Give Life - Donate Blood

I added a little something new to the blog yesterday- the give life/donate blood badge I found on the Red Cross's website. I have donated blood since shortly after my 17th birthday when my high school held a blood drive. It seemed to be a good way to get out of class for a while and here I am, almost 16 years later, still donating. I have to take a little break now while I am pregnant so I thought maybe I could encourage someone else to go. Some people are not eligible to donate but you can check here to see if you might be. If you do go and get turned down, try again! I was turned down once last year because my iron was too low (usually it is really high) so I went back two days later. I was fine that day and was able to donate. You can make appointments with most or all blood banks so the process for whole blood donation is not very long at all. Don't be scared about the needle- the nurses all do this so much that you can hardly even feel it. It is so easy and a fantastic way to help someone else out- AND you get to eat cookies and ding dongs when you finish!

27 Weeks and 1 Day With the New Kid

Here is a photo of me from today when I am 27 weeks and 1 day along in my second pregnancy.



I am almost into the third trimester- just a few days left now in the glorious second trimester. Not that I really find it so glorious, just compared to that last trimester it seems pretty good. I went to the doctor last week and everything was great. I had my glucose test and despite still being on a sugar high from Valentine's Day (only two days before my test), it looks like it turned out fine. I feel pretty good most of the time. Occasionally I have a little heartburn or feel a little short of breath but that's it. I feel the little guy moving around a lot during the day but it is still fun and not uncomfortable at this point. He usually gets really active after dinner and Rob gets to feel him move around then too. We bought a replacement bouncy seat this week since Hercules destroyed the one we had. I bought the same one again so now we have some extra parts if little Hercules here decides to break the new one too. Just have to get a double stroller, baby book and box of diapers and we are set!

King of the Laundry

Rex has been helping me so much around the house lately. Here he is, assisting with the separating of the laundry.



As I mentioned recently, Rex is climbing on everything. So the other day as I was trying to sort our laundry, he climbed up on the bed and decided to get right in the middle of everything. Not a lot of help, but he is so funny and so cute that it is okay with me if he does this. I have no idea why he was wearing his beanie around that morning- just part of his charm, I suppose. I think his true desire was to get to the pull chain that works the ceiling fan and light (that's what he is staring at in the photo), not actually help me. We managed to get our clothes clean that day which is more than I can say for the last few days around here. Our productivity has been pretty low lately. Rob hasn’t been feeling too great for over a week. Not really sick, just kind of a cough and tightness in his chest. He got some stuff from the doctor yesterday though and is feeling a lot better now. I’m doing pretty good but I had a headache Monday night and most of the day yesterday so I was useless those two days. I’ve been putting off my grocery shopping for a few days now and this morning thought, “Ok. Today we are going to get going early and get our groceries this morning!” It was a good plan until Rex woke up and I discovered he had been sick (puking- sorry if that is tmi) at some point in the night. I got him and all his stuff cleaned up and he seems to be doing pretty good- no fever and no more incidents. And he seems like he is feeling just fine. I don’t know what to think besides maybe he has a tummy like his mommy’s because I get like that too. Anyhow, no shopping or going out for us today just in case. It would totally be a pizza night except I got take-out for us last night due to the headache and we are not the kind of family that is okay with eating out two nights in a row. We need some real food around here and I’m not sure what to do about that. I think we are all on the mend now and will get more accomplished in the next few days.

It's the Climb

Rex is going crazy with new developments lately and one of the biggest is climbing. Climbing everything. About two weeks ago, he figured out how to climb up on the couch. Once he mastered that, he realized he could climb just about anything. This includes all chairs, couches, beds, several attempts on his Fisher Price musical toy table before he was stopped and also an attempt at climbing onto the table in his playhouse.



Although Rob and I were the ones to stop him from climbing on the musical toy table, he stopped himself from going any further on the playhouse table. He had already climbed onto the built-in chair and was standing on that, trying to figure out how to get from the chair onto the table when I took that photo. I'm sure he will figure it out before long. Another thing he has figured out is how to take pictures with my camera. He calls this one "Mama's Got a New Pair of Shoes".



