Pregnancy Pics and such

I have been really bad at taking pictures of my stomach this pregnancy. I took them at least every 2 weeks last time and I've only taken pics twice so far this time. I am currently 16 weeks along, but the pictures posted below are of me when I was 13 or 14 weeks (yeah I can't even remember for sure.. sad). I find myself being less obsessive with it all this time, which I know just has to do with the fact that Lydia keeps me busy busy busy. I felt the first flutterings of movement last week and now I feel them fairly often (several times a day, especially when lying down). Very exciting!

As many of you may remember, I had some problems with early effacement, which with standing and the laws of gravity, caused preterm labor. Well, this time around we are going to try our best to avoid that happening. The doctor prescribed a progesterone shot every week starting at week 16 and going through week 32. This shot will help to thicken my uterus, hence hopefully avoiding the effacement issues of last time. I had mixed feelings about having to drive to the doctor every week, with Lydia in tow. But my doc said that they typically will let the patient take the needles and meds home and have someone I know do it for me. haha. Of course, assuming I knew anyone who had any knowledge of human anatomy and medical instruments. Well, it just so happens that my husband knows a thing or two along those lines. But he has never actually given injections before. So, I get to be his guinea pig. Luckily he doesn't have to try and find a vein or anything, the needle goes straight into my muscle (like a flu shot.. only it doesn't go into my arm.. ;) ). The first shot was yesterday and we actually had the nurse show us how to do it and Derek will begin doing it next week. I have faith in him. And he is confident he can do it, no problem. Ask me how I feel next week as he's preparing to do it.. haha. The liquid is sort of thick, it's the consistency of olive oil and quite uncomfortable having it forced into skin (it's not as bad as the steroid shots though, luckily).

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this knew adventure with you all and hopefully it has the results we are looking for. :)

Big Appetite!

So, for the last few months Lydia's appetite just hasn't been very big. She eats every meal and snacks in between but each time she would eat it would only consist of a few bites. (Of course after some coaxing from us she would eat a few more bites :) ). But recently her appetite has grown quite a bit. Just this morning, for example, I gave her 2 pieces of toast and a half bowl of oatmeal. She has never asked for more oatmeal before, but this morning she did. So I gave her the rest of the oatmeal and upon finishing it she asked for "more, again." Haha. The oatmeal was gone, so I suggested an orange and she got really excited. Well, she ate that whole orange all by herself. And then she found the little container filled with cheerios that we take to church and has been snacking on them for the last little bit. Now, she woke up at 9:00, so all this has happened in just the last couple of hours. I think she just might be going through a growth spurt, what do ya think ? ;)

Just some fun pics of our Lydi-bug

Lydia loves to play outside. And now that all the flowers and veggies are dead or harvested we let her play in the dirt. She takes that quite literally and just digs right in.

Today Lydia and I made a Princess crown for her. She did such a good job coloring it, huh? :)

Derek's family owns a wheat farm in Idaho. We were up there a few weeks ago during harvest, and I really wanted to take a few pictures of her standing in the wheat. I took TONS, but I only put a couple on here.

Lydia loves to play with her stuffed animals. She lined them up and decided to just chill with them for a while. :) The 2nd picture is of her sitting in her crib with some of her animals and reading a book. She will only play in her crib if I stay in the room otherwise she thinks she has to go to bed. Luckily I was cleaning her room, so she stayed in there for quite a while.

Well, there's just a few pictures of our little cutie. She is so much fun and talks so well. She can tell you just exactly what she needs and wants much of the time in sentences (no matter that those sentences only contain 2 or 3 words most of the time :) ). She loves to dance, read books, color, play with her toys, and get into just about everything she isn't supposed to. :) She keeps us on our toes, that's for sure!

Our Trip to Italy!!!

So... our 3 year anniversary was last Tuesday. I knew Derek was planning a surprise weekend for us - the surprise part being when we were going and what we were doing. I had a pretty good suspicion we would leave on a Friday, but that's basically all I knew. I've had a bag packed for 3 weeks! haha. Well, this past Friday was the day. I got back from my shift, and Derek took Lydia outside, which isn't abnormal. Well, he didn't bring her back. lol. He'd walked her over to his brother's house. He told me to grab anything else i thought I would need and said we were leaving. :D. As we were driving he handed me a couple of plane tickets - From Salt Lake to Rome! I was so confused (we are too poor to fly anywhere let alone Europe! haha). The confusion deepened when we drove all the way to the airport. But then we circled around and drove back out of the airport. That's when it clicked, and Derek confirmed it when he announced "Welcome to Rome!"

