Kid-Friendly Dinner Party Ideas

We're having a dinner party tomorrow night.

But our guests are half kids.

2 other couples and their 4 kids to be precise.

Since we don't have kids yet I'm not used to cooking for a child's palate.

My 5 year old niece likes to say to me "You don't cook for kid's much do you?"

No, Parker, I don't. Thanks for noticing.

My chili didn't have beans and it was too spicy, my taco soup was too spicy and my enchiladas were too spicy according to Parker.

The theme being...too spicy.

Got it.

But now I'm paranoid that kids don't like my cooking.

I changed my menu three times, but have finally landed on what I hope is the final decision.

Cheesy Beef Enchiladas

source

and

Grown-Up Gouda and Bacon Mac & Cheese

source

Parents, what do you think?

Will kids eat enchiladas and mac & cheese? Specifically Gouda mac & cheese?

Or do I need to change my menu again?

Giada's dress

Does everyone watch the Today show?

Giada's dress this morning was BEAUTIFUL and I want it.

Here's my terrible screen grab picture.

And here's a link if you want to see a much better picture of it.

How can I find out the designer of this dress?

I NEED it!

Someone help me please!

Eating, Eating and More Eating

I can't seem to stop eating.

And when I'm not eating I'm thinking about eating.

What's my next meal going to be? When is my next meal going to be? What can I eat as a snack before I eat my next meal? Is it ridiculous to eat dinner at 5pm?

If I keep eating like this I am going to get FAT.

And not cute pregnant fat.

FAT fat.

I have no nausea and no food aversions (hate me if you want, I know 80% of women have morning sickness and I'm in the minority) and thus nothing seems to be off limits in my quest for food either.

Whoever said your pregnancy will be similar to your mothers and other women in your family is full of shit. My mother was sick for 9 months through 3 pregnancies and my sister said those first 3 months of morning sickness were hell.

I strive to be different in life. Even with my pregnancy.

I'm at least trying to eat semi-healthy.

I'm craving fruit and eating fruit more than normal. I'm actually normally allergic to fruit and I'm only allowed small quantities at a time. My allergy has not bothered me no matter how much fruit I eat through this pregnancy.

But I am also craving FAST FOOD.

Ew.

I don't really eat fast food and yet I am desperate for some Taco Bell lately.

What's up with that baby?

What possible nutrients could you possibly need or want from Taco Bell?

The fruit I understand.

But Taco Bell? There's no Taco Bell anywhere close to me thank god, otherwise you just know I'd have to drive over there and indulge my craving.

Want to know what I ate yesterday?

Peanut Butter on Toast when I got up at 8am

1 hour later a bowl of Grape Nuts

2 hours later an egg salad sandwich

2 hours later a peach

1 hour later a hard boiled egg

1 hour later handful of grapes

and finally at 5pm I could stand it no longer, so I ordered a small pizza

ate 3 pieces

and 2 hours later another 2 pieces.

That's 8 times a day I'm eating, and that was a normal day, I've been doing that everyday for the last 2 weeks. Looking at my list, like I said at least it's pretty healthy eating...except the pizza, but my husband is gone again and I HATE cooking for one person and I have no leftovers.

Does this happen for the whole 9 months?

I also seem to go from feeling perfectly content ie not hungry at all to downright starving in approx 2.3 seconds. If I wait too long to start dinner I have to snack on something while I'm cooking because I just CANNOT wait for 20 minutes for dinner to be done.

And because of all of this eating I am bloated. I know I need to avoid carbs like nobody's business because all they do is make me uncomfortable but mmmm....pizza. So, what I'm going to pretend is my baby bump is actually just some bloat along with some extra chub that I'm hoping will one day soon "pop" into a bump.

My husband is in danger of getting fat if he tries to eat when I eat. He keeps turning down my kind offers of food and telling me to leave him alone and quit offering him food so he doesn't get fat along with me.

Other preggos or mamas, were you hungry for 9 months straight? All the other preggy ladies I know are hating food and struggling to keep things down.

Now please excuse me...all this talking about eating is making me hungry and I have to go eat some nachos.

Fashion Rut

I hate all of my clothes right now.

I stand in front of my closet and can find absolutely nothing that I would feel good about putting on.

The weather here sucks.

It's supposed to be summer. I'm supposed to be wearing summer dresses and sandals.

Instead I'm wearing long sleeve dresses with tights and boots.

