Cooking

I enjoy cooking. I really do. I'm no gourmet chef, but I think I'm pretty decent. I have to give my mom some credit, because she is an amazing cook. Growing up, I never tasted Hamburger Helper, canned green beans or Easy Mac. Matt enjoys my cooking, but let's be honest. He's been known to say, "I really don't care what it is, I just like having a big wad of food in my mouth." While this is true, Matt does enjoy good food, which is fun for me because that equals going to fun restaurants and trying new things.

But back to the cooking. I am a rule follower. I always have been, and always will be. I break out into a nervous sweat when I am not sitting in my assigned seat at a sporting event. I have never pool hopped. I really never disobeyed my parents growing up. I like to follow the rules, and this applies to my cooking style. When I'm following a recipe, I FOLLOW THE RECIPE. I figure the ingredients are there for a reason - this is how it's made. I do not deviate from the recipe. I may add a little more garlic than what the recipe calls for - I like garlic. Or I may substitute half & half for whole milk, or add a little extra lemon juice, but that is about as far as I'll go. Matt's only complaint about my cooking is that I don't experiment enough. In his eyes, a truly great chef can deviate from a recipe by adding a pinch of this, or a touch of that. The only problem with this, is that Matt does not cook. So, he doesn't understand that you can't just add a dash of paprika to your dish and have it turn out hunky dory. The most dangerous thing in our kitchen is not the knife drawer or the stovetop, it's an unsupervised Matt lingering near the spice cabinet. Really. Leave the kitchen unattended for 2 minutes, and you risk returning to find Matt standing over your linguine with tapenade, arugula, and roasted cherry tomatoes with a fistful of cumin.

What's bouncing around in the ol' noggin

1. I've been dying to try the new V8 Fusion Smoothie. I'm not a big V8 fan, but I do love strawberry banana smoothies (we'd be bankrupt if Smoothie King was in West Ashley), and that just happens to be one of the smoothie flavors available. I finally found it at Publix, came home, and poured a glass. While it does taste surprisingly like a strawberry banana smoothie, it still smells EXACTLY like V8 juice. Blech. It is so odd to be drinking something that smells like spicy tomatoes, yet tastes like strawberries and bananas. So odd. I have to drink it through a straw, or I really can't stomach it.


2. Halloween needs to hurry up and get here before I eat all the candy. I thought I was doing myself a favor by purposely passing up the bags with the candy I really like (Snickers, M&M's, Twix, etc.) and going for the stuff I wouldn't be tempted to eat (Nerds, Sweetarts, Jolly Ranchers...) The plan didn't really work.

3. The McRib. What is America's fascination with this disgusting sandwich? It's return has been proclaimed all over the news, and apparently this gelatinous non-meat has it's own Facebook page. Barf.



4. Mr. Ben is so talkative these days! It is so much fun to try to get him to "talk", and sometimes we coo back and forth for 10 minutes or so. It's so sweet. Especially when I'm trying to put him down for the night and all he wants to do is talk to me :) I love this boy!

Love this commercial:

View it here.

Not sure about the whole bath in the kitchen sink though. Maybe it's just us, but our sink always seems to have food and drink residue in it. I don't think Ben would appreciate taking a bath with floating particles of turkey and cucumber skins.

On an unrelated note, Ben and I went for a walk this morning with our good friends Alice and Hannah. We love those ladies! Here's a picture of the babies:

Hannah's face cracks me up. "Moooommmmm! You're embarrassing me!"

I'm so thankful to have friends with babies to walk with, talk with, nurse with (sorry if that creeps you out), and just enjoy life as new moms together!

Some things I want to remember.

1. Ben's skullet. Ben was born with brown hair, which everyone said would fall out. Well, unfortunately for Ben, the hair on the top of his head has fallen out, leaving long, dark hair on the sides and back of his head.

See:

The flash picks up the hair on top that's starting to come back in, but in person all you see is the skullet. It's pretty sweet. I looked for some pictures of skullets online to do a side by side comparison, but every image seemed to be that of a child molester so we're just going to admire Ben's.

2. Ben's sweet smiles. He's started smiling in the past week or so and it is the highlight of my day. Watching his eyes squint up and that sweet little mouth break into a grin makes my heart melt.

