Back In Action

It's official on Wednesday, August 19th, Sophie started walking again! Two weeks after she had her cast(s) removed she felt comfortable enough to take the plunge. She is a little "limpy", but she is moving and grooving. She is so proud of herself saying, "Look I'm walking!" Neal and I could not be happier, it is so great to see her up and about again, we almost forgot what it looked like to have her walking around the house. She is loving her regained freedom and mobility and is walking everywhere and tonight we ventured outside and she was all about climbing on her swing set and going down the slide again. I think it is safe to say that we will be spending a lot of time outside since we have been cooped up indoors for the past 6 weeks and she has some serious energy to burn off. Oh yeah did I mention that she has now taken it upon herself to shorten her once 2 1/2 - 3 hour nap down to a measly 1 1/2 hour one?! Perfect just in time for the new baby....my cherished nap time is slowly dwindling! Maybe with Fall right around the corner and all the time we will be spending outside will wear her out and we can get some more nap time mileage! Wish me luck on that front!

Thanks Auntie Gina for the Bo' Sox hat that Sophie is rockin' out in these pics!

Ahhh what a beautiful sight!

So excited!

28 Weeks....Almost

27 weeks and 4 days to be exact as of today's date, but not like I am trying to speed up the process or anything. Technically, I have 12 more weeks to go, 3 whole months ugh! However, at this point in my pregnancy with Sophie (unbeknown to me at the time) I only had 10 more weeks, so I am really hoping that this baby is feeling the pressure to keep up with big sis and arrive 2 weeks early! I am trying not to get my hopes up because as a mom I know that is never about what we want or how we want things to go, that is just how it is, plus this baby is going to come when it is good and ready and that very well could be 2 weeks late, oh man I hope not!

I had my appointment today with our fabulous midwife and I brought along Sophie and my mom. Everything is progressing wonderfully with the pregnancy. The baby is growing perfectly and is SUPER active, I mean using my bladder as a punching bag, butt bumping with my stomach, practicing kicks for the soccer or football team with my ribs active.....all the time! Since my last visit the baby has switched sides and is now laying with his/her back along my left side and feet out to my right side just like big sis was. I am measuring 30 weeks at 27 weeks 4 days so about 2 over no biggie. The baby's heart rate is 148, which Sophie was able to hear and she was so stoked, the baby also had the hiccups at the time and Sophie thought that was just great and she could not wait to get on the phone and tell Neal after the appointment. My iron is low which explains why have been feeling like I stayed up all night and ran a marathon! The midwife gave me some great suggestions on how to boost my iron levels naturally without having to take those horrible iron supplements that I took or forgot to take when this same situation arose when I was pregs with Sophie. All in all aside from some achy back pain, which has gotten a little better since not having to lift Sophie all the time, an under active thyroid, and low iron this is a healthy, run of the mill pregnancy.

Sibling Practice

Saturday we had our good friends Kris and Kristin over for dinner and some much needed catching up. The Gurley's have a beautiful and oh so sweet 10 week old son, Ethan, and man oh man was Sophie LOVING her some Ethan!!! She was so amazed and enthralled with him and so sweet and gentle. She was all about his paci and making sure that he had it when he needed it and even when he didn't she was trying to give it to him, I think that in her mind she was thinking that if she couldn't have a paci someone else might as well take advantage! It was so nice to see Sophie with a small baby and get to experience some of the things that we have been talking about pertaining to babies, like the fact that the baby will not come into this world walking and talking like she thought. After spending some time with Ethan I think she has a slightly better idea of what babies are capable of, which isn't a whole lot. I know that it will be very, very different when our baby arrives and doesn't go home with someone else, but it was really nice to see her being as sweet as she was and excited as she was. She talks about "our baby" all the time and how she loves the baby "sooooo much" and she is always wanting to touch my belly and talk to the baby and give the baby kisses and hugs. I have a feeling she is going to be really great at this big sister thing.

Chocolate, Cozy Coupe & Bubbles What More Could A Girl Want?

Oatmeal

I am pretty proud of my newest off the top of my head cooking experiment. It was a pretty simple revelation nothing majorly complicated, but I was pretty darn proud of myself none the less! We always seem to have an abundance of fruit in our house and usually it all gets eaten, especially blackberries and strawberries in that case I can't buy them fast enough because my little berry eating monster can't get enough. Any how on rare occasions we don't eat all the fruit in enough time leaving us with wasted food and money. The other day we had one apple left and it was about time it got eaten same situation this morning with two peaches, any longer and they would have been wasted. So with Sophie's declaration that she wanted oatmeal for breakfast on these two particular days I whipped up some homemade Apples n' Cinnamon oatmeal one day and then today, my favorite, Peaches n' Cream!!! I have to say the Peaches n' Cream came out AWESOME it definitely took me back to my oatmeal lovin' days except with out all the partially hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors, colors and variety of other genetically modified ingredients! It was fairly simple to make and took no more time than it would to make regular oatmeal (not the package kind but the rolled oats in the big huge container).

