"There is sunshine in my soul today..."

Today was a good day. I have to make that distinction because yesterday...was not. I seem to be having trouble lately with, well, staying happy. It's weird because I am so thrilled to be pregnant. We wanted this baby so badly, and I can't wait to meet our new little one. So why are there times when I feel so depressed? I had the same problem during my pregnancy with Josephine, but this time it seems to be worse. I just have moments (or entire days, in some cases) where I feel very down, overwhelmed and weepy. Sometimes there will be something that triggers it (like a trip to the doctor's where I don't like what I see on the scale or children who refuse to behave...), and sometimes it will come out of nowhere, for no reason. I will be doing something mundane, like grocery shopping, and all of a sudden, without the slightest provocation, I will feel all overwhelmed and anxious and start crying. I guess pregnancy horomones wreak havoc on some people's bodies more than others.

Anyhow, well yesterday I went for one of my prenatal appointments, and found out that I now weigh what I did when I gave birth to both of my girls...and I have 10 weeks left to go. I was so frustrated, because I have been working out the whole time, eating good foods (indulging from time to time, as I did with the last two pregnancies), and I felt like I was failing somehow. This probably seems quite melodramatic to many of you, but my body is something I feel I should have some control over, so this was a big deal to me. So of course this set me off on the wrong foot. For the rest of the day, it seemed that nothing was going right - from my children's behavior in the grocery store to the errands and chores that didn't get done that day. Everytime I grunted when I bent over or huffed and puffed when I got to the top of the stairs, I would start crying, thinking that I wouldn't so bad off if I wasn't so big already. When I sat down to play the piano for family home evening, I had a total meltdown. At that moment I was exhausted from the day, my feet were aching, and my lovely maternity garments were cutting into my round belly. The thought occurred to me "I'm not even close to done! I have 10 WEEKS left of this. If I am this tired and uncomfortable now, how the heck am I going to feel at 40 weeks?!! How am I going to do this and be a good mother and wife?!" Tears were running down my cheeks all during the song, and I had to excuse myself when the song ended so that my kids didn't see me acting like a complete basketcase. Lou came over to see what was wrong and I just lost it - blubbering on and on about feeling awful and not knowing why and not knowing how to fix it. Yeah, not one of my finer moments... Luckily, my husband knew just what to do - he hugged me and let me cry, and then lifted my chin up and said: "You know what you need? Ice cream." And so off we went to Gannon's Isle for ice cream. :)

Well, some wise friends of mine gave me some great advice today - to remember the miracle growing inside of me and to try to focus on the amazing thing my body is doing right now. To remind myself how much I wanted this, and how much joy I will feel when I see this baby. I am sure that I will have more horomonal moments to come as I get bigger, and more tired and all that, but I will try to keep these things in mind in those moments to get me through. Anyhow, with my new attitude adjustment, I decided that I needed a fun, relaxing day with my kids. So, after getting some random errands done, we filled up our kiddie pool and played in it for what seemed like hours (yes, I got in, too - it was SCORCHING hot today, and that cold water was HEAVEN!!). Then we lounged around the yard in our lawn chairs, sang songs, colored with chalk and ate popscicles - it was just what I needed :) Maria wanted to take some pictures of me with our new camera (she is really into the camera thing lately), and though my first inclination was to say no (I was in my maternity swimsuit at the time...), I decided to heck with it! Why not take some pictures that celebrate my pregnant body instead of complaining about it? So I did a little photo shoot with her (she had so much fun with this!), and now you get to laugh at the results. So here is a collection of pictures from my "good day" - the day where I didn't worry about how much weight I've gained or how I'm going to feel in 6 weeks, about all the other errands and chores I didn't get done or how I've failed as a person, etc. The day where I stopped and lived in the moment and enjoyed my children - all three of them... :)

Still the baby of the family, for a little bit longer... :)

Maria thought it was hilarious to take pictures of ourselves, so we both did it once:

The girls, jumping around like jack-rabbits...

...and Josephine showing some sisterly affection

Here's to the days where we stop criticizing ourselves, sit back, relax, and remember to be grateful for what we have.... :)

My expanding waistline...

To satisfy all of the requests, here is the most recent photo of my pregnant belly. I am 29 weeks along now (although some days I feel like 39...), and my kids are getting a real kick out of mommy's "huge" belly.

