with Bill Clinton. So Bill Clinton wants to go drink and I of course want to take him to Nick’s. I mean, nothing says quintessential Bloomington quite like a pizza and a game of “Sink the Bismarck.” But noooooo……. Bill doesn’t want to go to Nick’s – he’s been there before and Obama dropped by his last time in Bloomington so that is SO 2008. No, Bill wants to go to the Bluebird. Which, I can’t really argue with – it’s not like Bill is demanding that we go to the Vid or some other such hole in the wall place that I didn’t frequent in college. The Bluebird was definitely a favorite – live bands all the time and 15 cent drafts on Wednesdays add up to a ton of great memories. I remember thinking in the dream there was a good band on that night but can’t remember who. Maybe Dave and Rae?

Regardless, Bill and I walk over to the Bluebird from the Nick’s area/IMU (walk! Bill Clinton!) and proceed to get hammered at the Bluebird. There are shots and pitchers of beer and general college shenanigans. But at the end of the night I remember I am pregnant. In the dream, I was about the same amount of pregnant that I am now – showing just a little but I could have also just had a big meal or too many burritos lately. So it wasn’t like anyone noticed that I was pregnant.

I am still trying to figure out why Bill Clinton showed up in my dream and why we drank in Bloomington. I will probably never know. But I do know that Dream Bill was a darn good partier. Plus, how many times will I get to party with Bill Clinton? Since pregnancy dreams are so vivid, I feel like it’s more of a memory than a dream!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

2010-09-09T06:45:00.000-07:00

Today is my Dad's birthday. I've posted these ten things about him before, but they stand reposting again. My Dad is the bomb dot com, and I hope he realizes how special he is to us all!

His laugh. When my dad really cracks up, he rocks back and forth and scrunches up his face, just laughing really hard. It is funny, it's like his whole being is laughing
He knows how to do everything. I swear to you, he does. I can call my Dad and ask him anything from investment questions to how to anchor some mason screws in a concrete wall. I am not saying this in the typical little girl "My Dad can do anything" way. He really can. Go ahead, ask him!
He also knows everything. Closely related to #2. But seriously, it blows my mind how much this one person can cram into his brain. He knows everything from which little old ladies at the church need their walks shoveled during a snowstorm to how to whip anyone at bags (ahem, Calbert Cheny, ahem).
He is super sporty. My Dad can pick up almost any sport and win at it. It makes me feel hopeful that my athletic non-prowess is a dominant gene, and somewhere there is a recessive gene for athletic ability that my kids may someday inherit.
He more gets along with Mike. I have never had a problem with the typical "Girl marries someone like her Dad" stereotype because mine is so great, but it really delights me that they look forward to seeing each other.
His committment to my mom and our family. We've been through rough times but I have never once doubted that we wouldn't get through those times as a family. He has set such a great example for my life and my marriage.
He's not afraid of anything. He'll jump up and defend me in the middle of Kilroy's when some 6'5" chick threatens me. And he'll order a shipment of stone crocks from China to start a new business.
He helps so many people. Whether he's going to Mississippi to rebuild or evacuate a town, heading the relief efforts after a tornado, or just visiting people in the hospital, he is constantly leaving a real imprint on this world in a positive way.
He supports everything I do. He may play the devil's advocate with me sometimes, but he is proud of me and supports everything I do in life. It's amazing to really know, deep down in my soul, that kind of support.
His big heart. He cares about everyone and everything, and loves me and the rest of our family so fiercely that I cannot even describe.

For all these reasons and more, I love my Dad so much! I am a total Daddy's girl, it is no lie. My hope is to spend many more happy and healthy birthdays with my Dad.

Oh and here is another point, #11. My Dad is the best Grandpa ever! He loves Gracie so much and I know he is going to be a great Grandpa to our little one. He was so excited about us having a baby he might have let it slip a couple times before I was really ready to tell everyone. Now he is so funny, going "I'm not telling ANYONE until it is born now! I don't want to get in trouble!!" Lol. You can tell people, Dad. I swear I won't get mad! Happy Birthday!!

It's about time....

2010-09-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

To tell you guys why I've been a bit quiet for the past few months....

Some of you may know already.....

Not there yet..............

Keep going!

I've been spending all my time feeling like I was going to throw up and/or fall asleep!

Yes, that means that all the trips lately have been alcohol-free for me (Vegas was super annoying sober, mostly because everyone there is hammered all the time, but Napa was actually still awesome!) but you really don't miss drinking when you feel hungover all the time because you are nauseous and exhausted.

I'm about four months along, due Valentine's Day 2011, and we are unbelievably excited!