My toenails have been unpainted for weeks...UNHEARD of for me...ok part of that is because my toenails look disgusting from the fact that they are rarely unpainted and almost always painted a dark color and I never put a base coat on my toes so I'm trying to leave them naked so that the disgusting part grows out and they will be pretty again. But NEVERTHELESS it is summer and I should not have the opportunity to have my toenails unpainted FOR THIS LONG.

Guys, I don't want to be wearing winter dresses with tights right now.

It depresses me.

And so I stare longingly into my closet.

Hoping and praying for something to jump out at me.

Something pretty and summery that I won't freeze my ass of wearing.

That I can just throw a jacket on and make it warm enough.

But there's nothing, NOTHING I tell you!

As the rest of you long for sweaters and boots because you've been sweating under 100 degree heat for weeks and weeks, we here in San Francisco have yet to see summer.

Sigh. Grass is always greener I guess.

On Turning 30

Let it be said, I really really like my birthday.

It's a celebration of ME and I am...

1. a Leo

and

2. a middle child

This equates to birthday time = it's all about me = awesome.

If I said I didn't like all the attention I would be lying.

And also the worst Leo ever.

I love my birthday.

So, you can only imagine the sort of nonsense I was planning for the big 3-0. I was not excited about turning 30 per se, but it was my birthday, who cares about the age, it's the birthday that's the important part! It was going to be AMAZING. I was going to NYC and we were going to P.A.R.T.Y our little faces off.

Dom and I were even taking a break from Clomid and babymaking.

Just so I could turn 30 like a rock star.

And then...

Well then I found out I was pregnant. On a Clomid cycle that was WHACK (I thought I wasn't going to ovulate at all, hence the NYC birthday plans! and then my body decided Day 29 would be a good day to ovulate, I tell you WHACK!)

And my 30th birthday took a backseat.

A really really far back of the car backseat.

August 13th, 2011 became just another day.

We went to Oregon and out to dinner with my family and told my grandparents about the baby, and while it was in fact MY birthday dinner, it didn't feel like it.

And it was OK.

I guess I was more excited about being pregnant than having a birthday. Just 30 and pregnant not 30 and still not pregnant (I was 28 when we started our TTC journey, I thought I would already have a baby by 30).

I surprised even myself with just how much I didn't care.

Remember last year on my birthday in Australia? No friends for my birthday and Dom not announcing to the others at dinner that it was my birthday and me getting a little too drunk and crying about it? Yes, that's the kind of behavior one can usually expect from me when birthday plans aren't suitably um....Jesica-centric enough.

This is not necessarily a good quality in myself, it just IS. This is what happens when you have a Leo who is also a middle child. All those parents out there of the following combination...you have been warned.

And while it's always a goal of mine to disguise my feelings on the outside and pretend that sort of thing doesn't bother me and to appear less selfish, you can't change how you feel on the INSIDE and that's what I'm talking about.

But this year was different. So so different. But it's good guys, it's really good.

I was scared about what kind of parent I'm going to make. The friends I know with Leo parents, those parents are...how shall we say this...a little self-centered. And even with their adult children they always seem to make everything about themselves, not their children. I don't want to be that kind of parent. And now just from this one tiny little thing that happened, or rather didn't happen, ie. me not feeling like it was the end of the world because I was pregnant on my 30th birthday and not getting to party and celebrate like I always imagined, I feel like it will be OK. Maybe, just maybe, I will be a good parent regardless of my self-centered, attention seeking, Leo/middle child tendencies.

Any other Leo parents out there? Have you found it easy to be less selfish (because let's face it if you're an unselfish Leo, you're a rarity) after having children?

Fertility Challenged

I mentioned it took a year for us to get knocked up.

I thought many times maybe I should blog about it...infertility that is.

I wrote many posts about it. I'll probably start posting some of these old posts for posterity sake with the original date that I wrote them. Most are from just a mere 3 months ago when we finally sought help from a specialist and when this all became really...real.

Before that it was just too hard to write about. It was easier to not think about it than to write about it and be constantly surrounded by it.

(Half of this post was written May 16, 2011, 2 weeks shy of our 1 year mark since we'd began our journey, the rest I just finished as my infertility story has just come to a close...or at least a pause until the next kid.)

Infertility is such an ugly word.

It invokes feelings of inadequacy and disease.

I prefer to think of myself as fertility challenged.

As in I think I CAN have a baby, it's just not happening as quickly as I would prefer.