Some of my kids less than tactful remarks about my size include:

Maria: "Wow, Mom that is one BIG belly!"

Josephine: "Whoa, Mommy, you are as big as Daddy!"

Maria: "Mom, your belly button doesn't, um, look like it used to..."

Josephine: "Haha - Mommy, your belly is sooooo big!"

You gotta love kids and their brutal honesty. :)

Ohhhhhh, summer!

The summer weather here has been very strange this year - very "non-summer"-like. Unseasonably cool (which this pregnant lady is LOVING!) and very rainy (which this outdoors family is not loving!). Luckily, that has not stopped the delicious summer berries from growing here, because I look forward to going berry-picking every year. Not only are they MUCH cheaper than what you get in the store, the taste is soooo much better, too, because they are fresh and in season. And I am all for supporting local farmers, so that is an added perk, as well. Here is what we have gathered so far this year:

Strawberries

Yeah, we went a little crazy with these, but we shared some with my mom, and had NO problem finishing off the rest ourselves on our cereal, in smoothies, and in a fresh-strawberry pie

Black Raspberries

These grow wild in our backyard, and also at the end of our street, and we spent many an afternoon picking them as a family - gotta love free food...

Red Raspberries

We have gone twice to pick these now - I just can't get enough of them...

And this is just on here because it was my first pie that I made with a woven lattice top. I have always been scared to do them, and I finally got over my fear and gave it a shot with the blueberry pie I made for Lou's birthday. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, and I think it turned out pretty good!

So even though the weather here isn't the greatest, we are still finding things to enjoy, like delicious summer berries. Ahhhh, the goodness of summer... :)

Belated blog #2 - The Crawfish Festival

Our other cool thing that we did in May was the Crawfish Festival, a fundraising event to raise money for the ongoing rebuilding effort in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Crawfish boils are evidently a HUGE thing down south. Lou and I had never had crawfish before, so we decided to check it out. It was really cool, because there was live New Orleans-esque music the whole time, a guy making animal shaped balloons for kids, and other food like Dinosaur BBQ for those wary of seafood.

They don't shell the crawfish for you - they boil them right as they are. And for those of you who don't know, here is what a crawfish looks like (well, a cooked one, anyway...) - kind of like a tiny lobster. That is Maria's hand holding it, by the way. I didn't really want to touch them...

And here was the platter we got - a whole bunch of crawfish, salt potatoes, and a small corn on the cob.

Our friends Scott and Cortnie went with us. They are real southerners, so it was good to have them along to let us know how authentic the food really was.

Maria loved picking them up over and over and playing with their tiny claws. Go her, because I was too creeped out to do it. I just have a thing against my food LOOKING like the thing it came from. I want it to look like food, not like the creature itself.

Here she is modeling the little sucker right up next to her face...

...and showing how tiny it is next to her. She thought they were so cool.

All in all, despite the fact that I made Lou shell them for us (I know, I'm a wimp), they really were tasty - very similar to shrimp in flavor and texture.

Josephine was talking about trying a crawfish nonstop for 2 days before the festival. She just kept saying over and over "I'm going to EAT one!". She was so excited, and then she saw them...

...and decided to stick with corn on the cob instead. She wouldn't even try one. Too much like me, I guess. :) I ended up going to get her a hot dog from the Haufmann's stand, and you should have seen the relief on her face when I brought it back for her. "Hooray - normal-looking food!"

It was a fun time, though. We got to try some new food, hang out with friends, listen to good music and take a stroll around the harbor afterwards. That's one of the things I love about central New York - all the festivals that are held almost year-round!

Belated blog #1

This post is yes, a bit late, but I didn't want to leave it out. May is a busy time around here, with all of the birthdays in our family so packed together. Mine is the 12th, then Josephine's is the 22nd, and Maria's is the 29th (and Lou's is a week later on June 6th - yes, that's all four birthdays within 3 weeks, and yes, it is tiring).

Lou wanted to make me a special birthday dinner this year, and I requested a dish that I had previously had at Ruby Tuesdays, "shrimp diablo". Lou looked up the recipe online, and found it to be quite, um, complicated. Besides the weird ingredients - brandy and white wine, to name a few - it is quite a fussy recipe, involving flambéing and all of that...