Retrieving Milly from daycare

2010-09-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

This is how Milly leaves daycare every.single.time. She is such a spaz!

Girls+Jay Weekend August 2010!!

2010-08-31T11:10:00.001-07:00

This weekend Mike headed to an Roast for an old buddy as part of the other guys' wedding festivities, so my Mom took the opportunity to come up for the weekend. And she brought my sister and niece with her! Jay was in town so all the siblings got to hang out with Mom and little Gracie. It was an awesome weekend.

Friday they got there around 8. Katie had forgotten her and Gracie's suitcases at home! Luckily Katie could wear my clothes, but Gracie is not so lucky. So we headed to Target for some Gracie duds before eating a pizza with the fam and then going to bed.

Saturday Grace woke up bright and early and immediately set about making friends with Milly. This included feeding Milly multiple chicken liver treats (those little discs that are spread about on the floor around her).

Then we headed to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which has no fee to get in! She thought the monkeys were pretty cool!
But the cows were definitely the coolest!
After some lunch and quick naps, the fam headed down to the Millennium Park. We got in a picture of us with the bean. I love this pic!
Gracie took a few "pictures" herself with her play pink camera. Jay proclaimed "I've got doubles!" and we all laughed that Gracie wouldn't even know what that meant when she got to be our age.
Then we headed to the big fountains with the faces for some toddler and Jay play time in the water.
Gracie was digging it to say the least. We didn't think she would get into the water fully, but the water that spits out of the faces' mouths gradually tapers off at the end and she was under it when it happened once. So she got unintentionally soaked. After that she was all about running through the water!
I've just got to say - these fountains are a GREAT thing to hit up with little kids. They love them, and besides paying to park, they are free. After fountain time, Gracie was DTS, as Jay says (Down To Snuggle). Look how moody-Abercrombie-model Jay looks in this shot!
Katie went out with some girlfriends from college, so Jay and Mom and I got sushi and stayed in that night. The next day we went to Bakin' & Eggs for brunch. So tasty. Gracie really loved my eggs from my Southern Comfort bowl, and powered through a ton of them.

Once we got home she wanted something sweet so I gave her a plastic cup with some Captain Crunch in it. Milly figured out begging with Grace is a million times more productive than begging from adults.
Oh, and this is what happened when we asked Gracie to give the doggy kisses and Milly was too far away. Milly got pulled a little closer by the ear. Poor Milly!
I think Milly had fun chasing Gracie around, as did I. But she was a little more glad to see Gracie go than I was. I had so much fun with Mom, Katie and Gracie here, and it was good to have all three siblings in one place for so long! I wish we all lived in the same place!

Napa, Day 3

2010-08-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

Everyone was pretty slow-going on Saturday morning after the events of Friday, but we got up and made it to our first appointment at Honig. Honig is also a small winery and are very ecologically conscious - they had several displays about their energy use and environmentally conscious winemaking practices. Very cool, in my crunchy hippy opinion. While were there we made friends with a group of vacationers from New York that were hilarious (Major Accents) and our server was from Iowa, so we talked some Big Ten fun for awhile. We sat outside in the courtyard, which was pretty well sized and so cute.
After that we headed to another smaller family-owned winery called Arger Martucci. We were literally wine-tasting in someone's backyard. I want this to be MY backyard. Our server was very diminuative and sweet, and we tasted all kinds of yummies.
After this tasting, we were all hungry and were a stone's throw from Gott's Roadside (formerly Taylor's Automatic Refresher) in St Helena. We got there just in time, as we only had to wait in line for about 15 minutes. Once our people got to the front, the line wrapped around the entire yard and had to be closer to 45 minutes long! This place is a fancy (and pricey) hot dog/hamburger stand but it is SO AWESOME. I got a chocolate milkshake that was to-die-for and also scored a chili dog and some onion rings. I totally couldn't eat it all. They do have more sophisticated dishes like an ahi tuna sandwich or fish tacos (which Meghan got). Jay got a double cheeseburger that was as big as his head.
My chocolate shake. So YUMMY.
After Gott's, we stopped by an Olive Oil store, which was pretty cool, then headed to Del Dotto. Around this time, Kimmy was a little broken. I bet she didn't think she could have too much wine, right?
Before a tour, I took a pic with my little brudder, Jay!
Del Dotto's thing is that they give you a tour with some wine background (here the tour guide shows the various types of toasting that they give barrels by firing the inside of them. This affects the "oakiness" level that you taste). Then they lead you into the wine caves and let people taste directly the barrel (well they use a fief.... I think that is what it was called.... to take it from the barrel and put into your glasses).
The wines are pretty good but they are pricey. The first location has a wine cave that is over a hundred years old and you can still see the pickax marks in it. The new location is opulently (to say the least - some might argue the word is more "gaudily") appointed with Italian marble and is Over The Top decorated (complete with Italian opera music in the background). Everyone we talked to in the region called it "Del Blotto" because everyone gets so wasted there. We ended up tasting 11 different types of wine, but the whole tour only took about an hour and the group DEFINITELY wasn't wasted! We did the tour in the old location on our honeymoon and it was way more of a party. We had a nice dinner planned for that night though, so no one minded too much. I doubt it was really worth the $50 tasting fee though, like the other location was. Regardless, I think everyone liked the wines (they only do reds and our group was a fan of the BIG reds!).