3. Ben's pastime of planking. My younger (and slightly cooler) sister introduced this term to me while she was visiting us after Ben was born. Obviously I am out of the loop and not cool, but the idea of lying on random objects while lying stiff as a board seems absolutely ridiculous to me. I mean really.

This one in particular makes me laugh. Lady, have you no self respect?!?!

Anyways, this is Ben's new favorite way to be held. Not face down, but on his side. We swaddle him up in his little wrap, and attempt to cradle him in our arms. This little guy wiggles to one side and goes stiff as a board. It's hilarious. I don't have a picture of Ben enjoying his new favorite pastime, but here's a visual aid:

4. The Best Friend Trio: Matt, Allyn and Ben. I know what you're thinking: who came up with that awesome label? It sounds like something this guy would say:

"Cause we're the three best friends......"

Actually, Matt came up with that name for us. I informed Matt before Ben was born that no matter what, Ben could not be his best friend, because I'm his best friend, and I always want to be just that. So Ben would have to be his second best friend. Now that he's here though, we've decided that the three of us can be best friends. We're The Best Friend Trio! Maybe we should have shirts made.

5. How stinkin' much I love Matt and Ben. It has been so amazing to see Matt embrace his new role as a father. The way he loves Ben makes me love him even more - if that is possible. Ben is so blessed to have Matt as a father. And Ben! I just love him so much! When I'm holding him in the middle of the night after he's fallen asleep, it takes everything in me to put him back in his crib. I could just hold him and watch him sleep and kiss his sweet face forever. He is such a sweet little boy!

And...........we're back. With a baby.

So it's been a while. I've been busy. For starters, I had a baby. And now I am busy feeding him 24/7, changing poopy diapers, and not sleeping. But it's cool. He's a pretty sweet kid. And he'll only be getting sweeter!


To backtrack a little bit, I went into labor on Wednesday, August 3rd. I started having pretty regular contractions around 3pm. Around 10:30pm they were really painful, so I called the OB on call. First blessing: She told me to come to East Cooper. Normally my OB would have delivered me at the Mt. Pleasant Hospital which is about 40 minutes from our house, but she was on call the following day at East Cooper. She told the on call physician that if she heard from me, I should go to East Cooper so if I happened to still be pregnant at 7:30am she would be there and could deliver me. Second blessing: East Cooper offers a physician discount, and since Matt is a resident we were eligible for said discount. Third blessing: I was 4cm when we arrived, so they let me stay! Fourth blessing: After I got my epidural, the nurse informed me that my doctor was on her way in. She wasn't scheduled to come in until 7:30am, but she came in around 1am and slept in the on call room so she could deliver me. By 5:30am we were all systems go, and at 7:29am on August 4th, Ben's due date, (yes, I pushed for 2 hours) Ben was born! Ben = Fifth blessing. He was absolutely perfect, weighing 7lb 11oz and measuring 20.5 inches.


I really can't praise God enough for my whole labor and delivery experience. I had so much anxiety leading up to Ben's birth, and the Lord took care of everything. Truly. It is amazing to me to look back and see His hand working to make everything right.

I think this was post epidural. Matt loves this picture. I was a little freaked out. Obviously.

Proud dad.

Ben's face makes me laugh. He's already a lady's man!

On the way home from the hospital. I was wheeled down at the same time as another woman, and we waited together while our husbands drove the cars around. I couldn't help but notice that her son was wearing a beautiful linen gown and a precious linen bonnet. She also had a beautiful monogrammed blanket draped over her shoulder. I looked down at Ben, who was wearing the hat and shirt the hospital gave us, and was wrapped in the hospital blanket. Whoops. Sorry Ben.

What I've been up to.

1. Plant shopping. Yesterday I bought a plant for our living room. It's the first house plant I've purchased, and I'm really hoping I don't kill it. It's some kind of bamboo, and I only have to water it every 2 weeks, which sounds good to me.

Ta da:

2. Visiting with friends. Last weekend Matt and I went to stay with some friends of ours in Murrells Inlet, SC. They have 2 sweet little boys that make me excited to have a son. If I can just brag here for a minute: their 3 year old, Harrison, has decided that I'm his favorite! Favorite what I'm not sure - I mean if you put me in a lineup with Bob the Builder, a truck, his pop up tent and some cookies, I don't think he'd pick me, but he did tell his mom that I'm his favorite, AND, I had the sweetest voice mail from him where he told me he loved me! How stinking cute?!

