One week- we did it!

We officially did 7 days of "real" food!  No sugar, high fructose corn syrup, processed foods (well, since cooking is a process, I will specify highly processed), and most of everything was organic!

Here are the meals I haven't posted about yet:

Stir fry with a variety of vegetables and shrimp (so good) with brown rice

Fruit salad (I ate a lot of this) bananas, pineapples, kiwi, apples, and mangoes

Chicken nuggets (some spices, whole wheat flour, parmesan, chicken), mashed organic potatoes, and honey mustard.  I had no idea mixing honey and dijon made such a delicious dip!  Andy had some avocados too.

Yesterday we had my parents over for crock pot pork tacos.  We even made the tortillas!

That was the full 7 days, but we want to keep going, just less strict.  This morning we used the leftover tortillas and vegetables for breakfast burritos YUM

Tonight we had grass-fed hormone free beef from the butcher boys, and mashed potatoes (my favorite).  I am definitely a "steak and potatoes" person.

We celebrated our full week with a treat.  Since today was day 8, we decided to get ice cream in the middle and Mt. Dew (I checked, Dew is still way under the allowed amount of caffeine per day)

Tonight we even made our own granola!  It smells AWESOME, and tastes just about the same.  It has all sorts of stuff like coconut, nuts, seeds, cinnamon, ginger, honey...mmm

This week was definitely time consuming, and it isn't exactly cheap.  We had a rough day Thursday especially when we had a doctor appointment after work, had to stop at target really quick, make dinner, eat, and Andy had to run 5 miles.  Without breaks it took until midnight :(

We still plan to keep it up though.  We're going to keep buying organic when the fruits and vegetables are available (which is a lot when you go to places like Top Food and Fred Meyer) and milk since I've heard so many bad things about the cow hormones.  We also want to keep up the meals, since our busy life has resorted us to too much fast food lately.  I noticed I don't want it as much when I eat solid breakfast and lunches though because we don't get home from work starving and needing immediate replenishment.  We will also allow occasional treats (so we can have that brownie when someone brings them into work).

Oh, and here I am at just about 31 weeks (I got out my good camera for the first time in months).  I had 3 people ask if I'm "about to pop" this week.  Really?  I have had friends that stick out like 2 or 3 feet at 40 weeks, but whatevs.  The customers are nicer to me when they are worried about engaging some sort of hormonal breakdown, so I prefer to look very pregnant :)  Our current favorite name is Kellan I think.  We change our minds a lot though.  We are going for "common enough that people know it but not too common that there's 6 in the class"  We've come to the conclusion we aren't going to completely die for a particular name and neither of us want each other's favorites (mine's Brecken and Andy's is Axel).  So I guess we'll see.  Time is flying so we probably need to figure this out!

 

Wahhhh

Want to know what is a very unpleasant situation?

Having a cold, having a bunch of stuff switched up at the orthodontist the day before, and not being able to take anything for it.  I struggled all day just to keep my eyes opened I am so exhausted, and I want to rip all of my teeth out at the moment they hurt so bad.  The only plus side is I can breathe a little bit better today.

Last night Andy went to Burlington so we were all alone.  He left crock pot chicken for us and I let Sawyer sleep in my bed with me.  I think he loves it most because I let him watch "prout" (Sprout) in bed and it was Poppy Cat and Caillou until nearly midnight (I was already asleep) when he finally said "turn it off now."  He was so cute and rubbed my head.  I also got a cute alarm clock (even if it was 15 minutes early) "MOMMY IT'S WAKE UP TIME!"

Hopefully everything goes back to normal tomorrow: breathing better, less sore teeth, and daddy being around.

Here is our chicken from last night and the most delicious enchiladas from tonight (I inhaled them even if I had to scream in pain along the way).

Day two

I feel like I have to mention the fog we've been having lately.  It is ridiculous!  It's been at least a week!  You can barely see the ground in front of you at times.  The air quality is also suffering because it hasn't rained in so long that there is a burn ban in the winter.  You can only light fires or wood stoves if it is your only source of heat.  Hopefully it will rain soon and we can see again because it is getting pretty dangerous.  The fog is freezing and sticking to things.  The trees look like they've been snowed on at the tops, and this morning when we went to stop at the end of our neighborhood...well, we didn't.  Luckily it was a holiday and there wasn't the normal school traffic because we went right out of our neighborhood and across the street!  That was quite scary!  It didn't even look icy at all, just wet.

