7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 14)

1. Thank you to everyone who weighed in about the hospital vs. birth center question.  After reading the advice which overwhelmingly supported the hospital, that's still where I'm leaning.  I met with one of the midwives on Wednesday, and asked her to lay out for me just what the birth center might offer that I could not get at the hospital.

It seems to me that the experience of labor and delivery wouldn't be too different at either place.  It's mostly the post-natal care and attention that differs.  The hospital keeps you for a couple days and you and the baby get regular visits from the nurses and a lactation consultant (which is good).  At the birth center, they mostly just leave you alone afterwards, and you go home in 4-12 hours.

However, at the birth center, you are encouraged to just hold baby on your chest for a long time right after birth, and start breast-feeding right away (which is good).  At the hospital, they give you about a minute with baby before taking him/her away (still in the same room) to check weight, Apgar stuff, etc.  They do bring baby back to the mother afterwards, but if I recall, they want the baby to be brought to the nursery for a more throrough pediatrician examination fairly soon after birth. 

But you know what?  I think I'm just one of those women who do like the pampering and attention (which many people might think is "over"attention) they give you in the hospital.  I'd prefer to have more immediate bonding time with baby, but it doesn't really take too long to check those things, and I mean...there's still the placenta and the potential stitching up that I need to be dealing with in that time anyways.


2. My best friend got married last weekend.  It was a beautiful wedding, and a memorable one.  We've been to so many weddings these past few years, and a lot of them have started to blend together in my mind.  This one will always stand out, though.  I'm not sure if it's just because I was the matron of honor, or because she's my best friend, or whether there was something especially unique about it.  It was the only time I've ever cried at a wedding.  I was very very happy for her.

Isn't she beautiful?

And here's us at the wedding. Tom is looking too serious.  The bridesmaid dress, which I complained about here ended up fitting a lot better after the (outrageously expensive!!) alterations.  But I still contend that it made me look more "large" than "pregnant"

3. Since I showed it to her already, I can finally reveal the wedding gift I've been working on for her for the past 18 months (yikes!).  It's a wedding cross-stitch.  And I will grumpily report that it's STILL not finished.  I need to fill in that entire center section with all the "wedding info" (names, date, place, etc.).

It's about 17"x15".  And yes, I know it has huge folds in it right now...

This is only the second cross-stitch project I've ever done.  If anyone is considering beginning this as a hobby, let me warn you that it takes FOREVER.  I have probably poured hundreds of hours into that thing already.  I fully understand why cross-stitch was historically a pasttime assigned to young ladies to teach them patience and dilligence.

close-up of a section

*If anyone's interested, the flowered border pattern comes from the book Cross Stitch Antique Style Samplers. 

4.  I recently used some gift money I had saved up to purchase myself this cute pair of Crocs flats (Tom wouldn't let me use our common money on a product he so abhors).

The upper parts are actually more clear than they appear in this picture [stolen from the Crocs website]

Tom HATES them and complains about having to be out in public with me when I'm wearing them.  They remind me of the jelly slippers I wore as a kid.  They're very comfortable.  I was looking for a flat I could wear in the summer (i.e. without pantyhose) which wouldn't make my feet sweat like crazy (sorry if this is an over-share).  These do the job quite well.  Not exactly church-appropriate, but great for everyday wear.


5. The mini-mart in our neighborhood (pretty much the only surviving business along the total wasteland of what was once the main street) sells Slush Puppies!  This was a very exciting discovery, being that it's really hot, I'm really pregnant, and it's good motivation to make me actually go for a walk sometimes.

Slush Puppies are actually one of the most poorly-designed in the "iced drinks" category.  Their competitors, Slurpees and Icees, use much more finely-shaved ice, so you get a decent ratio of flavored syrup to ice in each sip.  When you drink a Slush Puppy, no matter how careful you are, you invariably end up with more than half a cup of flavor-drained ice.

But this is what I grew up drinking every summer at our cottage, so it has a major nostalgia factor for me, which beats everything else.  I can't wait to introduce Sly to them!


6. There's a spray park really close to our house.  I hadn't even heard of these until I became a mom.  It's basically a park with a bunch of enormous sprinklers and water-spraying structures that kids can run through on a hot day. 