After that we headed home to get ready for dinner at Cole's Chophouse. Mike and I had eaten there on our honeymoon and it was super tasty, so we definitely wanted to try it again. Plus everyone we'd talked to over our three days in Napa said it was the best steak in the valley, so that was also encouraging. Dinner lasted almost three hours and was a pretty hefty bill, but was totally worth it. I loved loved the hash browns, my lobster tail, and especially the desserts. If you like steak, this is definitely a great place to hit up in Napa. Plus it's in the downtown area which is SUPER cute!

Well, that's it, that's our time in Napa. It was another amazing vacation and I think it secures a spot in my list of Happy Places. I would move there in a second.

Hey Napa, WILL AUDIT FOR WINE!

Napa, Day 2

2010-08-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

The name of the game Thursday was to see a ton of wineries, so we packed sandwiches in the morning and headed off to our first winery appointment at 10:15 AM at Cakebread. Brett and Meghan had wanted to hit up this place the last time they were in Napa but never made it. It was such a gorgeous property.
We tasted some whites and some reds and Mike and I decided on a bottle of Cabernet to bring back to Chicago with us. It was so yummy. We got in another group shot as well!
After Cakebread, we headed to Rubicon. We belong to the wine club there, and so do Brett and Meghan so we got a complimentary tour and wine tasting. This place is GORGEOUS and massive and has a long history.

Our tour guide, who was a mix of all the Golden Girls.
On our tour, Jay found an olive tree and picked an olive. He said it was the most disgusting thing he's ever tasted.
After the tour, we had our wine-tasting in the members-only lounge. It was so cool! We love it at Rubicon, and we were the only ones in the members lounge. It was huge and really nice and our serving guy was really friendly and outgoing. We spent alot of time just chatting it up with him and quickly killed the baskets of bread and cheese he brought out for us.
We spent so much time at Rubicon that we were 35 minutes late for our next tasting, at VineCliff. They had set up the tasting in their wine cave, which was a really cool experience.

This is a small boutique winery, and the experience was really personal and fun. Below is a pic of their wine cave from the outside. So cool.
A pic of VineCliff's main sales room... love the ivy.
After Vinecliff, we headed to Mumm Napa. Mike and I didn't have time to hang out there on our honeymoon, so I was excited for this one. We scarfed our sandwiches in the car before heading in, then settled on ordered two bottles of champagne for the table instead of assorted wine flights (it was much cheaper, and we'd had a lot of Mumm bubblies before).
And got some more pics....
After Mumm I think everyone was ready to call it a day but I insisted upon visiting one of my favorites quickly before they closed - St Supery. We used to belong to their wine club and their wines are featured on my favorite TV show How I Met Your Mother.

No pictures from St Supery, but Meghan ended up joining the wine club and everyone had a good tasting. Some guy came up to our server and asked if he could pay for the couple standing next to him down the way. Mike was like "Where is that guy standing? I am going to go hang out with him!" It was funny... everyone laughed and the guy goes "I'm not that generous!" Hilarious.

After the last of five (FIVE! Holy cow!) wineries for the day we headed to the grocery store for things to grill for dinner. I'd like to say that dinner was amazing, but since I fell asleep at 8PM I missed the whole thing. Oops.

Napa, Day 1

2010-08-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

We only had three full days in Napa, so I ran the preliminary plan by Meghan and Kim on the way to Napa on Wednesay night: I knew Meg loved Domaine Carneros (the quintessential vacation spot that we fell in love with on our honeymoon) and that Kim liked bubbly so I figured we could head there first thing in the AM on Thursday and plot our Napa strategy over morning bubbly. I brought our Frommers book, a list of wineries that Jessica recommended, another long listing that Brett and Meghan have honed over the years, and another booklet we got from the rental car place to aide in our planning.