3. Registering for baby boy. I use the term "register" loosely, because what really happened was that I wandered around Babies R Us with my mother in law, got really overwhelmed, and zapped a few things. I think I've picked out about a quarter of what I will actually need. Registering for a baby is not as fun to me as registering for a wedding. When you register for a wedding, there are really no wrong decisions. You just find a bunch of fun, semi-functional (sometimes non-functional) stuff you like, and zap it. With a baby, it's different. There are so many choices, all of which come with their share of pluses and minuses. It seems like every decision is so important! I'm not just picking out miniature knives to cut cheese with, but I'm picking out something that my child will be sitting in, sleeping it, eating from, etc. It stresses me out just thinking about it. And I'm lazy, which doesn't make it any easier. I really don't want to research the multitude of high chair options available, I just want someone to tell me which one is the best, and where I can get it. That's bad. And I will do the research, it's just not something I'm excited about. Oh yeah, and add to that my indecisiveness. My main problem is that I just don't like most of the baby boy stuff out there. I'm not into the cartoon animals, race cars, dump trucks and fire engines that adorn all things baby boy. So I end up staring at the 10 bouncy seats in Babies R Us - all of which look absolutely stupid to me, and then register for none of them, because I don't like any of them. I know that ultimately it's about function and all of these things will quickly be covered in spit up and poop, but it's really hard to pick out things that you just aren't that excited about. I'm way too picky, that's what it boils down to. I do think I've found some bedding that I like. Of course, true to fashion, I have all the receipts in case I find something I like better. It's Dwell Studio from Target:


4. Begging Matt to take pictures of me. I think it's pretty normal to want to document your pregnancy, no? So every few weeks when I'm feeling cute I ask Matt to take a picture of me for posterity. This is one of Matt's least favorite activities because I like to take several pictures in order to get one good one. Matt thinks I look exactly the same in every picture, so this is a huge waste of time to him. Like most women, I can find something wrong with the way I look in almost every picture, but I only have a small window of opportunity before Matt gets a crazed look in his eye and I risk having the camera crushed in his agitated hands. Here's one from our walk downtown on Friday night:

( 23 weeks)

I couldn't find a picture that I liked out of the 12 or so we took - so here's a candid shot. And yes, I made it black and white because I am extremely pale.

This one's for dad.

My dad sent me an email the other day with the subject: "Your blog....." and the body: "is annoying me." Both he and my sister have been harassing me to update the blog. Well dad, that's what you get for telling me I have a mustache*: a two month blogging hiatus.


*More later on the mustache comment.


So I guess the big news around here is that I'm pregnant! On Thursday I will be 15 weeks. I found out a few days before Thanksgiving, and it was a really fun time to get such exciting news. We waited to tell our families until we saw them in person over Christmas and New Years. We wrapped an ultrasound picture as a present and had our parents open them. It was really fun! My mom opened the gift at our house, and after all the crying and hugging subsided, my dad says, "I thought I noticed some dark hair growing on your upper lip. I thought it was due to birth control, but I guess not!" Thanks dad.



A week or so after we found out I was pregnant, Matt woke up in the middle of the night convinced that we had a carbon monoxide leak. I don't know what gave him this impression, but we do live in an older house with gas heat and a gas hot water heater, and we had not installed a carbon monoxide detector. Matt was on call the following night and called me at home around 8pm. I was lying on the couch feeling nauseous. He told me he was pretty sure we had a leak, and demanded that I go to Home Depot and buy a carbon monoxide detector immediately. I told him I thought he was overreacting; we just had the heating & air guy come out to the house to check on our system last month and everything was in good condition. We can get one tomorrow. This did not appease him. We argued about it for several minutes, Matt REALLY wanting me to go to Home Depot, and me REALLY not wanting to get off the couch and risk tossing my cookies. So we made a compromise. I agreed to turn the heat off when I went to sleep that night. And I did just that. And when I woke up the next morning, I was pissed, because it was 53 degrees in our house. I was pretty sure my little fetus friend was encased in ice, because I certainly was. When I came home from work that day, this was plugged in next to my side of the bed:



Sweet Matty!