Picture taken from the community website.  I've never actually seen it this packed, though

I thought it was a such great asset to have in a neighborhood, until I realized...they only put these in when they want to get rid of a pre-existing swimming pool!  Spray parks are just cheaper to maintain.  I get that, I do.  But I still think a pool is better for a neighborhood.  They talk up spray parks as being "more accessible" than a pool for those who are handicapped.  Maybe so.  But while there are no official age-limits on spray park use, I guarantee you will never see anyone over the age of twelve running through there.  It's sort of understood that it's just meant for kids.  And so it cuts off MOST of the people in the community from a good way to stay cool in the summer.

Still...as long as the pool is gone anyways, I guess it's nice to have this so near to us.


7. Our gardening attempts this year - as always - have been mostly a failure.  We sacrificed having a yard when we moved to our new place last autumn.  We don't even have the tiniest patch of grass or dirt.  But we were determined to try some container gardening along the sidewalk nonetheless.

I started a bunch of seeds (flowers, herbs, and some tomatoes) in various pots and seed-starting cells.  As soon as anything sprouts, though, something has been eating them.  I could have avoided this if I started everything indoors, but that would have interfered with our "keep all the curtains drawn during the day to keep out the heat" method of cooling our un-air-conditioned house (see #3).  With the exception of a few flowers we bought and re-potted in hanging planters (and thus kept away from hungry mouths), the only thing that has survived are my morning glories.  I guess they taste bad or something.

Just about ready to be transferred

My hope is that I can get them to vine up the trellis-y stuff all along the bottom of the porch, and just kinda totally engulf the whole thing.  Morning glories are spectacular when they've taken over a fence, and they're all opened up at once.

eww - and maybe the vines will disguise that gross mold at the bottom that I never noticed until I took this picture

Quick Takes is hosted at Conversion Diary

Seven Quick Takes (Vol. 11)

1. Fact: If you put a laundry basket of clean clothes right next to a laundry basket of dirty clothes, the cat will sit in the clean ones every time.

2. We were at the store last night, and picked up our first thing for the new baby!  A pack of adorable little hair bows!  Thinking back to Sly, I know it will probably be awhile before she has enough hair to hold one, but...we couldn't resist!  It was cute to see Tom so excited about them.

3. Speaking of the new baby, we've been trying to prepare Sly.  He's only 19 months old, so I know his understanding of the whole thing is very limited.  We're to the point now where when we ask, "Where's the baby?" he smiles and points to my stomach half the time (the other half the time, he points to his own stomach!).  But I know he's going to be totally taken by surprise the day he finally sees her, and has to accept that he's not the baby anymore.

4. Recently, Sly has been crazy about wanting books read to him.  I know I should be thinking of this as a positive thing.  But I'll be honest - it's getting really tiring!  He would be perfectly happy to sit for HOURS being read to (the same books over and over, of course).  Always, at the most inconvenient times, he indicates that he wants me to read to him, and has a tantrum when I don't.  I understand that a big part of it is probably just the closeness and attention that he's looking for.  I try to give this to him in other ways, but sometimes it just won't cut it.  I think he's just destined to be a book lover, like his parents.  A good thing...but...how many more times do we have to read "My First Word Book" before he can read it himself? ;-)

5. One of the things I'm supposed to be doing during Lent is "going for a walk every day, even if it's short."  Well, with the recent return of colder weather, I've really been stretching this one.  I might go to the grocery store one day and consider my stroll through the aisles sufficient for a "walk" that day.  I'm being too wimpy!  I really need to just get outside!

6. I finally bought a new camera!  For the past two years, I have been saving up every bit of money that I received as a birthday or Christmas gift - because gift money is really the only money that is "mine" instead of "ours"...and "our" money needs to be kept under a very strict budget!  The intention was that I'd keep saving up until I had several hundred dollars, and could buy a nice SLR camera with a huge zoom.  But after reaching $180 the first year, people stopped giving me gifts of cash.  And I began to realize the impracticalities of such a fancy camera.  First of all, I'd have to learn to use it properly.  No more relying on the "auto setting" to take decent pictures for me.  Also, I wouldn't want to lug it around with me.  Since it wouldn't fit into the little pocket in my purse, I'd end up never having it when I wanted it.  I realized it made the most sense to just replace my crappy point-and-shoot with a better point-and-shoot.  So the other day, I took my $180 and bought a Canon Powershot Elph - basically the same camera I used through most of college, and loved (until it died on me eventually).  I'd eagerly awaiting its arrival in the mail!

