it's chilly here today.

so i decided to use my baby for warmth...

hi, i'm cute!

LET'S GO GIANTS!

i'm a cooking fool. also? i miss my baby.

ok, so THIS week's menu is:

monday: salmon and salad (did not go over well. i mean, i made it correctly, but neither tom nor i are big fish fans so. oh well. i tried.)
tuesday (tonight!): chicken tortilla casserole
wed: baked penne w/ garlic bread
thur: skillet burritos, chips and salsa and sliced cantaloupe
fri: low country stew (it includes shrimp, which i hate, so i may be having leftover tortilla casserole!!)

also, i'm on week two back to work. livie's in daycare and I MISS HER. wa.

wanna know what i'm cooking THIS week?

of course you do. here you go:

• chicken tender fettuccine alfredo with salad and garlic bread
  
• cheddar bacon quiche with crescent rolls and hashbrowns
  
• salsa sirloin salad w/ garlic bread (hi, we LOVE some garlic bread up in here!)
  
• mexican casserole (NOTE: wtf are "chili beans" ???)
  
• pesto pepperoni pizza

last week's meals were a huge success. surprisingly, the spaghetti pie (which sounds horrid) was DELISH. much better reheated for leftovers. i might make another and freeze that bitch ICOE (in case of emergency).

work update: still don't want to go back. shocking, right?

Chillin out at blue back square

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yes, i'm seriously COOKING!!

i have never been a fan of cooking. i am not good a meal-planning or keeping a good grocery budget. i spend all day at work hyperventilating over what we'll have for dinner and how i forgot, AGAIN, to take something out of the freezer.

i thought, once i was home on maternity leave, that it'd be easier. it wasn't. hi, did i forget the year and a half that i worked from home and STILL sucked at cooking??? clearly.

so i signed up, on a whim, for e-mealz. it's $1.25 a week for weekly menus. i know, I KNOW. i should be able to do this for myself. for FREE. but i can't, ok?

and so far, it's been a huge success! i have made three, THREE!!! consecutive dinners...

saturday i made barbeque boneless spare ribs w/ a salad. sunday i made creamy bacon cheese tortellini with sliced canteloupe and grilled asparagus. last night i made roast chicken w/ gravy over rice and brown sugar-glazed carrots AND corn muffins.

i fucking made MUFFINS for DINNER!!!!

and tonight we're having easy beans and rice with sliced canteloupe and tortilla chips.

TOMORROW we're having crock pot beef stew, the rest of the corn muffins and a caesar salad. THE NEXT DAY we're having baked spaghetti pie w/ a tossed salad and garlic bread.

and i have ALL of the ingredients to make all of these dinners! I HAVE THEM! because they also provide you with a grocery list. i freakin LOVE this.

also? i so don't want to go back to work. now that i can make dinner, i want to wear an apron and be a stay at home mom. too bad that dream will die in two short weeks. WA.

photo update

i'm the suckiest blogger ever. sorry. here are some pictures of my TWO MONTH OLD girl to make up for it!!

loving on her baby doll:

go big blue!!!

bonus mohawk shot:

i am a pretty princess:

my little super star!!

ok, i was going to wait till i could actually post these pictures, but I CAN'T WAIT. please, go check out my little bean on the insanely talented crista acosta's blog.

miss olivia had her first photo shoot on friday and damn if i didn't become addicted to it. i made a promise to this bean when i was pregnant that i would get EXCELLENT newborn photos. i didn't do a good job of choosing a wedding photographer and it still pisses me off to look at our pictures now... that's a day we will never get back and it makes me sad that we have almost no pictures we'd even want to hang in our house (imagine our heads superimposed over a LAKE. i only WISH I WAS KIDDING.) and it's not like the guy came cheap either!

well, livvy's first days are a similar time. we'll never get these little toes, chipmunk cheeks or peach fuzz back and i wanted to make sure we had someone awesome come and take the time and effort to capture her as she is now - and crista NAILED it.

i know i'm her mom, but f you guys... SHE IS ADORABLE.

my loves

olivia's home!

well, we are totally scrapping the idea of putting her to bed in her crib from night one. daddy cannot be more than 1 foot away from her without freaking out that she's not breathing. ;)

she is AWESOME and very loud. she is a super squeaky breather.

we love her so much!!!!

