Baby 2.0: Pregnancy Rants

I think I will always refer to my first pregnancy as my "perfect" pregnancy, despite the medical issues we had while I was carrying him.  I was never sick, not that tired, and honestly did almost everything I did before I was pregnant. However, with this second pregnancy I can say that I have not been so lucky. I think all my bragging about no sickness/problems with the first has caught up to me and I am now paying the price. I decided just to write a little blog about the complaints of my pregnancy, really as a way to vent somewhat about the discomforts of this pregnancy. Hope you enjoy in my pain :)

Nausea

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With the first, I was lucky enough not to be sick at all. However, with this one I experienced nausea almost right away. I never have actually gotten sick, but the queasy feeling is something that I still will get every so often and it's annoying! I feel super bad for the women who are sick the entire pregnancy. I don't know how they do it!


No Energy

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I am naturally an energetic person. If you can't tell by my numerous projects I work on, I like to get things done! I remember the first trimester always being very low energy but with this one it has sneaked it's way into the second. It also could be the fact that I am chasing around a toddler too!

Heartburn

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I have never had heartburn, until now. It is terrible! I don't know what causes it, but if at 25 weeks I am getting it I can't imagine how bad it will be when I am 39 weeks! I heard that heartburn it means she will have lots of hair when she is born. If that is so, I will gladly take the heartburn! I have thin hair and would love for her to get my husband's thick hair!

Weight Gain

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With my first child, Aiden, I gained 50 pounds while pregnant and I SWORE I would not do the same with this one! The weight was hard to lose and I spent many of sweaty workouts trying to lose it! With this one I have eaten a lot healthier, not had ice cream every night, and tried to focus on eating smaller portions. I workout about 5 times a weeks for 30 minutes, not to mention chasing a toddler around. So how have I been doing? Well, I am 24 weeks along and I have gained almost 30 pounds! Looks like I will probably put on another 50 pounds with this pregnancy too! Not what I wanted to happen, but I think some people just put on more weight than others while pregnant. The upside of this is that this child should most likely be a normal sized baby, unlike Aiden. It's one thing to put on 50 pounds and have an 7+ pound baby, it's another to put on 50 pounds and have a 4 pound baby like with Aiden.

Sleepless Nights

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I read somewhere years ago that your body can store up sleep. So I have been trying to get as much sleep as possible each day. I usually take a short 20-30 minute nap mid afternoon and go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 7am. However, in the last few days, my night sleep has been interrupted by this little girl kicking me awake....and continuing to kick for hours! I am not sure what she is doing in there, but I am not a fan of it. This is probably part of the reason that I am so tired throughout the day. I guess she is just preparing me for her arrival!

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Those are my rants about this pregnancy. I guess they are probably pretty normal with most pregnant women's complaints and I do have to say I feel much better since ranting a little about them! I have to look on the bright side though. We are having a girl, which is what we wanted! Of course the pregnancy is going to be different, they always are! In a few months when we get to see her little face I am sure all this moaning and groaning will be well worth it!

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The Under Deck Sandbox and Playground

I am sure many of you have a raised deck, most likely from a walkout basement. Most people are normal and turn the underside of the deck into some type of great patio or grilling area. However for us, we have two walkouts (one on each side of the house) and this one is down a very inconvenient slope in our yard, so a nice patio area would not get much use. Here is the picture of the area I am talking about.

Also, not to mention that the deck is super unsafe-- if you can't tell by just looking at it. I shouldn't say it's super unsafe. I have walked on it and so has my husband. I just think if you would get a few people on it and some patio furniture I would question the structural support. Obviously the rails aren't up to code either...well I guess they are code because we live in the country and anything goes! This deck comes off the master bedroom and we decided when we bought this house not to use the deck and we are not replacing it. (We are not replacing it because we plan to bulldoze this house in a few years, see this post for more details Our New House.)

Enough about the deck...the nice feature of this deck is the shade it provides and that the location is right next to the garden area. The previous owner of the house had a hot tub down here, which we don't plan on buying. However, after watching my son play around the yard I thought the area would make a great place for a sandbox and playground AND use the deck to provide some shade. This probably isn't an idea that most homeowners would be interested in, but I have seen a few other houses around my town where they have installed a swing set under their deck. If you have two decks like us, this might be a good option for you.

Here is an up close of the area under the deck. The rock area will stay rock, after removing some hostas, and the dirt area (the old hot tub area) will be where the sand box will go.

I decided to make the walls higher on two corners of the sandbox because on one side of the area there is a good drop off. The back and left side of the sandbox will have the higher walls. I don't want any crazy toddlers (Aiden) jumping out the wrong side and falling down a hill. On the other two sides, I wanted some seating for my husband and I if we wanted to play in the sandbox with him.

My first task was to build up the sides of the wall on the sandbox. I used the deck supports to attach the sides of the sandbox. Now some of the deck supports aren't very close together. To provide support for the walls I hammered wooden stakes into the ground and drilled the sides of the wall to them.