7. Some friends of ours are getting married in a few months, and want to do pie instead of cake for the reception.  She's asking some of us to bake a pie, and I waited too long to choose a type, so I'm left with peach pie.  I've never made a peach pie before, so I don't have any reliable recipes to use.  I'd like to test out a couple before the wedding, so I know I won't be bringing her a dud!  If anyone has a good recipe, I'd appreciate if you could send it along!

This is exactly how good I look when I'm baking

Quick Takes is hosted at Conversion Diary

On Blessings

On Saturday, I attended the beautiful wedding of two friends. During the Mass, I didn't have Tom to help me baby-wrangle, since he was part of the wedding party. It's sometimes difficult to keep Sly content in church, where all he can think about are the rows and rows of lovely pews to climb along, and all the people who would be fun to grab.

For a while, I found a solution that worked. Standing, I held him to my chest, and rocked slowly back and forth. Sly was relaxed and peaceful. When I heard the priest say, "Let us ask for God's blessings," my immediate thought was, "I have God's greatest blessing right here!" as I squeezed Sly a little closer, and gave him a kiss on his head.

At that very moment, Sly reached his little pincer-hand around to the skin on the back of my arm, and pinched it SO HARD. Had I been anywhere but Mass, I surely would have let out an, "aaaargh!" As I removed his little claws from my arm, though, it came to me that perhaps God was telling me something there. Telling me that some of His blessings are painful. That just because they hurt makes them no less blessings, and we should be no less thankful for them.

Looking just at the issue of parenthood...When people refer to children as "blessings" - which they so often do - it seems to be mostly based on the great joy that children bring to our lives. But what about the often painful ways that children help us to grow in holiness? As parents, we are forced to sacrifice much, to die to self everyday. And surely, anything that pushes us a little closer to Sainthood is a tremendous blessing from God.

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 7)

This blog has existed for more than just seven Fridays! I'm so bad about writing Quick Takes each week. Oy. Well, here we go.

1. Today is the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It makes me wish I'd tried a little harder to make it to Mass this morning...It also reminds me of something that has been at the back of my mind for a while now: that we should really Consecrate the family to the Sacred Heart.

2. Since today is a First class feast, this does away with the obligation for abstinence. Which means we can go to the cookout we were invited to, and enjoy some burgers and dogs on a FRIDAY! :-D

3. I've been slowly trying to get myself back into the habit of running. Throughout college, I ran basically every day, between 3 and 6 miles. The past few years, I've hardly done so at all. But I just feel so much better when I start my day out with a good run.

I've really only done it a couple mornings so far, but the muscles in my legs are getting used to it again. I wake up at 6am, and hurry out as soon as I can get dressed. Tom needs me back around 6:45, since that's when he gets in the shower (and he doesn't want to worry about Sly during that time). So after subtracting the time it takes me to stretch before and after, I really only have the time to run a bit over two miles. But for now, that's a big improvement over what it's been!

4. Last weekend was spent in Toledo, where our good friends Katie and Chuckie got married!

The happy bride and groom

I was a bridesmaid, Tom chose to wear own of his retro-fabulous suits, and Sly is keeping it classy in a dress shirt/tie and...a diaper

We wish them all the best (and pray that they don't move away too soon!)

5. We shared our suite in the hotel with some friends. Their son, Anthony, is a bit older than Sly, so he was teaching him all sorts of tricks - like how to use the stairs. Before that weekend, Sly had climbed our stairs a couple times (though not without needing to be caught by Mommy at some point during the ascent!), but he didn't seem all that excited by it. But after watching Anthony zoom up and down all weekend, it's now his favorite thing. He wants to be a big boy, I guess, and seems determined to be as good as his friend at getting up the stairs. He still can't get down on his own, though, so the baby gate remains firmly shut at the bottom!