His speech is really progressing quickly now too. He is adding words all the time and some even sound like they are supposed to! Some of the funnier ones are "o-shoe" for shoe (Irish shoes, maybe?) and "gaga" for socks. I don't know how he gets "gaga" from sock but whatever. It reminds me of the Friends episode where Phoebe tries to teach Joey to speak French- that one just might be my favorite episode of all.

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day!

We had a very nice Valentine's Day weekend. Most of our valentine-y things actually happened on Saturday, Feb 13th. I made a nice dinner that night for us which included some special cupcakes for dessert.



The cupcakes looked exactly like I wanted them to but they did not taste so good (too dry). I used a recipe from Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine. I have not had very good luck with recipes from that magazine. In fact, the worst thing I have ever made came out of a past issue. It was an asian steak salad and there was nothing good about it. It all went straight in the trash. I made a roast and it seems we are finally figuring out how to cook a roast the way we want it. Yay!! The secret is to get a chuck roast and cook it in an oven bag in the oven. We've cooked them many, many different ways in the crockpot and even on the stove and it never was the falling-apart-roast like we wanted. You always had to slice the meat. It wasn't perfect still but with a few adjustments, it will be. Anyhow, our dinner was very nice and the cupcakes were okay but my favorite part of the day was when Rob brought these home for me.



Wow! I was so surprised and excited when he gave me these!! He went out Saturday morning to do a few things which I thought probably included getting me a Valentine's Day card but I was totally not expecting this. They are so beautiful and smell great. Good job, honey ;o)

We watched the Daytona 500 race on Sunday which took a long time. Chunks of the asphalt on the track came up and it took a couple hours to repair that. Glad nothing like that happened 2 years ago when we were there! Rob actually picked the winner too so he was proud of himself. The winner, Jamie McMurray, was a longshot to put it nicely. In fact, I heard them say that Vegas had him down for 30:1 odds. Too bad we didn't make a trip to Vegas and place some bets- we could be rich right now! I planned on making lettuce wraps and buffalo wings to snack on while watching the race but it didn't happen. It was a nice relaxing day and I had a good time all weekend with my two sweethearts.

A Few Complaints About Old Navy

This may not be a very exciting post to read but I have some griping to do. I keep having one bad experience after another with Old Navy! First of all, I hate that they started charging $7 for shipping instead of $5- I realize this is to allow me to shop from multiple stores (Banana, Gap, Athleta and PiperLime) but I never do! If everything I buy is just from Old Navy, I think I should only have to pay $5. They also now charge a $6 fee if you just return something rather than exchange it. Chumps. I have been trying for about a month to get Rob some new jeans from there. I have been to both stores in Des Moines and been checking online and I have had no luck. Finally, they had them online when I checked on Sunday. I selected two pairs and put them in my cart only to have them removed from my cart when I tried to pay because they said they didn't actually have them. By the way, that was after about 10 minutes of trying to get through their super-slow site and getting several error messages about not being able to find the old navy server. I checked again last night and was able to FINALLY order them though I keep waiting for an email telling me that they aren't available after all. On to me. I ordered a pair of maternity jeans in December and the ones that came were not the size they claimed. I have other ON Maternity pants that are the same size or smaller and they all fit just fine but these were way too tight on my legs. I exchanged them for another style that was very similar and the same size fits perfect. However, I'm quite sure the latest pair had been worn by someone before. And that is not the first time that has happened to me! A few years ago, I bought a pair of jeans from the Old Navy store in Clovis, CA and I was so in love them- just that perfect pair of jeans. I would have bought several pairs just like them but it was the last pair and on the clearance rack. I realized when I got home that someone had worn them before. I was mad but loved them too much to take them back. That time, things worked out pretty good though because whatever idiot wore them and returned them left $20 in the pocket for me! Not so lucky this time but I'm still going to keep them. I'm sure we will keep shopping there because we are always happy with the clothes we get but geez, could they just make it a little easier for me just one time?