I told him to skip it, since it sounded like way too much effort for my birthday dinner, but he insisted that what I wanted was what I was going to get - aint he sweet? :)




So here is a picture of my dinner. I don't really know that the picture does it justice, but oh my gosh, it was the best pasta dish I have EVER had, bar none. He flambeed the shrimp in olive oil, sea salt and brandy (this was the first time we've done this and he really loved the whole idea of setting food on fire on purpose), made the wine sauce from the freshest ingredients (don't any of you worry - all of the actual alcohol burns off in the cooking process - this dish is Mormon and pregnancy-safe), and served up the whole mess on linguini. It all ended up tasting nothing like the one I had at Ruby Tuesdays, and by that I mean that it put their dish to shame! Next to Lou's gourmet creation, the restaurants' tasted like a jar of Prego poured over some penne with a few puny shrimp sprinkled on top. I'm so glad he insisted on making it for me. I felt so special to be getting such a fancy dish on my birthday. :)


For dessert, my Mom made my favorite - homemade strawberry shortcake - ohhhh, so good.

After dessert, it was present time (I never get too old to get excited about this part!). My mom handed me this huge box wrapped in black paper, decorated with black, white and red ribbon with these forks tied on top. So I'm looking at these forks, knowing they are a hint of some sort, but really not getting it. Was it a picnic set? Why were there forks? Forks, forks, forks...
And then I got it. Do you?

Ah, but my mother is a clever one. Get it? Forks? As in Forks, Washington, where the Twlight series is set? Once I figured out what was inside, I tore that package open so fast!!

I thought it was really cute, and was soooo psyched to get the entire set, all in hardcover. Now if I could just find time to read them all again...

And my sister Dana got me the movie, because a true Twilight fan MUST have the books AND the movie, don't you think? :)

Josephine's was the other May birthday that I wanted to share. Okay, so I wanted to share Maria's, too, but my camera broke literally ON her birthday, and everyone in my family forgot to bring theirs, so alas, I have no pictures of her birthday. :( But suffice to say that she gots lots of cute clothes and dolls and LOTS of great dessert, between the cupcakes I sent to school, her friend birthday party and the one for her family. She was inundated with desserts, and loved every minute of it.

Anyhow, here is Josephine and Lou right before their first annual daddy-daughter fishing trip (he started doing these with Maria on her birthday when she was three, too). It's a fun tradition, and the girls look forward to it for months in advance. I don't have any pictures of her with the fish she caught, because Lou said they were all too small to legally keep. But she did catch a few, with Lou's help, of course - go Josephine!

Ahhh, and here is the dessert - a golden butter cake, filled with fresh buttercream and frosted with my own creation - a fresh strawberry-infused real whipped cream frosting (I hate Cool Whip). I had to make a special kind of whipped cream, since the normal stuff won't hold up for frosting a cake - it just melts down after a short while. It is one of my favorite cakes that I have ever made. You just can't go wrong with strawberries!

The blowing out of the candles - Happy Birthday, Josephine!

And that's it! Birthday season is over in our house, and THANK GOODNESS! I have to say, that although it kind of stinks being pregnant in the summer heat, at least this baby's birthday is far away from the May Madness! :)

Am I the only one? #258

As I mother, I have many moments where I am asking myself: "Am I the only one that..." fill in the blank with the frustration of the moment. I'm sure that the answer to this question most of the time is "no", but I still find myself asking it over and over, wondering how many other woman are going through some of these crazy, maddening moments of motherhood. So, I have decided that, from time to time, this blog will feature an "Am I the only one?" moment. After all, it is my firm opinion that blogs should not be all sunshine and butterflies and life-is-a-bowl-of-cherries, because that is just nonsense. Parenthood has it's sunny, wonderful, heart-warming moments, to be sure, but in the inbetween, there are lots of "Am I the only one?" times, when you think you might just have to bust out the straightjacket.

Today's "Am I the only one?" moment is the following: Am I the only one who HATES mealtime on a semiregular basis? I mean, I REALLY detest it a lot of the time. It just seems like the older my kids get, the more of a battle it is. Being someone who loves food and takes eating very seriously, :) I just don't understand why children have to be prodded, begged, and threatened to eat their food. I mean, they have no trouble with snacktime, why is it that as soon as it's a family meal, it becomes this huge battle? I can't tell you the number of times I have said (and, admittedlly, sometimes barked) the phrase "EAT YOUR FOOD!!" It's not like I'm serving liver and onions here, folks. The food I make is normal stuff, and it doesn't seem to matter what I make - it can be their favorite meal, and we still have this problem.