6. The boys were pretty cute when they interacted.

Tom is baby-herding at the top of some stairs

Though it left me wondering if Sly is going to be a little bruiser. I've seen the way he abuses our cats and also Tom's face (he loves to smack and pinch Tom, but not me so much...hehe). His treatment of Anthony over the weekend wasn't much different, unfortunately :-/

This was taken a second before he tackled Anthony to the ground

And then here's the boys fighting over Tom's glasses case.

7. Following recommendations of various people (both "real" and in "blog world") who had also liked Downton Abbey, I had Netflix send me disc 1 season 1 of Lark Rise to Candleford about a month ago. I had heard so many good things about the show that I just went on faith that it would be good, and never actually bothered to look up what the show was about before I added it to my Netflix queue. At this point, it's hard to remember exactly what I thought the show would be like, but I do know that my expectations were nothing like the reality of it. I think I must have assumed it was another of those high-society costume dramas that the BBC is known for. But it's very different. Larkrise to Candleford, though, tells the stories of people in a small English town (Candleford) and an even smaller rural hamlet (Lark Rise) nearby. They are simple folk with more realistic sorts of concerns.



After watching the first few episodes, I was fairly disappointed, and sent it back in the mail. I'd given it a chance, and unfortunately, it just didn't grab me. I thought that was the end of it. But a few days later, what should arrive in the mailbox but the next installment? Darn! I had preemptively put the entire first season in my Netflix queue, assured that I would love it like everyone else did. I didn't want to "waste" the movie, though, so figured I could put on while ironing and folding laundry.

Well, I can't say exactly when or how it happened, but now I am hooked. I think it may have had to do with the intriguing and suspenseful romantic aspects. But I found myself enjoying many of the characters, and excited to see what would happen to them next. I'm on season 2 now, and there are at least two more after that! My recommendation is: watch it!

See Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes

A Wedding Countdown Craft

My best friend is getting married next summer, and since I am to be her matron of honor (yay!), I feel like I need to go somewhat...above and beyond to help her out with the preparations. I was thinking about how it must be tough for her to wait so long for this much-longed-for day to arrive, and that it would be nice if she had something to help her count down the days. Something that could serve as tangible proof that the day was, in fact, slowly getting closer.

I know lots of engaged ladies have an ongoing "wedding countdown" of some sort. So I decided I should make her something cute and crafty to help her count down the days. I was hoping for something where she would have to either cross off, or remove some object each day. Figuring there would be a treasure trove of ideas online, I Googled "wedding countdown." Every single hit was just some sort of stupid electronic countdown application! I searched again with "wedding countdown craft." There were only two ideas, and both were too simple, and just not what I was looking for.

So, for almost the first time ever, I actually conceived of a craft idea by myself! And - with some assistance from my gracious husband - managed to pull it off!



Wedding Day Countdown Butterfly Mobile

Materials:
Butterfly paper punch
Card stock (pink, orange, purple, white, and brown)
Bronze-colored marker
Craft Glue
Large embroidery hoop
2 spools of thin white ribbon
Glitter (purple and white)

I chose three colors that I know she likes. The pink/orange/purple for the fronts of the butterflies, and white paper for the backs. Also, brown and white to write the name of each month.

This punch was expensive ($10), but worked very well. And I'm sure I can find more uses for it in the future.

Cutting the paper into strips first, and then staggering the shapes helped a lot.

Punched butterflies waiting in bowls.

I wrote out the names of all twelve months on white paper, mounted on the brown. I also made plain brown rectangles of the same size for the backs (so I could sandwich the ribbon between).

I glued the butterflies on, sandwiching the ribbon between a colored one and a white one. I used each color of butterfly for four months of the twelve months. After the strand had the appropriate number of butterflies to indicate the number of days in that month (29, 30, or 31), I glued on the month's name at the top.

I wrote the day of the month ("1", "2", etc.) on the colored fronts of the butterflies, and the number of total days left until the wedding ("365", "364", etc.) on the white backs. I didn't want the two numbering sequences to be confusing, which is why I used different colors for front and back.

Here you can see the top of my "March" strand, where the dates are listed on the colored side. Each strand started with the 1st of the month at the bottom. The intent is that she will cut off one butterfly each day.