Our host/server at Domaine was, of course, awesome. The place really knows how to cater to their customers/guests. As he delivered our champagne flights, we asked him to recommend some wineries. Actually, I said, "If you could only go to three wineries in Napa, where would you go?" He brought out this amazing wine weekly magazine with an AWESOME map in it and immediately made 5-6 recommendations. The guy was SO excited about the locations, and several overlapped with Jessica's, so I knew we had to hit those for sure.

In addition, his recommendations overlapped nicely with my sub-plan - to pick a smaller area of Napa and really explore it. The area is so big, with hundreds of wineries throughout Napa and Sonoma that you can spend much of your time just driving around the region instead of hitting wineries. I wanted to cut down on the driving/traffic time and maximize the winery time. And since most of the recommendations we gathered kept us in the Rutherford/Stag's Leap regions, that dovetailed very nicely with my thoughts on reducing time cursing in traffic!

Here is the group after plotting out our strategy and some bubbly. The weather, as is typical during this part of the year in Napa, was idyllic.

After Domaine Carneros, we hit a couple of the Domaine guy's recommendations. The first was Robert Sinsky, where they had food pairings with the the wine. We were under the impression that this would be a lunch-type event. Instead there were 4 pours of wine with tiny little servings of food. As an example, the first food pairing was HALF a mini-quiche. What the heck? Why would you make a mini-quiche and cut it in half?! The food pairings were super yum though - the other ones were herb-roasted almonds, olives, and then a cheesy roll thing. The wine was good but our server seemed a bit uninterested. She was nice, but nothing great!

After Robert Sinsky we headed to Silverado Vineyards with the intention of hopefully finding some lunch. Unfortunately, they didn't have a deli but they pointed us toward the Oakville Grocery. We had a wine tasting flight at Silverado before heading off to lunch.
And took some pics! The views from Silverado were amazing!!
At Oakville Grocery we all got sandwiches except for Brett and Meghan. They got a wheel of goat cheese, a big baguette and some pepperoni/salami meat sticks. They looked super yummy!
After our late lunch we had time for one more winery, so we headed to Goosecross. They had these cool wine bottles dipped in chocolate!
We got in another group shot!
Goosecross is a really small, family-owned winery. The ambiance was pretty nice and everyone was pretty friendly. Plus the guy comped our tastings because Jessica recommended the place!
Tasting room had barrels stacked up to the ceiling.
After Goosecross we headed home for some nap and chill time before our 8:30 reservations at Bottega. I totally didn't take any pics at Bottega but it was amazing - definitely an experience! I would highly recommend. They gave us a huge table in the front of the restaurant and we felt like rock stars. :)

Poker Night

2010-08-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hubs had the boys over for poker night last night. I guess it was a pretty rocking party (I wouldn't know, I went to bed at 9:30PM!), because he went to bed to this...
(This pic even misses most of the kitchen, which was covered in paper plates, pizza boxes, soiled glasses and other dishes....)

But woke up to this!

Man, our magic cleaning fairy is great. It must be nice to have a wife :)

Now I just need to vacuum the top of the poker table and help Mike put it away. It has lots of boy crumbs on it :)

Happy August 11th!!

2010-08-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Three years ago today, Hubs and I tied the knot. As Hubs would say "Longest three years of my life!" I kid, I kid!!He's my best friend, my everything. Not to get to lovey dovey, but I can't imagine my life without him.

Also, today is Milly's birthday! Happy second birthday baby dog! No birthday party this year, dog. Last year was just an excuse to have my friends over for sangria. This year Mom and Dad are jetting off to Napa. Have fun with Aunt Amy!
This is what she looks like when I pick her up from daycare... falling asleep sitting up. God bless daycare.

Tame update

2010-08-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Things are a bit tame around these parts right now. We leave for Napa a week from tomorrow, so that is exciting... until then, here is what's going on:

We had a nice chill weekend here in the Chi last weekend. Saw inception, dropped by a birthday party, ran errands, BBQd with my brother and his fiance, hit up a bridal shower and street festival. Wow that sounds like a lot for a chill weekend. Such is city life.
Mike's parents were up the weekend before. We headed out on Mike's Uncle's sailboat and also hit up Fat Willy's Rib Shack. Both were divine.
Heading to the Cubs game tonight if weather cooperates. Until then I will be sporting my bright pink Hunter wellies
I am attending a bachelorette party in Madison, WI this weekend. I've never been there, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to consuming fried cheese curds. I don't know that I've had them since I rolled off the audit I did in Racine, WI. Back then, every day I would come back to the Marriott and get room service cheese curds. So freaking good.
Milly is smelly. We're holding off on a beagle bath until this weekend so she is nice and clean for my friend Amy who is watching her while we are in Napa.
I am especially enjoying Captain Crunch right now. For some reason the green berries don't ruin the generic version like they do the actual name-brand version. Yum.