To me, infertility means you CANNOT have children, ie. you have no uterus, or no sperm, or some other condition that means you CANNOT.

I feel there should be another word that means...you need help.

Subfertility is what many people have come up with. I like Fertility Challenged.

That's me. I'm Fertility Challenged.

My fertility history in a nutshell. Ok, it's a really big nutshell, put on your seatbelts, here's my story.

I was on birth control for 10 years. If there were breaks they were few and far between and they never lasted very long. My hormone of choice was the pill, but I was also on the Depo shot for a year somewhere in my early 20's.

I came off the pill in December of 2009, with the thought being in my pretty little unknowing unwordly head that if we wanted to start "trying" in June 2010 (this was the master plan!) it might be smart to let my body adjust and get back to it's own normal hormones for a bit.

If I could rewind my life and do it over again this is the one thing I would change.

I would either not go off my pills until we were ready to "try" (I'm sorry but that will always be in ""...it's a stupid term, I'm sorry I'm using it but there's no better way to say...having sex for procreation purposes, so "trying" it will be) or we would just go with it and start "trying" in December when I went off the pill.

If you are ever in a similar position, here is my advice, come off your pills and IMMEDIATELY start "trying", do not wait, do not let your body adjust. Because...

I had a few normal periods. I will forever be plagued with the thought that had I not waited I could have gotten pregnant there in those few months that I was getting a period. It felt like things were adjusting, cycles were somewhere in the 30-50 day range...irregular but they were coming and relatively normal. And it's not abnormal to have irregular periods after coming off the pill. And then June comes along, we're ready to start...one more time..."trying", that cycle I had an amazingly normal cycle, 29 days and I was convinced my body had finally done it, she had regulated herself and I was going to have normal easy to track, thus easy to tell if I was pregnant or not cycles.

We weren't pregnant that cycle but we thought nothing of it at this point, WHO GETS PREGNANT THE FIRST TIME? Oh right, just half the couples I know. But really, they're the freaks, not the ones that it takes a few months, right? So, onto the next month, and here, ladies and gen...I mean ladies, is why I've taken a million pregnancy tests, I quit getting my period. The damn thing just stopped.

I would like to blame the move to Australia, seeing as how the periods stopped in Australia...but I had that normal normal cycle right at the beginning...which when I think about it THAT is the period that should have been screwed up by the move, the crazy time difference and the ridiculous flight and all that jazz, but no, that was a normal cycle.

At the 3 month-ish mark with no period (and several pregnancy tests later, seriously guys what would you have done?!) I finally went and saw a Dr. as well as a naturopath, they both came up with the same thing.

PCOS.

Go ahead and google PCOS if you don't know what it is. It stands for Polycycstic Ovarian Syndrome. It means you don't ovulate, have irregular periods, have cysts on your ovaries, have acne, are fat, have facial hair, etc etc. and there's an underlying insulin resistance. I do not have any of these physical symptoms. I am not overweight, I don't have acne, I don't have facial hair BUT diabetes is prevalent in my family, the majority of relatives on one side of my family have diabetes THUS it made a certain amount of sense that maybe, just maybe I had this disorder that was stopping me from ovulating. I will dive into this in another post, but I do not believe I have PCOS. I do have cystics ovaries that clog the damn things up and don't allow me to ovulate, but I believe this is some leftover aftermath of being on the pill for so long.

So, here we are in Australia, no ovulation, no periods and a diagnosis of PCOS. Because I was unwilling to go the Clomid or Metformin route that the GP recommended at this point...mostly because I was only there for a short time, Metformin is a long term remedy that requires a certain amount of monitoring and Clomid...I just wasn't ready for the Clomid yet, but I ended up seeing a naturopath that specialized in fertility.

You may remember a few posts where I mentioned her here and here and she's also the reason I was going to the gym. I cut out carbs and started hitting the gym, all in an effort to help my body rid itself of extra glucose which in turn would let me ovulate (if I had PCOS anyway). I was also on what felt like a hundred different supplements and herbs. I lost 10 lbs almost immediately (just one of many reasons I do not believe I have PCOS, PCOSers DO NOT lose weight easily) but did not ovulate. I had a 94 day cycle and a 105 day cycle back to back with no ovulation just breakthrough bleeding. I had 2 periods the whole time I was in Australia. It sucked.