We also had our second day of "real" food.

Breakfast was whole wheat honey bread from Great Harvest with almond butter and honey and a big pile of fruit (banana, apple, part of a pineapple)

Lunch was leftover jambalaya (yum) and organic whole milk.

Dinner was macaroni (or whatever those noodles are called) and cheese with organic ingredients, whole wheat pasta, and bacon!

I'm excited for tomorrow, Andy's getting the crock pot together now :)

Working on healthy

Friday started a normal weekend.  I brought Sawyer to Target and he got "Sarge" which was lucky they had a car we didn't already have.  I also got a new robe for the hospital since I lent mine out from last time and never got it back, and bought baby a going home outfit.  I think the whole 'just about 30 weeks' thing freaked me out because we were so unprepared last time that I want a bag ready to go like now haha.

This was at Target (or as Sawyer calls it, the Red Store) and his cute little red mustache   He said "I ate cold-aid" if you ask where it came from.

Saturday, I woke up with a not-so-great surprise.  I caught a cold.  I had made it through November, December, and half of January, but it finally got me and my weakened immune system :(  I felt pretty terrible.  Andy ran 6 miles in his training, and we finally were ready to go shopping at like 6 :/ Oops.

We are going to do a week of "real" food...or as close to it as we can get.  This means organic and not processed.  Living in Puyallup though, there are only so many options so we are just doing our best.  The day before we had picked up a whole wheat honey loaf of bread from Great Harvest because they grind the wheat daily.

Our first stop Saturday was Trader Joe's.  It was tough figuring out what to get because we were going to hit up Tacoma Boys next but didn't know what they had.  We would rather our produce come from Tacoma boys so we just held off on all of it.  We did pick up some local eggs, organic whole milk (any reduced fat versions mean more processing), whole wheat pasta and tortillas, whole maple syrup, organic raw apple juice, raw almond butter, and a few more things.

Next we went to Tacoma Boys (which is a nightmare with a toddler).  Andy ended up getting a ton of produce organic, but we had to settle with a couple of our fruits and vegetables.  I just chased Sawyer around which was super frustrating because the whole store is made up of glass jars and bottles, and their carts don't have seats.  Plus I was weak and exhausted. Bleh.  When we got home, I went straight to bed.

Sunday I woke up feeling just as crappy.  Andy cooked our first "real" meal: whole wheat pancakes from scratch with blueberries and whole maple syrup.  Now I know I won't like most of the food we eat, especially "whole wheat", but the syrup caught me off guard...especially since it was supposed to mask the wheat flavor.  I checked the Mrs. Butterworth and it actually has NO maple syrup in it...it is more like a bunch of corn syrup and fake flavors.  No wonder it tastes so good!  The 100% maple syrup however really grossed me out, and I preferred the pancakes out of it!  I only have about 50% of my tastebuds though so who knows what they taste like on a normal day.

Next we went to the butcher to get our meats.  I just wanted some grass-fed beef, but Andy walked out with a bunch of stuff and forgot the beef.  He said he will get it tomorrow though.

While I was laying down, Andy decided to take Sawyer on a walk around the neighborhood and they finally located the mythical park!  I feel ridiculous that it took us a year to locate our neighborhood's park, but it is really hidden and you have to practically walk through someone's yard.  It's there though, and I'm excited to go there in the summer.

For dinner, Andy made a delicious jambalaya that had all sorts of seasonings and vegetables, with brown rice, shrimp, and sausage. Mmmm.  We have enough for lunch tomorrow, which is what we were hoping for since we only bought stuff for dinner and breakfast-y things.

Here are a couple other interesting pics from the weekend.

Sawyer pretending to sleep


and Sawyer "I'm a pirate!"

He tried doing two at once.  He likes using the vacuum nozzles and once even tried that rolly one at the front of the picture, HAH!

Audit 2013

My job at work is to make sure our store passes the yearly audit.  This includes things like reviewing discounts given to customers, credits, returns, and warranties, as well as keeping things like security and cash up to par.

Yesterday I was laying comfortably on the couch (my usual location while at home) and I get 3 calls from my managers.  Guess I'd better call back.  What was it?  None other than the audit was tomorrow and I needed to be at work by 6am.  I was completely shocked- it is only 15 days into the new year (you only have one a year) and last year's wasn't until June.  Once you get the call at 4pm the day before, you can't really do anything.  They have reports that show if you try to adjust inventory or the demo tracker, and they review the security cameras for any weird behavior.  I reminded them to have counterfeit pens at their registers and crossed my fingers that I had done everything else my job wanted me to up to now.