Hmmm.... what else? I don't know. I am a crapola blogger lately!

Have a good week peeps!!

iWanna my white iPhone

2010-07-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting very very patiently for the white iPhone to come out. Last week it was delayed yet again, to year-end, so I gave up. Darn you, clean design and beautiful classic Apple loveliness!

So I go into Best Buy last night (I had Best Buy gift cards, so this made my iPhone the best price - ZERO dollars) to order my new iPhone.

Me: Hi, I'd like to order the iPhone 4.
Girl at Counter: OK, let me look and see if you are upgrade eligible... ok, yup, you're good to go. Name?
Me: April Lastname
GaC: Phone number
Me: 773-###-####
GaC: Would you like the black phone or the white one?

I spluttered, like, "I don't think the white one is available. Right? Right?" The manager leans over the girl and is like "Yeah, God only know when those will come in. We're not taking orders for them."

The girl just shrugged it off, didn't even admit she had no idea what she was talking about and marked down "Black" on the order form.

Um? Thanks for both making my hopes and dreams and crushing them in 20 seconds flat. Hooch.

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

2010-07-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Thought I would repost the 10 things I like about Gayle... Happy Birthday, Mama!

According to Birthday Tradition, here is 10 things I like about my Mom, a little late (her bday was Wednesday, July 21!):

My Mom just GETS it. She gets me perhaps more than anyone.
My Mom is great with kids. I don't know what she does, but she can get Gracie to sleep in 5 min flat when Katie's been trying for hours to no avail. Earlier this year I told her "I don't know how you do that, but you should bottle it and SELL it!" She has a natural talent with the childrens!
My Mom can order/heat up pizza like no one's business. When my Mom was in college, my Uncle counted during one finals week and we had pizza 5 times in one week. I would like to think that all her non-cooking days have given me a fine appreciation for pizza as it's own food group.
Mom knows all about the Information Technology. Sometimes when I have a question about a certain system, I'll tell someone at work that I need to talk to my "Subject Matter Expert" and then call Mom to ask how the system would work or if someone is pulling my chain. Plus she is helpful in fixing all the stuff I mess up.
I help her argue with her auditors. I love giving my Mom ammo to fight back against her audit issues at work. It is way too much fun.
She is one of my favorite people to gossip with. From family drama to what is going on with the people back home, Mom's always got the dirt.
I've gotten some really great recipes from Mom, even if 95% of them involve some kind of ground beef. And I love that she is always down for eating out, especially at Los Bravos or Rafferty's.
Mom is a great minister's wife and I love that she supports and loves my Dad. Mom sits through and is involved in countless church activities with a patience that I doubt I could ever muster. And I suspect that she thoroughly enjoys most of them!
Venting to my Mom is the best thing ever. I will have talked about something to a few friends or Mike, and if it's something that is REALLY weighing on me, nothing really lifts the burden off my shoulders like talking to my Mom. After hanging up the phone with her I feel immediately lighter and better about the world.
My Mom knows exactly what to say. Whatever I'm venting about, she always has the perfect thing to make me laugh or give me perspective.

As you can see, I love to just CHAT with my Mom... she is the best :)

Mega update

2010-07-14T11:25:00.001-07:00

Looking at the blog lately, you'd think we have nothing going on. And I did the same... wondering what to write about. Fortunately my little point and shoot camera saves the day and reminds me of what we've been up to.

The week after Vegas, we got Mike's boss's tickets to the White Sox game and we took some friends along... this is Amy and myself at the game.
At about the bottom of the 8th inning, some old man in front of us stood up and started YELLING. "You twos are the most ignorant fans I've ever sat in front of at a baseball game ever! All you did was talk the WHOLE TIME. BLAH BLAH BLAH!" And then proceeded to run up the aisle (which was rather long because we were in the 5th row) screaming BLAH BLAH BLAH and flapping his arms. Once we got over the shock of being screamed at, it was kind of funny. Plus, Amy knows more about baseball than most dudes. She was like "If he'd stuck around, I could have told him anything he wanted to know about the game. You ran it up in the 4th and then it was kind of boring!" It was so funny. At least we can refer to ourselves as the Most Ignorant Fans Ever. Dude, Sox fans are crazy!