Josephine's problem seems to be that she just isn't interested in eating a lot of the time. She would much rather just live on milk. And her new thing is to chew up one bite of food, and then refuse to swallow it. She just lets the whole mess sit in her mouth indefinitely. Maria's problem is that she won't stop talking long enough to put the food IN her mouth in the first place (surprise, surprise there). We constantly have to tell her to stop talking and start eating. Yesterday, it took my girls an hour to eat one small bowl of cereal - AN HOUR, FOLKS!! Does that seem crazy to anyone else? And that is quite typical of these two. Lou and I will finish our dinner, and then spend at least 30 minutes getting the girls to eat theirs. It makes mealtime so frustrating.

We have tried so many things to combat this problem. They get no milk until they finish their food (we figured that maybe they were filling up on milk and then had no room for food), and I don't give them snacks after 3pm, to make sure they are good and hungry by dinnertime at 6pm. The weirdest part is that in the hours before dinner, they are whining around about how STARVING they are, and then they sit down and play with their food instead of eating it - aaaaarrrrggggghhhh!

I am just starting to feel like a food-Nazi, saying over and over "Eat your food. Eat your food. Eat your food. EAT. YOUR. FOOD!!!" But if I take it away from them, ohhhhh, you should see the freakout that starts. And yet when I return it, still no eating...

My girls didn't used to be like this, but gradually mealtime in our family morphed into what it is today - a battleground. Not everytime, but enough to make Lou and I want to rip our hair out.

So, I ask, "Am I the only one?" Or are there fellow mealtime Nazis out there who suffer along with me...

Adventures in Virginia - the end

So, our last night there, after a whole week of eating home-cooked meals in our hotel room via our kitchenette, we splurged on a local seafood buffet. My girls were so excited for all-you-can-eat shrimp!

" Woo hoo - our cheapskate parents finally took us out to eat!"

Josephine showing off her fried shrimp - ohhhh, how she loves it.

This was the first of Lou's MANY plates of crablegs. He takes the "all-you-can-eat" seafood buffets very seriously. He has a whole game plan - he concentrates soley on the crab legs, since they are the priciest item. He was a man on a mission, cracking stack after stack of crab legs - I think he ate his weight in them before we left...

Our last night there, the girls wanted to take a walk on the beach "one last time". They were so sad to leave. We brought the last of our bread, and they had a great time throwing it to the seagulls to eat.

Maria was a good girl and just tried to feed them

Josephine, however, was intent on "catching one and EATING IT!!!" Seriously, she tried for over a half hour. She didn't get one, by the way.

Our last night there, I had a craving for some ice cream, and so I asked Lou to go out and get me some. When he came back and told me he had Ben & Jerry's, I was really excited, until I saw the container. In case you can't tell, this thing is TINY, like, the smallest carton of ice cream I have ever seen in my life.

Here it is inside a small bowl, to give you some scale. I was like "Are you KIDDING me?!! I ask you for ice cream, and you bring me six bites worth?!" As much as I was annoyed, though, I did find it kind of funny - what a goof he is...

It was the day we had to leave. The van was packed up, we were checked out of the hotel, but Lou wanted to do ONE more fun thing before we left. So, we went to the local putt putt golf place with a jungle theme. The girls saw it on the way in on our first day, and so they were really excited to get to go.

Maria did her best, but truth be told, Josephine was a way better putter. They both had fun, though, and that's what counts in the end.

We squeezed a couple of visits in on the way home. My cousin lives in Richmond and had just had her first baby a week earlier, so we dropped in to see her and the new baby boy for a couple of hours.

We joked that there were two babies in this picture - one newborn, and one half cooked!

After we left my cousin's house, we headed up to Springfield, to visit out long-lost friends, the Tolboes! They moved out of our ward a year ago, and it was really nice to catch up with old friends. Maria got to see her buddy Gavin and her pseudo-little brother, Josh, which thrilled her to no end.

My friend Linda and me! I have missed seeing all of the friends that I have made over the past few years, and it was sooo nice to be able to see one again and be able to talk, just like old times. Seriously, it was like they had never left, and also served as a nice reassurance that friends who move away don't have to disappear forever!!!

Ahhh, what a great trip - relaxing on the beach, seeing the sights, visiting with family and old friends. We felt so blessed to be able to have such a wonderful family trip together. I just love family vacations... :)