SHE'S HEEEEREEEEE!!!!

i'm SO SORRY i've been mia. i don't have time to post the big, long version, but our baby girl has arrived!!

10:46am, 7/6/09 weighing in at a whopping 8lb, 9.8oz and 21 1/4 inches long... olivia marie burst into our lives and it has been an incredible circus since then.

short version (c/p from an email because i can't write it all out again!):

Just an update...

Olivia was stressed out in some way (we don't know for sure what it was yet -- probably the fact that I was having contractions from Friday until I delivered her on MONDAY) and pretty much pooped in utero. She swallowed some and even though the NICU staff was ready and waiting to suction her upon delivery (they found the meconium when they broke my water, so they knew she was in a bit of trouble) she still breathed a bit of it into her lungs as well. She was VERY sick when she was born.

She's been in the NICU since then and was on oxygen, IV antibiotics and a feeding tube. She lost the IV on Wednesday, since her blood work came back showing she had fought off the infection and just yesterday afternoon came off the oxygen and feeding tube. Now, we are just waiting for her to get stronger. She needs to prove to the doctors that she can maintain her O2 levels steadily even when she's upset (which is whenever you change her diaper or try to bathe her... she's ALREADY HOLDING HER BREATH ON US!!) and that she eats and keeps down enough food to thrive.

We've stopped asking for potential release dates, because she tends to tucker out and need to go back on the oxygen after a bit so we don't want to get our hopes up, but it looks like middle of next week if she continues to do as well as she has been since yesterday.

Wish us luck, if you can spare it. After everything we've gone through to get her here, we certainly weren't expecting our full term nearly 9lb baby to be sick and stuck in the hospital. :(

here is a picture of livvy and daddy after they FREED her from the icky nasal cannula and feeding tube (she is thinking VICTORY IS MINE!!):

wish you were here...

today marks two big milestones in my life. the subject of this post applies to both and i can represent both of them in the following ridiculous picture.

1) today marks fourteen years since my father was killed in a motorcycle accident (that was his own fault, by the way, but i digress.). six weeks after the accident, twenty-year-old me had the above ridiculous tattoo inked on me for life. the sentiment is awesome, the tattoo? not so much. it's a harley davidson bar and shield (my dad's true love was his bike) with his date of birth, name and date of death.

2) the tattoo is now stretched across my once-upon-a-time-probably-back-when-i-WAS-20-flat-belly that is now gloriously THIRTY EIGHT WEEKS PREGNANT.

i wish my dad was here and i wish bean was here. and a flat belly afterwards wouldn't be so bad either.

oh hell YES.

that is right. i am excited over a CAMRY. look how SHINY IT IS!!!! and it even has FOUR WHOLE DOORS!!!!



we decided, after finding out that tom's trusty 1999 toyota solara needed a repair that warranted spending about $500 MORE than the trusty 1999 toyota solara was WORTH, that it was time to put her out to pasture. rest easy, ole girl... 201k miles is nothing to be ashamed of.



so we set out to find her successor and landed on this hot piece of a$$... HOW FUNNY THAT I THINK A TOYOTA CAMRY IS A HOT CAR??? i am old. but srsly, i love this car. suck it, infinitis and audis! my heart belongs to this 2007 dream, tentatively named (by hunter, of course), THE SPIDEY MOBILE:



woot!

boo!

we are almost at the finish line!

missing mom

a few weeks ago, my sister sent me a cell phone pic of hunter at the beach and i couldn't stop thinking about it. it's so similar to another picture that we have framed in his room of my mother with him at the beach in 2004, except in this new one, he's alone. as though he's aware that she's not next to him.

but, maybe it's that she IS there, but only he knows, so he's quiet and still, just taking it in.

i got that boom boom pow!

