Craziness

Last Monday was Tim's first day back at work since Jack was born. We went on our first (since Jack was born) play date with the Straka's. The boys had a good time playing with Cole and Lacey and I enjoyed getting out of the house. Tuesday was by far the roughest day of the week. It started off good with me dropping off Carter to play at my parents' house while Jack and I went to visit my co-workers and figure out when I will be going back to work. My co-workers loved meeting Jack and are very excited for me to be coming back in another couple weeks. Now for the bad part of the day. I had driven our new car. Not use to all of the new features, when we were ready to leave the mall, I threw the diaper bag, my purse and keys in the front seat. I was then going to place Jack's car seat in the backseat when I realized the car had locked. I took Jack back into the store so I could call my mom since I didn't know Tim's work number. She was able to come help us fairly quickly. Tim has the only other key with him at work in downtown. I then remembered with the extended warranty we bought we got free roadside assistance. My parents also have the same brand of car, so I tried using the number they had in the glove box for the service. After 15 minutes trying to look up our account, it turns out that there is several different numbers for service and that was not the one ours was through. I then call the dealer to get the correct number, which also is not able to look us up since our car is too new to be in the system yet. It would cost us $80 out of pocket to send someone out to unlock the car, which we'd probably be able to get reimbursed for (but they didn't know how long that would take) and they weren't sure how long it would take to get someone out there. During all these phone calls Jack decides he's starving, so I start breastfeeding him in the car in the parking. (And I happened to have about the worst shirt choice for this, so I was pretty much exposed to the whole parking lot.) At this point time decides to drive from downtown to meet us to save the $80. The rest of the day went much more pleasantly. Wednesday I decided I needed to be brave and go out again, so both boys and I took a field trip to Walgreen's and Rainbow to get my coupon deals. It went surprisingly well. Thursday we went over to my parents for dinner since Tim had work and class which means Tim is gone from 8am until 10pm, a very long day for me! Friday we just hung out at home. Saturday was another uneventful day. Sunday I woke up with the stomach flu. I haven't been that sick in a long time. Tim had to work, so I sent Carter over to my parents for the morning. Jack and I spent the day in bed alternating between sleeping and nursing. Luckily Tim had Monday and Tuesday off, so we've been recovering the last two days.

My much belated birth story

Things have been a little crazy lately since baby Jack has been born, but I finally posted his birth story.

In the afternoon of Saturday, July 10th I was having contractions between 7-10 minutes apart. I was leery of getting too excited about them after going into the hospital the week before and being told that I was having “false labor”. As the evening progressed they were getting closer together and I was getting much more uncomfortable. Tim was working until 11pm and I was determined to not make him come home early unless I was for sure going to have the baby that night. Around 10:45 my contractions were between 4-5 minutes apart. I decided to call my parents to come over to spend the night with Carter because I was pretty sure it was the real thing this time around. I called Tim at 11:01 and he got home as fast as he could.
We made it to the hospital a little after midnight and got settled into our room. It happened to be the same room that we stayed in when Carter was born. They got me hooked up to the monitors and saw that my contractions were between 3-4 minutes apart. The nurse then did an internal. I was only 1cm dilated and 70%. I was extremely disappointed that I had made pretty much no progress in a week. They decided to have us stay to see if I progressed any further. When they checked me two hours later, I had progressed to 2cm, enough to let us stay to continue being monitored. I was given something to help me get some sleep. They checked me again at the 6am shift change. I had made no progress. I was still having contractions every 3-4 minutes. The nurse was not sure what my doctor would decide to do. She mentioned that I could possibly be sent home. Exhausted and frustrated, I asked what would happen if I changed my mind about trying for a VBAC. She said she wasn’t sure and would ask my doctor.
At 9am, they gave me the option of starting pitocin. At that point anything that would make the baby come quicker was a welcome thought. Because I really hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last week, they offered a pain meds so I’d be able to get some rest before I was ready to push. I slowly started to make some progress, and spent most of the day napping. During one of the internal checks, my daytime nurse, who was not at all gentle, accidentally broke my water. At 3pm I decided that I would most definitely be getting an epidural because the pain was getting unbearable. Around 8pm, my labor and delivery nurse decided I was ready to push. Things were going well, but very slowly. After the 2nd hour, they were becoming more concerned about how the contractions were affecting the baby’s heart rate. The potential need for a c/s or use of the vacuum was brought up. At this point the on-call doctor for my clinic switched (the other doctor had been on-call for the whole weekend and got called into do a c/s.) She was willing to let me go for a little while longer as long as conditions didn’t change. At 11pm, after three hours of pushing, my body had pretty much stopped reacting to the pitocin and my contractions started to lose strength and slow down. As much as I didn’t want to use the vacuum, my choices were pretty much being narrowed down to that or a c/s (which I really didn’t want after this much work!) Around 11:45pm, the doctor prepped everything for the vacuum and had extra nurses on hand in case we needed them for the baby. After two more pushes with the vacuum, Jackson Curtis was born at 11:55pm. He weight 7lbs 10oz and was 22 inches long.
Overall things are going well for our family. Jack is a sweet and mellow baby and big brother Carter loves him so much. The adjustment to having two kids really has gone fairly smoothly for us so far. The real test will be when Tim goes back to work next week.