I went on a boat cruise with a professional organization that I'm a member of. Fun networking and talking to people I used to work with. Plus the view was amazing.
My friend Stacy turned 30 and we all went out to celebrate. Here me, Emily, and Shayna pose at Glascott's!
On the 4th of July weekend we headed to our friend's lakehouse in southern Michigan on Friday night, then attended Mike's cousin's wedding on Saturday during the day. We left Milly at the lake with her friends, but had to stop by my sister's house on the way back to the lake to see her new puppy, Jonas. He is a basset and so cute. He runs like his body is made of one giant slinky - all 4 paws just all over the place. So cute!!
This was what Milly was up to while we were gone. Getting attention from all the lovely ladies!
On Sunday Mike participated in the annual lake cornhole tournament. He didn't win this time, he was pretty disappointed. But look how adoringly Milly looks at him. I love that Milly likes him best - I like him best too, and it makes me feel like I really picked a good one that the tiny beagle has such an admiration for him.
Last weekend we headed to Boston with my brother and his fiance to visit his fiance's sister and her husband. I caught a contraband pic of the skyline right before takeoff.
On Saturday we visited the Boston Museum of Science where Mike found an awesome Mathematica section. Good times!
Saturday night after an amazing dinner at Damiano we walked to see the Old North Church.
On Sunday in Boston we hit up brunch at Stephanie's. OMG it was so good. Look how big Mike's french toast was!

So that catches us up. The weekdays have been pretty boring as per usual, even though we did go to Kirkwood last night for dinner ($5 Quesadillas, woot!) and to watch the Allstar game. It was a perfect summer evening in the city.

This made me laugh

2010-07-14T09:38:00.001-07:00

Probably what Milly is thinking while we play fetch....

Doing some good

2010-07-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did my part and signed up for the national bone marrow registry. You only have to swab your cheek with some qtips to get signed up and you could save someone's life? I'm totally in.

Registry Link here!

A couple weeks ago, I quizzed Mike on my organ donation wishes. Sometimes he forgets things or doesn't listen fully (check those husband skillz of tuning out the wife!) so I wanted to make sure he knew what I wanted in case the issue ever came up. He thought my answer was pretty funny...

I am ok with donating anything BUT my eyeballs. I don't want anyone out there wandering around with my eyeballs!! Dude, that is HELLA creepy!!!!

Getting things done.... or not.

2010-07-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

One of my pet peeves is trying to get something accomplished and not being able to do so because someone else is a moron. Today's example of that was the city clerk's office distributing about 125,000 defective city stickers (only to those who preordered right when the forms came! What can I say? I like to check things off the list!). So I had to go and exchange the stickers at City Hall. Wonderful. I usually order things online because I don't like to wait in line with the unwashed masses (what? people are smelly). Other examples of me doing my part but the task not getting accomplished include 1) going to Home Depot to have extra condo keys made but the keys are not cut right so I have to go back and have them recut again or 2) going to the dog food store where the chick accidentally scans Milly's food twice so I have to go back again for a refund. Boo!! It's like I shouldn't even bother trying to get stuff done to begin with sometimes!

All that said, when I went to City Hall today I was totally impressed. They had 5-6 people working the information desk and asking people why they were there and directing them accordingly. When I informed one guy that I had defective stickers, he took them and my receipt and went to reprint them for me. No waiting in line, I even got to sit down in the back! This was awesome because that line wrapped around like four times and I would have been there about forever. Let's just say other than the 6 block walk there and back, it was actually a nice experience. Score one for the city! :)

Vegas, baby

2010-06-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

Hubs and I went to Vegas this last weekend and hoo boy did we have fun! Here's a quick photo recap. We stayed at the Wynn

We ate at Mesa Grill, where I made someone take pics of Hubs, me, and Brett. Brett was REALLY happy to take this pic. Not!
We saw the Beatles Love Cirque. It was awesome!
We headed to the Carnaval bar and did a Team Knowles fistbump.
We met up with an old coworker of mine, who lives in Orange County now ("Home of the Cougar" he said!). I took pics that cut off his head. Oops. He also saved my iPhone when Mike upended an entire Maker's and Diet on the table.
To top off the weekend, we ate lunch at Stripburger on Sunday where I had fried pickles while wearing my new aviators. Cool!
The weather was amazing and we had a great time! Plus I got to shop at Anthro, so it was pretty much a perfect little vacation. :)

I am such a spaz

2010-06-23T11:21:00.001-07:00

Today, Wednesday the 23rd - Internal monologue
12:45 PM - I smell cookie. Wow, a cookie would be really good right now.
12:55 - I still smell cookie. Who has the cookie?
1:05 - Hmmmm... cookies. Why do they smell so good?!
1:10 - Oh wait. That lady at lunch gave me a cookie while I was waiting in line and I put it in my pocket! *rummages around in pocket* Here it is! A little smooshed, but doesn't look too bad! This is so exciting!!!
1:11 - Cookie is gone. Also, I am a spaz for not remembering there was a cookie in my pocket.