Apples n' Cinnamon Oatmeal

• 1 apple cored, peeled and cut to desired size pieces
• 2-3 tablespoons brown sugar
• Cinnamon to taste
• 1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
• 1 3/4 cups water

Bring water to boil. Add oats cook about 5 minutes or until water is mostly absorbed then add apples, brown sugar and desired amount of cinnamon. Cook 5 or 10 minutes longer or until you have the desired consistency of your oatmeal.

Peaches n' Cream Oatmeal

• 2 Peaches pits removed, peeled and cut to desired size pieces (our two peaches probably ended up being about 1.5 peaches before they were added to the recipe since I have a little fruit bandit who invaded my kitchen!)
  
• 2-3 Tablespoons brown sugar depending on how sweet you want it, but the peaches make it pretty sweet.
• 1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
• 1 3/4 cups milk

Bring milk to boil. Add oats and cook until most of the milk is absorbed then add peaches and brown sugar. Continue to cook until the oats are cooked through and you have the desired consistency. ENJOY! And feel good knowing that you can pronounce every single ingredient in this wholesome healthy breakfast and can list them all on one hand!

Please excuse my picture quality I definitely did not check the settings on the camera before I started snapping away and I was not re taking the pics, so I did what I could to edit them and make them look semi-decent!

Mama's Manicure

What do you on a boring, blistery hot, sticky icky, it's 11am and we haven't gotten out of our jammies yet kind of morning????? You let your two and a half year old paint your fingernails! I had just finished painting Sophie's fingers and toes and she stated that she wanted to paint my fingers. So I let her. We had nothing else to do. If you click on the picture it will enlarge so you can get a good look at her handy work.

Delicious!

Yesterday I tested out a new recipe that I adapted ever so slightly from another Mama's site which you can check out here. The recipe turned out great and was a crowd pleaser, although next time I may shred the zucchini so Sophie won't protest as much, although she did eat it (the zucchini), but it took some coaxing.

Homemade Hamburger Helper

• 1 lb ground meat of your choice (I used turkey)
• 1 medium onion chopped/diced
• 1 can crushed tomatoes or 1/2 to 3/4 of a jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce
• 1/2 box whole wheat spiral noodles
• 1/2 can of vegetable broth (preferably one without MSG...YUCK!)
• 1 8oz package of shredded cheese (I used Colby Jack)
• Veggies of your choice chopped, shredded or however your fam will eat them some good choices are bell peppers, kale, spinach, yellow squash the possibilities are endless. I opted for :

• chopped mushrooms
• 1 zucchini diced (however next time I will shred)
• 2 carrots shredded

In a large skillet saute the onion in a little bit of olive oil once they are tender and to your liking add and brown your meat. While meat is browning, boil water and cook noodles. Once meat is browned add your veggies of choice and cook a little longer to soften veggies(about 5 minutes). Add your crushed tomatoes or pasta sauce cook for about 10 minutes or so stirring every so often. Drain noodles and add to mixture. Add the vegetable broth be careful when adding this, the recipe calls for a whole can but I stopped at about a 1/2 a can because I did not want it to get too soupy, so use your judgement. Cook about 10 minutes longer stirring often. Add the cheese mix well, let it cool ever so slightly so your family doesn't scald themselves on this piping hot goodness! Enjoy!

Oh Happy Day!!!!

What a GLORIOUS day!!! Sophie had her casts taken off today!!! Thank you God!!! She did phenomenal at the doc's office. Naturally, she was a little scared when the casts were sawed off, but our nurse Sandra gave Sophie a cookie for being so brave and that helped. The first thing we did when we got her home......gave her a proper bath!!!! OMG it was SOOOOO nice to actually bathe her and get every inch of her clean and get that stinky cast smell off of her! She has been a trooper through this whole ordeal I am amazed at her ability to adapt to the situation like she has. That is our sweet sweet Sophie.

From looking at the x-rays doc says her wrist looks good and even Neal and I could see no remains of a break in the wrist. Her leg however is a little different, doc says she is 80-90% healed, but she does have some new bone growth or whatever he called it over the break area which is good, but it is still slightly displaced. As far as the displacement he said that with her growing and the weight and stress she will put on it, over time will work itself out. The down side is that she still has more healing to do and since the break is not completely healed she is still in pain when she applies pressure to her foot. She is of course VERY hesitant to put any type of pressure on her foot or her hand. She is still "walking" on her knees and crawling around, except now she crawls on her knees and elbows because she afraid to support herself with her hand! The doc said that she probably will not want to put weight on it for at least a week, so it looks like I will be carrying her around for a little while longer, hopefully not too much longer as I am getting winded carrying just myself! Ha! We go back in 6 weeks for a follow up and he wants to keep an eye on her growth plate in the coming months as well. In the meantime please pray for Sophie's continued healing and that her body can heal itself with out the need to be recasted!

She looks a little pitiful in this pic only because she just woke up and Neal was trying to take her pic while she was watching Little Einsteins! No red cast!!!

Sweet feet cast free!

Happy Girl.