Fast forward to finally back in the good ole U S of A in January 2011. My period tricked me again, I got 2 in a row in the 30 day range. Unfortunately I was temping at this point and I knew I hadn't ovulated during either of these seemingly normal cycles, BUT my period made me think that maybe it was just all the moving and traveling and now that we were back things would regulate themselves again.

This is called denial people. I did not want to admit we needed help.

BUT as soon as we had a move to San Francisco date, regardless of my denial, I made an appt to see an RE (that's Reproductive Endocrinologist for all those folks who aren't versed in infertility speak) I knew we needed help at this point (and not help from a GP or GYN, I'd seen 3 of those at this point, they weren't helpful) and that I couldn't fix my body on my own. Or if I could it was going to take A LOT longer than I was willing to give it before I sought medical help.

The RE appt was just shy of 1 year of "trying". And if I ovulated at all in that time it was that very first month when I had a 29 day cycle, the rest of the year was a bust.

But just 2 Clomid cycles later, I'm pregnant.

Not infertile...

...just fertility challenged.

Busting Out...

...of my bra that is.

Dad, don't keep reading if you don't want to read about boobs.

The real reason I wanted to announce my pregnancy is so that I could talk about my boobs without everyone thinking I was weird.

Because if you're pregnant you're allowed to talk about your boobs, they become much like the tummy (or so I imagine) in that they're completely foreign and unreal and a little unnatural.

It's like they belong to someone else.

Let me explain.

(I wrote the rest of this post on August 3, 2011 when I was not quite 6 weeks pregnant.)

While my belly has remained the same size, the girls are growing like nobody's business and they hurt like hell.

I've already outgrown all of my bras...I foresee bra shopping in my near future. (a good 3 weeks later I have yet to go bra shopping...I think they're going to continue growing...not sure what I'm waiting for, is there a boob plateau? Will they stop for a little while before the grow again after the baby is born? All questions I don't know the answer to...thus the delay of bra shopping.)

I'm only 6 weeks in, holy hell what's going to happen over the next 34 weeks!

Seriously, I've read about or heard about every pregnancy symptom that ever was, I've been a birth junkie since I was 22. I love pregnancy and birth stories. But why, oh why does no one talk about how big and sore their boobs get RIGHT AWAY?! I expected bigger boobs...later, not the exact second I became pregnant. Nope, I wasn't expecting that at all.

The boobs were in fact the only reason I took a pregnancy test. I'll delve more into this later but I was temping and as a rule after taking what felt like hundreds of pregnancy tests over the last year I was at the point where no pregnancy test was even going to come into my house until I had a high temp for AT LEAST 18 days past ovulation. Nothing breaks your spirit quite like peeing on stick after stick month after month and it always flashing negative at you.

So, no peeing on sticks before the 18 day mark.

BUT my boobs hurt so bad that I took a test at 13 days past ovulation...a good 3 days before my period was due and a good 5 days before my rule of 18 days.

It was THAT noticeable.

So for this ONE reason I cannot fathom how people don't know they're pregnant right away. I do not have any morning sickness or nausea or cravings but by god I've got these uncomfortable tender things on my chest that let me know every time I try to turn over at night or run down the stairs that I am in fact still pregnant.

Is this how most of you feel just before you get your periods? Do your boobs hurt like hell? Is that why people don't usually know they're pregnant right away? I don't have normal periods, I don't ovulate...more on that later, but that's obviously why this took a year. But my boobs never hurt before my period, thus this was an extremely unusual symptom for me, there was no mistaking it. Please share, does everyone get sore boobs before a normal period? I'm very curious.

Update: I finally broke down and bought some new bras yesterday. For the curious I started out as a B and am now a very full C, I am hoping they stay this way though the left boob is teetering on the brink...it wants to be a D already. For the moment the girls are much more comfortable in a bra that fits...good advice for everyone, wear bras that fit, especially if you have sore pregnant boobs!

1 Year and 1 Month

Perhaps it is too early to share this news.

But it consumes my thoughts.

And makes it hard to blog about other things.

And I've waited long enough.

It took one year and one month.

But I can finally say...

I'm Pregnant.

8 weeks and 3 days today.

Bookshelves

I feel like I am constantly decorating.

Normally I would have a good association with decorating. In general I like moving into new spaces and decorating them.

But for whatever reason, this house refuses to really come together for me.

There's not a single room that I wouldn't change at least one thing if I could.

I'm over it. I want a break. But at the same time, I WANT IT DONE.