Blackhawks Rally

2010-06-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

Took some good pics at the Blackhawk rally and thought I'd share!

This guy had a sweet Stanley Cup Costume on!
After the police cars and some sponsor floats, each team member had a trolley with his name on it. The trolley was filled with his family and friends, and these people were pretty darn excited!

Then came multiple double-decker buses, filled with Blackhawks players, management, and even some older players in their jerseys!

Byfuglien holds up a sweet wrasslin' belt.... BTW, this is pronounced "Bufflin"... wouldn't have figured that out on my own.
Not sure who this is?

Toews hoists the cup!!
More cup!
The crowd follows the parade down the street... so cool!
The parade was super cool... I don't know if I'd go to one again (esp on a hot muggy summer day) unless it was the Cubs, but it was great to get to experience at least once! One of those Chicago things, checked off the to-do list :)

Stratton Family Reunion 2010

2010-06-15T07:53:00.001-07:00

This weekend we headed down to Brown County State Park in southern Indiana to get our family reunioning on!

I didn't get ANY pictures of little Gracie! I'm a little heartbroken about this, but she was only there on Saturday and was in the waterpark for much of it. And new Nikon baby doesn't go near the water. Gotta protect it near splashy kids!!

On Sunday after breakfast we take a ton of pictures before everyone takes off though, so I got a few good ones...

Emma and Michael cheese

Lots of little kids. Didn't realize there would be this many in the 18 and under picture!

My Grandpa and his siblings Rita and Marvin. They started this whole family reunion tradition!

Marvin Family picture

Rita Family picture

Frank Family picture

The whole group!!!

I did manage to get a few pics other than the group shots, mostly of my cousin's new baby (2.5 months old, so cute!) Abigail
She is so cute and such a good baby.
That is it for this year's Family Reunion festivities! Hopefully next year I get more pics of Gracie!

S'more cupcakes

2010-06-10T07:50:00.001-07:00

I've always been the designated cupcake-maker in both our friend group and at work for birthdays. I used to just ask the person's favorite kind cake and make that and it usually was pretty simple like yellow cake or red velvet etc. Lately I've been sending people links to the cupcake sections of my favorite cooking websites and having them pick cupcakes from those (Smitten Kitchen, Annie's Eats, Martha Cupcakes). This ends up in me making more complicated cupcakes, but it's nice because I get to try recipes I wouldn't otherwise. I never make cupcakes unless it was for a special occasion!

This week, my coworker picked S'more cupcakes for her birthday celebration. I was super excited because I had actually really wanted to try this recipe. And OMG THEY WERE SO GOOD. I didn't realize until the "frosting" was done that it was actually homemade marshmallow, and that really made the cupcakes. Plus "toasting" the marshmallow with my culinary torch was so much fun!

I wouldn't recommend these cupcakes for a beginner cook, simply because the marshmallow was really quite complicated. I had to have Mike help me b.c I had to constantly whisk the mixture over a double broiler, while taking the temp to make sure it didn't go up too fast (don't want the egg whites to scramble) and that it got right to 160 degrees. I also wouldn't recommend unless you have a stand mixer - once you take it off the broiler you have to let the mixer beat it up for a good ten minutes and that would be super tiring and almost impossible to do by hand. I imagine hand whisking would take even longer than the stand mixer.

BUT DUDES, these cupcakes are AMAZINGLY tasty.

Bakin' and Eggs

2010-06-09T19:48:00.001-07:00

On Saturday we met up with Michelle and Andy and their wee one Samantha for brunch at one of our favorite new spots, Bakin' and Eggs. We LOVE this place, and it's convenient because it's just up Lincoln from us. Let's just say if you live in Chicago you have to go. And if you don't and you come visit, I will almost certainly take you there!

As an aside, I feel like kids look really grown up when the can smile intentionally for the camera. Sam is such a big girl!!!

Once we arrive, I always hem and haw over the menu for the entire time before the waitress comes to take the order, and then finally give in and order my usual, the Southern Comfort Bowl. Behold, breakfast potatoes, topped with eggs, topped with cheese, topped with biscuits, topped with gravy. Be still my heart.
We also like to get the bacon flight for the table. It has jalapeno, honey, mesquite, maple pepper, and cherry smoked bacons. And it is freakin' delish.
Such a good time with some of our fave people and food! My idea of a great Saturday morning :)

Weekend recapped

2010-06-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hubs and I were originally supposed to go out of town to a Florida beach this Memorial Day weekend. Those plans fell through b.c the friends we were supposed to go with bailed. However, I am SO GLAD we stayed home this weekend. It was everything I hoped for and more.