And here's the back of another strand, counting down the TOTAL days left until the wedding.

After I made twelve strands (representing 366 days in all, since next year is a leap year), they were hung down around the embroidery hoop. (We glued the ribbons to the inner part of the hoop, and then glued the outer hoop over the entire thing.)

Tom gets all the credit for the meticulous assembly of this! For both the "tent" of ribbons above (which led to a hook for hanging), as well as for positioning all twelve months around the hoop.

After it was all glued in place, I decorated the bare spots of the hoop with "special" white butterflies with dots of purple glitter on their wings.

I also created a special middle section. Since her wedding is on the 9th of the month, I needed an additional short strand to represent those last 9 days. On these butterflies, instead of the date on one side, and the number of days remaining on the back, I just wrote "9 days left", "8 days left", etc. And then I created a big fancy WEDDING DAY butterfly for the end (not pictured: their names and the wedding date are written on the back).

A close-up of the fancy Wedding Day butterfly. After all the work I did, it's kind of a shame that she'll just be slowly cutting this mobile to pieces all year! But I figure she can at least keep the big butterfly as a memento, converting it into a Christmas ornament or something.

The completed project!

An Outdoor Wedding

As I mentioned yesterday, Tom and I went to my cousin's wedding over the weekend. It was only two hours away, but my dad had insisted - and kindly offered to pay - that we stay in a hotel Saturday night, instead of trying to drive home. This was an adults-only affair (isn't that kinda lame? I think kids make weddings more fun!), so we left Sly with my mom overnight.

It was my FIRST NIGHT EVER away from him! But he did really well, and I didn't miss him too bad. At any rate, it was good practice for this weekend when we will again leave him for the night, this time with Tom's parents. We are planning an overnight trip to New York City as a late anniversary celebration!!

The wedding was a good time. I got to see almost all my cousins! Growing up, we saw each other constantly. My dad and six of his siblings all stayed in their hometown of Pittsburgh (just one brother moved away, to Mississippi); and five of those families actually settled in the same township. So we all basically grew up together. When we were younger, Family Parties were regular, huge, and great fun. Additionally, all us cousins saw each other regularly in school, or at our dad's basketball games (they all played on a local team together!) or at our sleepovers, etc.. In fact, at this wedding, my cousin Ted had asked one cousin to be his best man, and another to be a groomsman. Further testament to how tight our family is!

Now that everyone's growing up, though, the cousins are scattered around the country for college or their new careers. We only get to see everyone now at Christmas and at our "Family Week" summer vacation. Okay - I know, I know - that's still way more than most extended families, or heck, even some nuclear families, can say for themselves. But it's still much less than I'm used to!

Anyways, the wedding ended up feeling like one big family party. Here are a few shots.

My cousin Ted with his bride, Nicole. Look at that great vintage-style dress!

The happy couple

My cousin Val (Ted's sister) made the cake! I think the birdy toppers are very cute.

Here's Tina, my awesome cousin-in-law, breaking it down. She homeschools her eight kids, age 13 and under!

Dancing

My uncle and cousin from Mississippi

Something about going to weddings just puts me in such a cutesy lovey mood. I kept finding Tom to go give him snuggles, and plant him with kisses.

hehe. I think Tom's reaction was more, "groan...I guess I have to put up with this"

Me and three cousins. So nice to get the girls back together.

Throwing the bouquet

Oh, I didn't get a picture of this, but they also did the (awkward!) garter toss after this. And the guy who caught it was a 13 year-old boy who had not been aware of what he was supposed to do with it afterwards. Needless to say, the whole situation was pretty embarrassing for everyone involved!
And that is why the whole practice should just be abandoned altogether!

Aw, how cute :-)

Loving on my husband again (I'm not really that short - I think we were on stairs)

A beautiful 1949 Cadillac (and I only know that because Tom told me) came to pick up the bride and groom.

This was a nice idea. Instead of throwing rice or blowing bubbles, we were given cones of lavender to toss.

Departing

My scruffy brother, Dan

Cousins, so happy to see each other again!

Here, they are inserting "Let's Go Pitt!" (the school where half the family has gone to college) in between the lines of "Sweet Caroline"


Ahhh....Family :-)