miscellany & 24 weeks

1) Today marks 24 weeks. Still another few weeks before I see the midwife again, so we're just cruising along. The little guy's still moving around plenty, I still feel quite large, and am still feeling pretty good. Yesterday I did some work digging compost and covering the rest of our future vegetable garden, and paid for it that evening with terrible lower back pain. I'm sure I was not using my muscles correctly with the belly, balance being off, and not having much abdominal power to speak of. I got the paint for baby's room this weekend, so we're ready to go with that as soon as we have time to paint the room.

2) This week I really got back on track with my vegan diet. The only thing I'll miss for a while is ice cream, but I just found a new vegan recipe I'm excited to try. It's funny- even if you think you're eating a relatively healthy diet, as soon as you completely cut out the dairy you're automatically turned toward other foods that offer better variety and nutrition. My consumption of fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats, protein and carbs has just skyrocketed because I'm no longer eating the other stuff.

3) Speaking of that, I just discovered this blog with all kinds of new recipes and ideas. The best part is that they're all so simple and easy, and have few ingredients. Yesterday it only took about 15 minutes of preparation (including cleaning up the kitchen afterwards) to make raw vegan vanilla caramels (the only ingredients are pine nuts, dates, and vanilla!) and cinnamon sugar roasted chickpea "peanuts". They were both so good! I'm picturing the caramels as a layer in some sort of cookie bar... The chickpeas do have quite a lot of sugar involved, but I'm hoping all that good protein counts for something :)

4) Thought I'd try increasing the size of my pictures today. The food pictures look great. I might have to switch to smaller ones next time I put up a picture of myself- ha!

5) Chris had Celia outside after dinner on Thursday. She literally got one bug bite, and of course it had to be right near the corner of her eye and result in a big allergic reaction. I guess she's just very sensitive to bites. I made a new rule that she can't be outside after dinner, when the mosquitoes really get going. And she always needs bug spray!

Poor thing looked like she'd been in a fist fight. When I brought her in to the doctor she immediately became the darling of the office. Everyone had to come see her, dote on her, and offer her stickers :)

6) Luckily the eye was getting better by Saturday when we went to a birthday party for one of Celia's friends. It was a lot of fun, we got to chat with other adults a bit, and it was really cute to watch Celia play with the kids. She even introduced herself to some kids she didn't know- as in "What's your name? My name's Celia." Coming from a tiny toddler- so cute.

7) Can you believe it's August already? I really want to get a few more things done on the house, have a plan for getting freezer meals made for when the baby's born, and get my recipe book and meal plans going before school starts.

8) A result of having several trees cut down last week is a lot of wood for us to keep to burn for the winter! We only kept a small amount of what they cut down, but it's still a lot of work for Chris to split and move it all.

We'll definitely be using the fireplace this winter. We'd like to install a wood stove in the fireplace, actually, to save some money on heat. Not sure a wood stove purchase is in the budget right now, though.

9) Outfit of the Week: Kind of a re-run, because Pita had another Agador Spartacus moment yesterday that was just too good to miss. The pose, the blue mop- perfection.