The first few days of recovery were just as bad as or worse than my c/s recovery. Now, over a week later, I feel almost back to normal, which has made the VBAC experience completely worth it. There was no way I could have done it without the encouragement of my nurses and the doctor who ended up delivering Jack.

Parmasan chicken

Ingredients
1c bread crumbs
½ c grated Parmesan cheese
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp Olive Oil
½ tsp salt
Pepper
4-5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
¼ c basil
¼ c Mayo

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine bread crumbs, parmesan, garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste in bowl.
Mix basil and mayo in small bowl and spread mixture evenly over the chicken. Sprinkle bread-crumb mixture evenly over mayo and press lightly to adhere. Place chicken in a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Bake the chicken until crumbs are golden brown for 18-22 minutes.

I'm planning on freezing half of this for another meal, serving it with pasta and tomato sauce.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I'm determined to have at least a week or two of meals frozen before baby comes. I'm too worried for the time that Tim (He's a pretty decent cook) is off work, but more so when he goes back to work. I'll try to post the recipes as I go.
This is one of my favorite sweet breads. I make it all the time.

Banana Bread
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
1 cup chocolate chips (can skip if you just want plain banana bread)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix all ingredients together. Pour into two bread pans. Bake 45-50 minutes.

Buca Di Beppo Lemon Green Beans

I had Bucas over the weekend with some of my girlfriends. I forget how much I completely love their food. This is a pretty good replica of their green beans. :)

Ingredients
1 lb fresh green beans
1/4 cup butterr
2 medium lemons (juice)
salt, to taste (I used sea salt)

Directions
1. Prepare the green beans by clipping off the stem end.
2. Melt the butter in a sauté pan on low heat. Squeeze the juice out of two medium-size lemons. Strain the pulp and the seeds out of the lemon juice.
3. When butter is melted, carefully add the lemon juice to the pan.
4. Raise the temperature to medium and reduce until the lemon juice and butter become a sauce. Do not brown the butter.
5. Place the clipped, fresh green beans in boiling water for two to three minutes. Do not overcook. The green beans should remain crisp.
6. Strain the green beans and add to the sauce in the sauté pan. Toss the green beans in the sauce and season with salt to taste. Serve immediately.

Disturbing

In my quest of knowledge on food companies, I discovered after buying Horizon Organics half and half at the grocery store this week that they are pretty much what I'm trying to avoid. I guess this explains how their prices really aren't any different than Kemps. And it kind of bums me out because the same parent company own Silk Soy milk (which I love!).

http://www.naturalnews.com/021186.html

http://www.wisebread.com/horizon-organic-milk-is-it-all-just-lies

http://sites.google.com/site/integrityinbusiness/

On another interesting note, I found a chart that shows what who owns some of the bigger organic food brands. Check it out. I was amazed at how many of them are own by big corporations.
http://awesome.good.is/features/009/009buyingorganic.html

Self/Family Improvement Goals

These are almost more for me than any of my readers, but I wanted to get down in writing my goals on the ways that I am working to improvements in our lives.

1. Consumerism: I'll admit it. I like to buy stuff. I have improved on this greatly since being home with Carter for the last two years, but like most people I still sometimes get the "I want" fever. Areas I'm doing well on: I don't buy very many clothes anymore. What I do buy now is stuff that I love how I look and feel in it now. (Not how I might look in it if I lost 10 pounds or if I was more toned.) Almost all toys (gifts from others excluded) are purchased used. I plan on doing a big toy purge right before birthdays and Christmas to get rid of anything that is not used. We don't have the space and we don't need that many toys around. Areas I can still improve on: Kids/baby clothing. I'll admit it, I love buying baby and kid clothing. They are just so cute. We definitely have more than is needed. On the positive side much of it is hand-me-downs and garage sale finds. As I've been washing baby clothing, I've been pulling out anything that I don't really like to give away.

2. Food: This is such a big area for us, so I'll break it down further.

a. Grocery shopping: I've cut our monthly bill down significantly by couponing, meal planning, and shopping from a list.

b. What we're buying: I am currently trying to research and learn more about the items we are buying and the companies that produce/grow/manufacture it. The more I learn, the more I feel I need to learn. Just a few of the issues I'm concerned with include" treatment of employees (Are they hiring illegals to lessen their production cost? Do they pay their employees livable wages and offer them benefits?), genetically modified crops (Is their any way to escape/avoid this? What are the long-term repercussions going to be?), localism (can I get more of the products we eat grown locally to save on pollution/cost of travel to get it here?), use of antibiotics, pesticides, etc (Organic vs. non? Or are there any other options?), treatment of animals (free-range? corn-fed vs. grass fed?) packaging (Should I be concerned about the BPA in plastic or metal can lining? ). These are just a few of the issues I could think of off the top of my head.

c. Cooking: I'm really working to expand my cooking horizons.