For the seat support, I made an angled support and positioned them every few feet,  which should be enough to support the average adult. 

Here's a close-up of the support if you are wanting to build something like this. You will have to use your math skillz, which I am not ashamed to say my husband helped me out with--he was a math major after all. The embarrassing part is that it uses the very basic algebra equation...if I can't remember algebra I wonder how bad my calculus is! To find the length of the angled board, we just used the pythagorean theorem .

Here is the completed sandbox with the seat for sitting on the two sides. Once I had the sandbox built, I stained the boards with a stain that prevented chemicals from leaching out of the green treated lumber. Not all stains do this, so ask your hardware person which brands seal in the chemicals.

I filled the sandbox with some dirt to even out the area and then placed landscape fabric in it to prevent the weeds from coming up through the box. (Or in our case Sumac.)

I also installed some playground toys, a swing, and moved our small playground we had inside the house to  the outside. The playground area was complete!

He loves banging on these drums I installed and they were a great way to utilize the taller wall on the two sides. (Now you might notice the black fabric is showing. I need to add more sand to the sandbox, but waiting to see how much the husband needs for his firepit/patio he is building. All the leftover will fill the sand box a few more inches.)

Now he plays in the sandbox every time I am working in the garden, which seems like a lot! You should see my horrible tan lines!

On the size with the swing and slide, I had to remove the hostas, remove the rocks, lay new landscape fabric and then put the rocks back.

Even though the deck is an eyesore, I really like the playground area. It was a great way for us to use the useless deck as a large shaded area. As I said before, I can be in the garden and Aiden can play in the sand. As you can tell from the picture below, our garden is growing! The only thing that I don't like is that it seems to be bath night every night now every time Aiden plays in that sandbox!

Also, another item checked off my Countdown of Summer Projects is complete!!

If you have great eyesight, you might have noticed the lumber sitting on the table in the photo above. That's for the next outdoor project, our broken fishing bench! It's a really funny story how it broke, but that will be for a later post. It use to look like this: 

Now it looks like this:

Thank goodness I found there other bench you see above there at a garage sale last year for cheap or we would have no seating down by the water. I honestly just plan on rebuilding the same one, just more structurally sound.

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Easy Crockpot Cheesy Potato Hamburger Casserole

I am not a casserole girl..... I use to be, but I think during college I ate so many of them that I just don't enjoy them as much. Once in a while though, I will stumble across a super easy casserole recipe that I find it hard to resist trying and this is the case of this recipe. My husband really liked it, but requested less cheese the next time, so I pared down the cheese in this recipe. It's easy to put together and goes right in the crockpot, so make early in the day and dinner is ready at night!  

Crockpot Cheesy Potato Hamburger Casserole

1 pound ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

1 box of Betty Crocker Cheddar & Bacon Scalloped Potatoes

1 can whole no salt kernel corn, undrained

1 can 98% fat free cream of celery soup

pepper to taste

4 slices of 2% American Cheese or 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese

1. Brown the ground beef in a skillet over medium heat.
2. When beef is cooked, add in chopped onion and cook until translucent.
3. Drain the beef/onion mixture.
4. In crockpot, place scalloped potatoes in bottom and mix with powered cheese mixture.
5. Pour can of undrained corn onto potatoes.
6. Top with spoonfuls of cream of celery soup.
7. Place ground beef/onion mixture on top of the soup.
8. Sprinkle with pepper. You can salt this too, but I found with the soup, potatoes, and cheese that no salt was needed.
9. Top with cheese slices or shredded cheddar cheese.
10. Cook on low for 4-6 hours, depending on your crockpot. After a few hours, I stirred mine so the cheese would not burn on the sides.

Enjoy!

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The Fire Truck Room #3: The Reveal

Well the big day has come, the revealing of the fire truck room. It's been a long project over the last year and it is nice to say it is FINISHED!! I have been posting random blogs about this room, please read:

The Fire Truck Room #1
DIY Painting A Dresser
The Toy Box
The Bookshelf
Hanging Bookshelf From Crib Bumper
The Fire Truck Room #2: The Before)

To review, the fire truck theme came about from the fact that my son's Farfar use to be a fire fighter. Both he and my husband have fond memories of those fire fighter days-- the large fire trucks and putting out the fires. Also, I like that I can use the red and white color scheme for any future rooms that Aiden might ask for, such as a Nebraska Husker room (my husband's alma mater University of Nebraska). The third reason, I just think the theme is super cute! I mean, what is not to love about fire trucks and there is a lot to choose from when it comes to decoration!

The moment has arrived, the big reveal. I hope I didn't build this room up too much! This is the right side of the room when you walked in before.

And now this is the right side of the room. The table was $14 at IKEA and the chair were given to me by my sister Luci. They use to be beat up spider-man chairs, but I painted them white so hopefully they can go with other kids things in the future. The main black area above the table is a chalk board so Aiden can draw  to his heart's content.