So, while we were agonizing over what to do with our dining room, we finally came to the conclusion that bookshelves belonged in the living room. We searched and searched for the perfect bookshelves and finally landed on what was a happy medium for both of us and bought a couple of these babies from Crate and Barrel.

They arrived today.

The one thing we hadn't unpacked from moving was a box of books, I thought for sure with these new bookshelves all of our books would finally have a home.

I was so wrong.

So, what started out as this at 7am this morning (really Crate and Barrel, 7am delivery?):

Now looks like this:

I'd like to tell you that all of my books fit...but sadly, they do not.

Which means I have another bookshelf to decorate.

See what I mean, it's neverending!

Anyone else have trouble getting a new house to "come together", or am I the only one?

3-0

Today is my birthday.

I'm 30.

But hey...

or so I've heard.

Miscellany Wednesday

I know it's supposed to be Miscellany Monday...alliteration and all that jazz. But I'm feeling a little bit like bullet points are the way to go today.

So here goes.

* I just found this chocolate chip cookie recipe here, decided to try it and am now enjoying a delicious batch...so much so that I fear there will be no cookies left by the end of the day.

* For personal reasons that I will share in a few weeks, I have decided to not go to NYC for my birthday. This makes me very very sad, but I will be going in September to make up for it!

* Instead, for my birthday, I'm going up to Oregon to see the fam, where if nothing else I at least get to enjoy some summer weather which San Francisco is not providing.

* I fear that because we're so protective with our cats, ie. leaving them for 4 days to go to Oregon is KILLING me, that it's indicative of how we're going to be with our kids. I don't want to be an overprotective parent.

* San Francisco weather sucks.

* AM I REALLY TURNING 30 ON SATURDAY?

* I'm uber excited to be going to a wedding in the UK in October, just 2 months away!

* I just rediscovered how bad I am at keeping secrets. Someone told me something and I am DESPERATE to tell others...it's not even my secret to tell!

Happy Hump Day Everyone!

True Life: I'm a General Life Blogger

I'm linking up with Fabulous but Evil and Mrs. Monologues today for the premiere of the

True Life: I'm a ______ Blogger.

I consider myself a General Life Blogger.

I started this blog just over a year ago when my husband and I moved to Sydney, Australia.

I blogged about life as an expat living in a foreign country.

My blog was very much a travel blog at that point as we spent much of our time traveling around Australia.

Since returning from Australia in January I've managed to stay put for an entire 8 months and blog about my life here in San Francisco, whether that be decorating our new house or weekends away at Napa, or the latest book I'm reading.

Soon I hope to be blogging about pregnancy and babies and boobs.

Either way my blog grows and changes along with me as I blog about my life.

Things to know about me:

I turn 30 in 1 week, and I'm none too thrilled about it.

My husband travels too much for work.

I used to work in Production in NYC.

I'm a Stay-at-Home Wife now.

San Francisco is a new city for me, I know NO ONE here.

I miss NYC and consider it "home" when I say I'm homesick.

I'm actually from Oregon.

I'm a middle child.

I'm a Leo.

Everyone else Link Up, fun way to get some new followers!

Dining Room Dilemma

For the first time ever I have a proper dining room.

And I'm having a bit of trouble with the decorating.

You see there's this big wall on one side.

With nothing.

Just a wall.

Originally I thought ooh, I could put floor to ceiling bookshelves across the whole wall!

But I have floor to ceiling bookshelves on either side of my fireplace in the next room.

I think that might be a bit of overkill on the bookshelves.

And honestly books don't really go in the dining room, do they?

So then we decided a large buffet/hutch type thing would be pretty with a display on top and cupboards on the bottom.

But I don't have china or anything else I really want to "display" in a dining room.

So now we've moved on to just a buffet, a long one that stretches almost the whole length of the room with some sort of artwork or giant mirror above it.

But for the life of me I CANNOT MAKE A DECISION.

Here's the room as it is now:

The armoir does not live there, it's just resting there momentarily while we figure out exactly where another piece of furniture that's in the armoir's spot is going to live. Nor do any of the other weird things lying against the armoir, this has been sort of the holding area while we figure out where everything lives since WHO USES A DINING ROOM?! And sorry about the weird coloring, the 2nd picture is most accurate with the actual color of the room, it's definitely orange, not yellow.

Anyway, what does everyone think?

source

Large wall unit like this?

source

or something more like this (but longer to fill more of the wall) with aforementioned mirror or artwork above to fill up the wall space?

What does everyone think?