Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Wow, I've gotten really bad at blogging!

Well, it's been over 4 months since I last blogged. Let's just say, a lot has changed in the past 4 months! Ethan is getting so big and he's growing every day! He's already 17lbs 3oz and 28 1/2 inches long at only 5 months old. He's going to be a tall boy! He's rolling over enough that I have to keep an eye on him and he's learning how to grab things, especially my hair and jewelry. He's doing great with nursing. We never really had a problem with that except for one strange week when he was 2 months old that he would go like 6 or 7 hours without nursing, and when I would try and nurse him, he'd get fussy and arch his back. I'm not really sure what that was all about, but we got through it. He still sleeps in bed with Mark and I most of the night, but mainly because I've been dealing with insomnia for the past 4 months. I know, you're thinking..surely you would have had more time to blog if you were up all night watching the clock tick away. Well, I found that getting up out of bed made me more awake and made it worse, so I layed in bed, for hours some nights, wondering why I couldn't sleep. All the while, my child was sleeping peacefully next to me..sometimes 8-10 hours at a time. I figured I would get more sleep if he was in bed with us, so all I had to do was roll over and nurse him. Instead of finally drifting off to sleep, only to hear the monitor go off and have to get up and go get him. Luckily, my sleep cycle is finally normalizing. At first, my insomnia was the result of taking too much of my thyroid medication. I guess pregnancy can do some funky things to your hormones. Then, once I went off of that to normalize my hormones, I began taking zyrtec to help me sleep. I became dependant on it, and I think it eventually gave me insomnia. I've been off all medication(excluding the small amount of thyroid med) for the past two weeks now, and am slowly sleeping longer at night. My doctor thought that it had to do with low blood sugar beacause I would wake up at 3 or 4 am, ravenous, and sweaty. One night when I woke up, I got up and got a snack. I fell back asleep very soon after that, so I guess that was it too! Once I'm sleeping normally again, we're going to start putting Ethan back in his crib. I feel jipped though, because Ethan is a great sleeper..usually going 6-10 hours each night without waking up, and then there's me, laying awake, when I could be sleeping!



Anyway... my job is going well. I've been with Rachelle Dauphinee Jewelry for the past year and half and the business is growing! My highlight of the year so far though is being able to take a metalsmithing class with her. We're trying to expand our knowledge of jewelry making and evolve a bit more, so with that comes training. This week we learned about annealing and fusing. Basically we heated sterling silver until it turned red and pulled all the copper out of the metal, leaving fine silver in it's place. Next week we will be making a cuff. I'm having so much fun in this class!

Ethan's been so cute lately. He's started pulling his feet to his mouth and sucking on his toes. It's cute until he's big enough that he's walking around..then it won't be so cute putting his dirty feet in his mouth :) I have to be careful with breastfeeding because he's beginning to clamp down on me with his gums....That hurts, so I can't imagine how much it will hurt when he has teeth! We've been recording Ethan with our video camera almost once a week for the past month or so, because I've just realized how darn quickly he grows. I mean everyone tells you that, but you just sort of blow it off. It's totally true! I never realized how fast the newborn phase goes by. Now he's 5 1/2 months old!! I just bought him some new cloth diapers. We've been using Bum Genius 3.0 pretty exclusively, but I was doing diapers every day, so I decided it was time to get some new ones. I got an Econappi by Swaddlebees in chocolate with blue polka dots, two thirsties covers and a thirsties diaper, 5 prefolds, 1 prorap cover and 1 Happy Heinies AIO in a yellow color. I absolutely love the Econappi, and of course it was the most expensive one, at 26.95. But if it holds up, it will be worth it. Maybe I'll just set aside that much each month to buy more! I never realized how fun diapering could be!

Ethan's getting close to starting on solid food. He's not showing all the signs yet, but I have a feeling it won't be long. I want to wait as long as I can though because of the history of family allergies. Anyway, as you can see, my life is pretty much all about Ethan now. I love it!

I'll post about something else now. I love this time of year. I think I posted a blog last year around the same time, but I was pregnant at the time, so food sounded awful to me. The farmer's market is in full swing, and fresh seasonal produce is abundant. Last weekend, my sister, mom, Megan and I all went to the Farmer's Market in Coppell and Dallas. We got our raw milk and cheese, organic, local eggs, and I picked up some fresh uncured ham as well. After we got back to my mom's house, we made pickled beets, fresh pickles, ricotta cheese, beef bone broth and peach/plum jam for us all to share. All of the ingredients were fresh, local and organic. I made some roast one night and homemade biscuits with raw butter and topped them with the peach jam. It was to die for! Everything tastes so fresh this time of year, and I'm glad I'm able to enjoy it, since I'm not pregnant and nauseated by everything! Tonight I made a thai noodle and chicken dish that turned out really well. It's funny because last year, the week I found out that I was pregnant, I made a thai rice and chicken dish and it was the next day that I felt the nausea of pregnancy for the first time. My whole pregnancy, the red curry paste I used to cook the meal with sounded absolutely repulsive to me. Well, tonight I opened it up again, took a whiff and it actually sounded really good! Here's my recipe:

4 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp red curry paste
4 tbsp coconut oil, plus 2 for veggies
2 green onions, chopped
4 basil leaves, diced
handful of cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp agave nectar
couple of squirts of chriracha sauce(hot chili sauce)
1 package vermicilli rice noodles (Kame brand)
12 oz chicken breast, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 red pepper, thinly sliced
1 carrot, shredded
1/2 onion, thinly sliced,
3 garlic cloves, chopped

Mix the first nine ingredients in a bowl. Set aside. Sautee the veggies in the coconut oil until crisp tender. Put water on to boil and cook noodles until tender (about 2 or 3 minutes). Drain noodles and rinse with water to prevent sticking. Sautee chicken in a separate pan until done, then pour in sauce and veggies and heat until hot. Serve with crushed peanuts and a sprig of cilantro.

This turned out really well. I based the recipe loosley on one that I found online, making my own alterations.

We got together with the families from the birthing class that we took on May 24th. That was so much fun seeing all the babies..they are all about a month and half within age of eachother. I also enjoyed hanging out with other moms that are in the same place in life as myself. I'd really like to get together with them again sometime. Well, that's all I have for tonight. I'll try and blog again very soon.