UPDATE (2/17/10): The clothes all were delivered on Monday, on time and everything was there. However, it seems Old Navy has changed how they are making their "loose painter jeans" and it is not so good. They are way tighter and don't fit the same at all. I even looked at the comments left on Old Navy's site about these jeans and there are tons of complaints about this change. Since I seem to be in a mood to complain about ON, maybe I will leave a comment too. Rob has worn this same style of jeans for the 5 years that I have known him and probably even a lot longer than that. He doesn't seem too bummed about it but I feel bad for the guy. And I don't anticipate looking for a replacement for these- not a lot of fun. Hopefully they will bring back the old style and make everybody happy again! My shirt and Rex's shirt are great though so yay for that.

Rub A Dub Dub

Last night was Rex's first time in the big tub for bath time.



We had washed him in the little tub which sat in the big tub before but this was the first time ever just being in the big tub by itself. Oh boy, did he love to splash the water! Rob was washing him so he got almost as wet as Rex, I think. We don't have so many new experiences these days so it is kind of funny when we do- funny to see how awkward we all are at it! I remember giving him the first baths in the baby tub and wow, it did not go so well. I'm sure we will all get better at bath time in the big tub.

It is snowing again today. Apparently we want to make sure we not only pass the snowfall record for the season but that we obliterate it. Awesome. The good thing about snow is that forces me to make a menu up for several days and do my grocery shopping accordingly. We tend to eat better when this happens. On Wednesday we had buttermilk "fried" chicken with herbs, mashed potatoes, salad and homemade applesauce cake. The chicken was good but it was more like do-it-yourself shake and bake and not so much like fried chicken. Last night I made carne asada tacos which turned out really good, but not quite like I picture carne asada to be. I think the soy sauce in the marinade was what kind of threw it off for me. It was actually warm enough that we were able to grill the meat on the bbq which was great. One of Rob's friends makes the best carne asada I've ever had so we're going to find out how he makes them and try that next time instead. Tomorrow night I am planning on making french dip sandwiches. I've used the recipe I linked to before and it was kind of blah, I thought. I'm going to give it another try though and incorporate some of the ideas people left in the comment section and hopefully that will give it some more flavor. Hopefully we will be able to get around again good enough on Sunday to get more groceries because I am out of plans and supplies after tomorrow!

Happy 3 Year Anniversary to Us!

Today we are celebrating our 3 year wedding anniversary- Yay for us! Last Friday night we got a babysitter for Rex and went out to a nice dinner to do most of our celebrating then so that we can watch the Lost "premiere event" tonight. Yay for Lost being back on- hopefully we get some answers and are happy with the way they wrap it up! Anyhow, back to us. Here we are, 3 years ago today, on the beach in Carmel getting married.



It really is hard to believe that was just three years ago. Our lives have changed so much since then! We moved more than 2000 miles from California to Iowa, started new jobs, bought a house, had a baby, quit my job and are now expecting baby #2 in May. That is a lot. We are so happy and have been incredibly blessed by all these changes and new experiences. Here's a picture, taken yesterday, of one of those blessings.



Although we planned on staying in tonight, I still had some plans to make a nice dinner and decorate the house a bit for tonight but nothing is cooperating. I woke up last night, feeling dizzy and a little queasy. I finally got back to sleep but I woke up this morning still feeling not-so-great. I decided to skip on the dinner and get takeout but thought I would still decorate. Well, the snow plow came down our street this morning and buried our driveway (just the approach, not the whole thing). I can't get the car out of the driveway without doing some shoveling and that's not very appealing and also not a great thing for a pregnant lady to be doing. Since I can't get out to get the items I still need, I think the decorating plans just got ruined too. Ugh. I'll save what I have for Valentine's Day and we'll try again for that!