Bright and early (or shall I say DARK and early) I showed up and they began.  I didn't even have time to be nervous.  We had a few things wrong (which is to be expected- they said if you get 100% your sales are probably suffering) but it seemed to be going pretty well.  They check everything from samples from the last 3 months and basically do everything I did for the sample days and made sure I was reviewing accurately.  They also do things like count our entire inventory, and check the emergency exit and make sure we hold safety meetings.  We finished around noon and got our score- 94.2%!!!  Last year (after my vacation) we only had 86% which is "yellow" and this year was "green"!  I am so excited!  I was a little nervous because we just got a new manager a couple weeks ago.  They changed the point structure this year so I was nervous to see how that affected the overall score (they took out some of the easy point questions).  The store down the street got audited today too which was weird, but they got less than us (90%) so I kind of hope that my score is above average :D

It feels good to be validated, and I got some congratulations emails from other people in my job as well as my boss's boss which was nice.  It also made my job more secure (one person in my area got a really bad score a few years ago and ended up fired :/) Whew!  I am actually kind of glad it was this early in the year so I didn't have to be nervous all year, or give Natalie a stroke having it happen while I'm on maternity leave while she's doing my job.

I don't have a picture because audits are super boring, so here is a video of Sawyer jumping on a bed and shaking his bum for the grandparents.

Just doing the usual

Oh my, is time flying or what?  I swear I am complaining about it being Sunday night, and I blink and it is the next weekend already.  We aren't doing anything out of the ordinary, just the usual.

This weekend was the normal medley of things that leaves a very scattered blog post for the end :)

 We woke up Saturday to some pretty weather: sunny, with the small bits of snow still scattered

Then we went to Federal Way to meet Kyndyl for lunch at red robin.  Sawyer made a mess, but made friends with the hostesses (talking over his chair) that they gave him 2 balloons for being such a cute cowboy (he was using his fingers as guns and shooting them).  He just yelled "I want orange!" So ungrateful lol!

We also went to Target so I could get new jeans, and Sub Zero for some ice cream.

As we drove home, we saw a pretty sky.  Sawyer pointed at it and said "Purple for mommy, Orange for me, Yellow for daddy!"  Apparently he likes to assign us to things because today out of nowhere he said "Mommy's broccoli, Sawyer's carrot, Daddy's Elmo" (his stuffed animals that weren't anywhere near us)

That night I went bowling with my friends.  Andy couldn't go because we couldn't find a sitter for 9-midnight, but it was still fun.  And a shocker...I got over 100 each game...which is good for me...especially while pregs.  I was definitely limping at the end though, my pelvis has been KILLING me and activities make it worse (even walking.)  I could hardly walk at all today :(  Anyway, I didn't win any money, though I almost won $4 but the last tipping pin decided to straighten up instead of fall over. Boo.

113 suckas

I didn't get the scarf memo

Today we didn't do much because well, I wasn't mobile.  We watched the Seahawks lose at the very end (probably shouldn't have watched that due to stress and near heart attack during the last minute of the game!)  We also took down our Christmas stuff sadly.  I just felt like it wasn't up long enough, but the tree started to get crispy.  We also fixed Sawyer's carseat by moving up the straps since they were a tad too low for safety (which made it easier to pull thank goodness) and Sawyer and daddy did puzzles (he's so smart).

I have been having noticeable braxton hicks contractions since like 16 weeks (apparently most people have them from the start but barely notice them) but they have been extra annoying lately so I've just been on the couch uncomfortable between my pelvis/lower back/stomach but I'm happy that is the worst of it all.  I'll take not being able to walk well for a few months, since I know too many people that would give anything to be in that situation.  Now it's back to another (hopefully) speedy week at work.

28

Little nugget is 28 weeks and a few days now.