I used his bookshelf and attached the changing pad to the back of it so it would double as a changing table. I know, people still think it's crazy that I use a changing table, but it works and saves me from having to bend over him with this huge prego belly of mine. I attached a red basket from IKEA to the side of the bookshelf to hold diapers and wipes. 

The large AIDEN letters are cardboard from Hobby Lobby that I just painted red to match the room. I had him random letters while changing him and he likes to say the letters over and over again. However, he love to stick his foot through the letter "D", which makes changing him a little tough.

This is the window/left side of the room before. 

And this is the window side of the area now. You will see that I hung a couple more shelves, the hanging bumper pad book holders, and the toy box also doubles as a window seat.

I love plants and I have so many. Aiden has grown very attached to this one, he like to touch it every morning, so it has made it's way to being a permanent fixture in the room.


Here is the new painted toddler bed and the fire truck painting I made him.

 I am absolutely in love with this brown wall! It just adds some good contrast to the colors of the room. 

This is the closet and the entrance to the room before I changed them a little. 

I added a fire truck over the door rack to the entrance door and hung a custom growth chart for Aiden on the closet door. 

Here's a better view of the growth chart. I am so glad to have a printer connection that will allow me to make custom artwork like this growth chart. (If you want something like this just email me and I can give you more info.)

That's the big reveal of the fire truck room. I hope I will have given some of you out there some cute ideas to add to your own toddler's room. Now only if we can get him to stay in that toddler bed.....that's a different story and there will be more on that soon!

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Naked Potato Salad

This is not your normal potato salad recipe! This is a mayo or miracle whip free potato salad, which my husband will LOVE! I adopted this recipe from Giada at Home's recipe Red Potato and Tomato Salad but thought hers was super bland so changed some of the ingredients! Enjoy!

1 pound baby red potatoes, halved
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
5 scallions, sliced
1 6 oz. can of pitted black olives, halved
1/3 cup chopped fresh italian parsley
1/4 cup of capers
3 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 large lemon, zested
1 half of lemon juice
Salt and pepper

1. Boil potatoes until fork tender.
2. Drain potatoes and let them cool to room temperature.
3. In one bowl, mix together all ingredients: potatoes, tomatoes, scallions, olives, parsley, capers, thyme, olive oil, lemon zest, and juice from half of the lemon that was zested.
4. Toss gently until all the ingredients are coated.
5. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Depending on the saltiness of your olives and capers you might need to add more salt.
6. Refrigerate for a few hours before sevice and toss again before serving.

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Zuppa Toscana Soup

My cousin Nikki was raving about this soup recipe a few weeks ago and sent it to me. We have had a couple of cold rainy days lately so I made this for dinner the other night. It was a HUGE success! I loved the green the kale added to the recipe and overall it was great comfort food! Serve with some crusty bread on the side!

1 lb ground Italian sausage (I use 1 package of Johnsonville Spicy Italian Sausage, removed from casings)
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
1 large diced onion
1/4 cup turkey bacon pieces, crumbled small
2 teaspoons of garlic, minced
1 pound potatoes, or about 2 large potatoes, sliced in half, and then in 1/4 inch slices
6 cups water
2 (14.58 ounce) cans chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups of kale


1. Saute Italian sausage and crushed red pepper in a large pot. Remove from pan and drain excess fat. Keep warm.

2. In the same pan, saute bacon, onions and garlic for approxiamtly 15 mins. or until the onions are

soft.
3. Add in diced potatoes.
4. Add chicken broth and water to pot and stir.
5. Add sausage and bacon and salt and pepper to taste.
6. Simmer for another 10 minutes, to thicken the soup.
7. Turn to low and add heavy cream and cook until thoroughly heated.

8. Add kale just before serving. Delicious!

Makes: 6-8 servings

Thanks Nikki!

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The Fire Truck Room #2: The Before

It's finally here....almost! The big reveal of the fire truck room for Aiden. I am probably building this up way more then what I should be, but it's always a nice feeling when you have a long project finished.

Periodically, I have been posting things about this room (see The Fire Truck Room #1, DIY Painting A Dresser, The Toy Box, The Bookshelf, and Hanging Bookshelf From Crib Bumper) and after almost a year of redoing random garage sale finds and painting the room the last few months, I am finally finished!

I thought I should  start out the big reveal with a little peak at what the room was like before. Now keep in mind, we moved into this house less than a year ago and no decorating was done. The room is very small, but fine for a kid his age.

This is the right side of the room when you walk in.

You will see bookshelf and the dresser are already in use.

The left side of the room had the crib and rocking chair, which will go into the new nursery.

Also, you have the door to enter and the closet door. I have a little bit of a plan to dress them up!

Anyways, that is his super tiny room! I can't wait to write the post up on the reveal of the room!

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