The weekend sort of started out on Thursday night. I say "sort of" since I worked from home on Friday. Thursday night I went out with my girlfriends to see SATC2. It was ok, but the theater we went to was amazing. We hit up the Roosevelt ICON theater and had VIP seating. This meant our seats were assigned and we didn't have to wait in line to get good seats. I was stoked. They had really good food at the theater and even better, great drinks. I will be returning to have Scott the bartender's Hendrick's dirty martini again. So good.

Friday I worked from the comforts of my couch and sent Hubs pictures like this of dog also enjoying the couch:
I'm pretty sure this is what she does every day when we're gone at work. Minus the couch, since we lock her in the hallway because she can't be trusted.

Friday night my brother, his fiance Kim, and his friend Kevin came over for grilling and cocktails. They left to go to another party around 9:30 and Mike walked out with them to take Milly to potty. I got way too comfortable on the couch in his absence and as a result stayed home watching America the Story of Us on the history channel instead of going to another buddy's house for more drinking. The couch was so comfy!!!

Saturday morning I woke up and cleaned the house, organized some stuff, balanced the checkbook, and finally woke Mike up around 11:30. "I'm going to Kirkwood for drinks and lunch," I told him. "OK, fine, I'll go. But only for one drink and a cheeseburger," he replied.

Then this happened.... let's just say we totally stayed longer than expected! We basically spent all day in the beer garden at Kirkwood. I can think of many worse things... we had a ton of fun.

Fishbowl means... you'll be here awhile boys.

Me and Kimmy!

Some random guy decided to take a nap. He had a sweet Minnesota accent.

Mike and I left around 7 to go home and potty Milly. We were going to head back to the bar and go back out again, but Mike fell asleep and I couldn't wake him up. So I camped out on the couch, watched more America the Story of Us, and baked cookies for our new next-door neighbors. Mike woke up at 11:30PM, long enough to watch two episodes of Mad Men with me, eat, and then go back to bed.

Sunday morning we woke bright and early and grabbed McDonald's breakfast on the way to the doggy beach. It was a gorgeous hot day and Milly loved it. She's been there before, but we haven't (Kim took her), so it was a good first family outing to the beach!
After we got home it was time for a family nap and then accomplishing some tasks - we hauled stuff down to the garage storage unit, organized it, added some tiles above the stove to fill in around the new appliances, replaced some light bulbs, did laundry, etc. Lots of quick stuff that we'd been procrastinating on forever.

That night we hit up dinner at El Tapatio... finally I have a good Mexican place to substitute for my place back home, Los Bravos. It was amazing and totally reasonable. We ordered a pitcher of frozen strawberry margaritas, and he brought us four almost-full glasses and the full pitcher. "I had some leftover for you guys," the waiter said. "I like how this place works!" exclaimed Mike. After dinner we headed to Iron Man2, which was loud but good. I thought it was as good as the first one, and I love Robert Downey, Jr, so it was all fine by me.

Monday was a BBQ with some of Mike's coworkers, more naps, and more America the Story of Us. The weekend was a perfect balance between chilling, accomplishing, and socializing. Best weekend I've had in a long time! Let's make all of the weekends that long, eh?

Fun from the doggy beach

2010-06-01T08:12:00.001-07:00

Milly has always been a bit scared of the water (that may be our fault.... we tossed her right into our friend's lake last year thinking she would just love it once she got in. Oops), so Sunday at the doggy beach we didn't have high hopes for her to get in the water.

Hmmm, Dad. You have fun out there. I don't think so.

Some pets for a couple steps out? OK, I'm thirsty anyways.

I'm good. I'll just hang here, thanks.

But I want the ball. Just a few more steps.

Dad took my ball out there. Oh noes!

OK, fine, count me in. But only if Dad is around!

Getting deeper!!! Half swimming, half walking

Now that I'm out on this sandbar it's soooo not a big deal.

She's not frolicking around in the water yet like some of the dogs out there, but she got in! Baby steps!! We had a good time at the doggy beach, even if each round of fetch was sure to get Milly a snout full of sand. Still a good time!

New kitchen stuff

2010-05-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

Check out these new stainless steel appliances. I love them! Today and yesterday I added some tiles to fill in around the new oven and microwave and I need to grout the new rows tomorrow. Then the kitchen will be ALL DONE! At least... until we decide to redo all the cabinets that is.

Milly the thief!

2010-05-19T18:52:00.001-07:00

DSC_2179, originally uploaded by agstratt.

Milly loved stealing the nephews' plastic alligator and running away. It was an epic game of chase!