BAM! look at that. i've been very busy cooking this baby. and crying over kris' dramatic win over the over-dramatic adam.

and while we're talking about idol, can i just defend my danny gokey love one time? HE SANG WITH LIONEL RICHIE, PEOPLE. i adore lionel richie. and i also adore almost EVERY. SINGLE. SONG. danny sang this season.

NOT TO MENTION...

he has amazing taste in glasses.

AND

he looks like a mini robert downey jr.

i wish he would take me glasses shopping and sing dancing on the ceiling to me while we look. my glasses are boring.

SERIOUSLY, MOM???

so yesterday my sister calls and says, "hey, i need a baby picture of you." and i'm like, oh, ok, this must be for some schtick for my baby shower. cute!!

then i think, hm... i'm not sure i HAVE any baby pictures of myself. you know, because those are things your PARENTS GENERALLY HAVE (and we all know my sob story of being an orphan ALL TOO WELL).

ANYWAY. that's not the point of THIS post.

but i of course mention this to my sister and she's like, well, i don't know where your baby book is, but it should have pictures in it. then i remember that i HAVE both of our baby books so SCORE! i ask what age range she needs and she says toddler. ok, fine.

so, i'm going through the baby book last night and it's a trifect of emotions (keep in mind that i'm 8 months pregnant and i have no mother)... i'm over-the-top excited that i'm going to be a mom in a few short weeks. i'm devastated that my own mother won't be here to celebrate this with me and i'm DYING over the RIDICULOUSNESS that is my baby book.

do you want to know what my GRANDPARENTS gave as a gift when i was born?? my grandfather gave: the baby book and TEN DOLLARS. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

my grandmother gave a stuffed mouse. a STUFFED MOUSE? WAY TO BREAK THE BANK, MEMERE!!

anyway... so i'm off looking for pictures and there is a little spot for each birthday to write about the day and to add a picture. i shit you not, next to FIVE of the seven picture spots is written: "mommy forgot to buy film for the camera!"

INCLUDING MY FIRST BIRTHDAY!!! i mean, that shit is acceptable after a few kids, even the SECOND kid, but the FIRST CHILD???????? it's not like she didn't know the birthday was COMING.

damn!

so, my sister is getting a picture of me opening a present on christmas of 1977. at age 2 years, 7 months. nevermind that my mother in law has 40 million pictures of my husband from probably every HOUR of his life. you know what? christmas 1977 IS ALL I HAVE, PEOPLE.

at least i got that $10.

Current temp in CT. Insane!

spring!!

LOOK WHAT'S IN MY YARD!!!!!!

i know! flowers!!!! i didn't even know those were there. we moved in mid-july and these were already gone by then. HEE! so cute. and of COURSE they are purple, since the lady who lived here before was OBSESSED with purple flowers. but, at least these are fareel purple and not freakin LAVENDAR. gag.

ALSO... i bought a wall quote for above the baby's crib. my camera is circa 2003 and has fewer megapixels than MY CELL PHONE so the quality sucks, but whateva. the first one gives a truer picture of the room color and the phrase is easier to read in the second...

"little angel from above" is the beginning of a lullaby my grandmother used to sing to my mom and that my mom sang to us and then to my nephew when he was tiny. i'm really heartbroken to say that i don't remember all the words and i CANNOT find the lyrics online and that sucks.

i mean, it doesn't suck more than the fact that my mom won't be able to actually rock this grandchild and sing to him or her in real life, but it is what it is. and this little quote is a small shout out to her. this bean will know and love you, mom. i promise.

and bonus! shot of my VERY ENTHUSIASTIC husband. he's moving a rock pile that the last lazy owner left on the side of our patio. he's been at it for three hours already and it doesn't even look like he's touched it. poor bastard.