Here is a copy of my fake ticket. Pretty convincing, huh?! It's amazing what you can do on the internet. haha. P.S. nothing illegal was done to get these tickets. haha. they were printed on printer paper. (Sorry it's so small).

As we drove to Salt Lake City we played along. We were having a Italy-themed weekend! Such a great idea! So we drove from Rome to Venice. Venice was the theme of the hotel room we stayed in. We slept in a gondola! And yes, it was every bit as cool as it sounds! We had dinner at the Olive Garden (where else?! yummmm).

Here's a view of our room. You can see there is a bed and a couch set into a gondola.

Me lounging in my big boat :)

Derek trying to drink from the fountain that was in our room.

The next day was filled with a wonderful trip to the temple, strolling around the city, and a surprise shopping spree!! The whole weekend was surprise after surprise. And I'm pretty hard to surprise - I'm a natural detective even when I try not to be.. haha. It was a perfect two days! I love my husband, my best friend. :)

Suuuper Yummy!!!

I made the most wonderful sandwich today (compliments of Rachael Ray :) ). It is so good and figure friendly.

What you need:

2 pieces of bread

1 chicken breast

1 gala apple

One wedgde of Laughing Cow cheese or a slice of swiss cheese

olive oil/canola oil/etc. whatever you prefer.

Pound the chicken until pretty thin. Season chicken with a little salt and pepper. Cook it in a saute pan or grill it. Cut the apple into really thin slices. Saute the apple slices in oil, yes, that's right, saute it... trust me it's good. It seems to release the sugary taste and adds a wonderful sweet touch to the sandwich. Spread the laughing cow cheese on a slice of bread, scoop the apples on, add the chicken breast, add the other slice of bread. Then grill the sandwich in the same saute pan you cooked the apples in ( just like you would for grilled cheese). Hint: the bread won't sizzle like it would with butter, so you have to keep an eye on it. Remove from skillet and ENJOY!!! You'll love it! And feel a teensy bit of guilt for it either.

So I've been super curious about Laughing Cow cheese for a while now, and when I saw this recipe I used a coupon and went and got some. It's so creamy and there are only 50 calories a wedge. It's really good. But using regular swiss cheese would great too, I'm sure!!

Sugar!!

So, I seriously believe I am addicted to sugar. I purposely don't buy sugary things, because I end up craving it every single day. It's not the "good" sugar that I crave either.. it's the bad - candy, cookies, brownies - kind of sugar. And I try to ignore it, but it literally becomes annoying to ignore. It's like nagging me at the back of my mind that I have to have it. So, I'll find myself looking to see what I have in the pantry and luckily I rarely have anything on hand - it's usually mixes that I'm too lazy to make. Haha. But the annoying, nagging tendency to eat sugar is real for me. I think a lot of people have this.. at least that's what I've noticed (or maybe it's wishful thinking in hopes that I'm not alone :) ). My 2 biggest weaknesses are ice cream and chocolate chip cookies, so those are rare things that we keep in our house - I don't even like to have chocolate chips on hand because I'll probably end up making chocolate chip cookies. Does anyone have suggestions of how I can deal with this?? Help!! :D

Pavlov's Dog

I had an experience similar to this today. For those of you who aren't familiar with Pavlov's dog. This guy named Pavlov conducted an experiment with his dog. Every time he'd ring this bell he'd feed his dog. Ring the bell, feed the dog, ring the bell, feed the dog. It got to the point that the dog would begin to salivate at the sound of the bell.

Well, Lydia has really started loving this game we play with her. One of us will hide and crawl out and chase her and then tickle her. She loves it. She laughs and crawls to the other one in the room to save her. It's like we're "base" or something. Anyway, so she and I were sitting in her doctor's office today waiting for her doctor to come in. She was sitting in the middle of the room playing when all of sudden we heard thumping in the hallway (someone was walking.. rather loudly.. down the hall). To her it sounded like someone was crawling towards her.. haha. So, she stops playing, starts laughing and crawls to me as fast as she could. I picked her up and she stared at the door just waiting for daddy to crawl in and start tickling her. lol. She just stared at the door with a smile on her face. It was so funny. Of course, daddy never came in. It still makes me laugh thinking about it. She's so fun :)