We had a doctor appointment today and everything was normal.  Well, they didn't mention my glucose test from December 22nd so I am assuming I don't have diabetes...YAY!  We move to appointments every TWO weeks now, which is actually kind of exciting since it means the end is near.  She said it is to check to make sure things are going normally that tend to go wrong in the end (blood pressure, kidneys, baby position...) not that it is common, but if they were to happen it tends to be in the end.  Andy also asked her about the chances of this baby having pyloric stenosis (the condition Sawyer had that caused him to have surgery in his stomach and stay in the hospital for 4 days) and she said the chances are still low of this one having it, but if he spits up more than normal they would definitely be more likely to check for it than people that have "normal" babies.  I feel comfortable knowing it is a standard surgery (even as invasive as it was- Beany still has 3 scars on his stomach) and we know what to look for this time around.

my tummy blew a bubble

This guy is flop-py! It has reached the point where I can just watch my stomach move all day.  It is amusing when it is just the outside, but he tends (as most do) to find the uncomfortable spots and poke those too often.  I am not swollen yet (which is good for being on my feet so much), but my hips are definitely moving. It feels like someone kicked me in the crotch some days.  Walking is a bit painful because of that, but I haven't been able to walk far at all for awhile...I swear I need a handicap parking pass because I am usually bent over from cramps after walking from my car to a store.

Little man still doesn't have a name.  Nothing is jumping out at us (at least that we can agree on).

P.S. It has been SNOWING today!!! Love it...it is just so pretty!

Mr. Independent

Sawyer is getting so big, it is blowing my mind!

We haven't had to put the front on his crib.  He actually stays in bed pretty well.  Yesterday I told him it was nap time and he walked with me right upstairs and crawled into bed.  He wasn't perfect though, he got out 5 minutes later.  I heard his door shut and went "Sawyer?"  "What?"  "Go back to bed!"  "Awwww" so he did...and didn't come out for 2 hours.  He is very good at going to bed as long as you promise something awesome when he wakes up like "you get to go to grandma's in the morning!" or "we can watch Caillou when you wake up, but you have to take a nap first".

His potty is improving.  He actually woke Andy up at 4am and said "go pee!" He thought he would want water, then to play, etc. but after he went pee, he went right back to his room and crawled back into bed.  He has woken up dry for a good amount of time now, and tells us in the morning that he has to go.  We still put a diaper on at night though since I've read their bladders just aren't developed enough to hold it all night until they are 3.

He even gets his own drinks as long as he has access to a cup- here he is getting some water

He has been moody lately though...and everything is his.  He yelled at Andy for watching "his" TV yesterday.

Party time

Yesterday was LJ's birthday party and I loved it.  I don't get to see Sawyer play with other kids much (even though he does all day without me) so it was so cute seeing him be a little kid.  Janelle hangs out with one of the families a lot so he knows those kids as well (I think there are like 5 of them alone in addition to Eli and LJ and the other random kids that came).  They were running all over the house in mobs, hiding in closets, and wrestling.  I don't know what they were playing, but it looked like they were having tons of fun...besides the every few minutes when you'd hear one of them cry for a minute or so because another one tackled them too hard or something lol.  I felt so bad when it was time to go and we had to pull him out of a closet full of 5 giggling kids.  He was so sad.

That night we had to go to the store late due to a craving.  No, not from me, from the little guy.  He was freaking out because he wanted a bagel.  He only ate sweets all day at the party so we went and got him some dang bagels in the name of eating something with substance.  This kid could live off bagels, pancakes, and eggs.

Andy has finished his first week of training runs (4 so far) and is feeling good.  I am pleased he wears the shirt I got him because it is always dark when he goes and we don't have a lot of sidewalks.  Sawyer saw I was taking a picture and ran in and stuck out his tongue.

Oh, and here is a picture I wanted to post before.  Andy was overnight in Burlington this week and I took Sawyer to Munchies.  It was so cute, he walked up to the counter and told the lady "I want cheeseburger" and when she handed him his meal in his own paper bag, he marched out of there so proud.  When we got home though, he insisted on eating on the stairs.  It was weird, but I didn't mind.

Happy New Year!

Erik and Destiny came over to ring in the new year.  I was sleepy and had to work at 8 the next morning so I didn't do much and went to bed right after midnight.  Here is our typical "picture in front of the tv space needle" tradition.  Perhaps we'll go to the real thing one of the next few years.  I had just got out of the shower lol.

Our neighborhood was blowing off a ton of fireworks.  We went outside to watch but Sawyer kept saying "I'm scared!" and would close his eyes and hold daddy. :/  We took him inside and put him to bed but he wandered back out after a few minutes because he was scared of the booms outside.  Andy had to hold his hand until he fell asleep.  He has done ok in his new bed the first night but last night he got out again at like 4 and Andy had to rock him until he said "daddy I go to bed now" and he went and crawled back in and slept til 9.  I guess it will take a little getting used to before we decide to put the front fence back on.