Spring Beauties

One of the realities of new motherhood is how quickly the "pregnant glow" fades to dark under eye circles, dull skin and thinning hair. Going through that during a long, cold, dry winter made my skin look even more tired. There's no substitute for getting enough sleep, especially uninterrupted (5 hours straight would feel amazing), but since that's not how new babies roll, here are two new items I've been using to fake looking well-rested:

When J. Crew sent out an email touting RMS Beauty in order to "glow like a J. Crew model," you can bet I was intrigued. The Living Luminizer and Lip Shine in Sacred are now my new go-tos, even if I don't have time for anything else except mascara. They're easy to apply and feel good on. Order from the RMS Beauty website and you'll get free shipping.

Since I also want to feel good (and fit into my pants), I've been switching between these two green smoothies in the morning. Being well-nourished lends a certain glow too!

BLUEBERRY, ALMOND & GINGER SMOOTHIE (From Camille Styles:)

• 1/3 cup frozen blueberries, preferably organic

• handful of spinach or kale

• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

• 2 tablespoons coconut or goats milk yogurt

• 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

• 2 teaspoons raw honey

• 2-3 ice cubes

• fresh mint, for garnish

(I skip the yogurt and add a whole banana. Jarred minced ginger makes it way easier)

GREEN PEANUT BUTTER SMOOTHIE (Bon Appetit)

• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1 banana
• 1 cup torn kale
• 2  tablespoons peanut butter
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

My sweet night owl and her adoring big brother:

Nothing Tastes As Good...

Remember when the collective media jumped all over Kate Moss for saying "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels"? I think she eventually explained that she was paraphrasing someone else, but that's probably easier advice to follow when you enjoy as many...uppers as she has.

I could at least adopt "nothing tastes as good as just fitting into my own pants feels," but I only get so far before someone challenges me to bake these cookies with unsweetened coconut and see how they turn out:

Incidentally,they are delicious with unsweetened coconut. And egg free. Except that's not a thing since eggs are good for you. It just means you can eat the dough with a spoon. You can find the recipe at Averie Cooks.

On the balance of fitting into my own pants, I just bought a workout video from the Hilliard Studio Method in hopes of being magically transformed:

(they even say it's transformative, via The SoGood)

This may be a Mindy Lahiri delusion of grandeur, but it can't hurt. Actually, it can. It will probably make every muscle in my body hurt, but pants people! Keep your eye on the pants.

Ford and Eleanor getting in on the exercise mat action yesterday:

The scariest/most exciting two hours of my life

Looking back on my tongue-in-cheek pregnancy update from January 29th, I smile, but also shake my head at my blithe approach to only half the story. The other half was that from 32 weeks on, I was being monitored fairly closely for a partial placental abruption--when part of the placenta detaches from the uterine wall. I was not put on bed rest, but I was being pretty careful not to overdo it and we were scheduled to deliver our girl by c-section on February 13th at 37 weeks, just to play it safe. This was confirmed for certain on Friday, January 31st.

So at 8:00 PM on Saturday, February 1st when we said goodnight to Ford, shut his door and then shortly realized that we needed to go to the hospital, the MM and I were pretty shaken, to say the least. We couldn't reach our back-up babysitters to stay with Ford, but miraculously caught a family friend at home. "I'll be there in five minutes" were the sweetest six words in the English language at that moment. We met her on the front steps, said a quick thank you, and headed out.

The drive to the hospital was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. I felt the baby move a few times, but no number of kicks would have been enough to convince me to stay calm. When we finally arrived, "I'll be there in five minutes" was totally eclipsed by the sound of her steady heartbeat on the fetal monitor and the nurse saying "she sounds great." We still weren't sure what would happen next, and waited for the OB on call to arrive. He walked in and said, "So we're going to have this baby tonight, then, aren't we?" In our state of relief, we'd barely noticed the nurses starting to scurry around, bring the MM a pair of scrubs and page the anesthesiologist. It was go-time.

We had a very, very abbreviated discussion about the surgery, but did get the nod from the medical team that we could have her on my chest ASAP if she was stable. Still breech, Eleanor Thomas Cundy entered the world butt-first (girlfriend is going to have a sense of humor, right?) at 10:10 PM and promptly started crying. That sound topped all the others! She weighed five pounds and seven ounces and was 18 inches long. A little thing, but for arriving at 35 and a 1/2 weeks, we were thrilled.  Because she was stable, they brought her to me very quickly and I got to spend about fifteen minutes with her on my chest and nursed her. This clearly blew some of the nurses away, but I was glad they supported it.

In a strange way, sweet Eleanor's birth was more calm and relaxed for me than Ford's. I had already made peace with not having that hoped-for VBAC, so the c-section was expected. I wasn't strung out on exhaustion, pitocin and epidural anethesia, and I hadn't had the time to get the excited jitters as I might have the night before a scheduled delivery. It happened so fast and was over practically before we would have turned out the lights for the night at home. Except that we were now asleep in a cramped hospital room and I had a catheter. But you know, details.

By gaining weight and avoiding jaundice, Eleanor was discharged from the hospital with me on Tuesday and came home.  This felt like a huge victory when there could have been so many possible complications. The ensuing two and a half weeks have been predictably foggy and exhausting as we adjust to being a family of four, remember what it feels like to only sleep for two and three hours at a time (pre-terms have to nurse all the time), and I recover from the c-section. Toss in three utterly miserable days of stomach flu for the MM, Ford and I each (that's one way to drop the baby weight, but I would not recommend it), and you can understand why it's taken awhile to announce our darling girl's arrival.

Welcome to our family, Eleanor! We wish you could have cooked a few weeks longer, but want to thank God and you for being such a strong, beautiful little thing thus far. We hope to do right by you until you're bigger and stronger.  Even if that means your mama has turned into a slightly crazy, house-bound germaphobe on your behalf.  We love you so much!

Breech of Contract

Here's something not to do. Google pictures of frank breech babies at birth. It's like a bad yoga joke.

 

Her expression says it all. Also, baby chiropractic care is in her future. 

Mountain Munchkin Two, aka Baby Girl C has been frank breech for the last two and a half weeks. I'm 35 weeks along, so there is still time for her to get herself into the head-down position to be born, but the days are ticking by and the bigger she gets, the less room to do a somersault.  Turn, baby, turn.

The interwebs have turned up all kinds of interesting ideas to turn a breech baby. A selection:

 1. Talk to her: "Babies are smart! They know what they need to do, but sometimes they need a little encouragement. Have a conversation with her about why this is important."

2. Self-hypnosis: "Baby or I may be holding on to something deep in our sub-conscious that's holding us back. Time to relax and let go."

 3. Go upside down: Spinning Babies.com, y'all. Because who wouldn't want to lie on an inclined ironing board and give themselves a headache to back that baby up? Alternately:

 4. Excite some molecules with burning mugwort: aka moxibustion. It's an acupuncture/Chinese medicine practice.  I have no idea how this works, but it seems pretty harmless, so why not?

5. Frozen peas: If someone plopped a bag of frozen vegetables on your head, you'd run away, right? The idea here is that cold on baby's head and a heating pad at her feet can encourage her to move towards the heat.

6. Music: Same idea. Babies like music, so play music where you want her head to be.

If Ford has not already taught us that children will do what they want to do, irrespective of their parents' wishes (i.e. my wish to avoid another c-section), then this little hurdle is certainly a good reminder.  Let it go, let it flow. Ommmm.......

New Breakfast Players

 

Also, no nutritional value. 

I had the coolest nurse-midwife in Missoula. When I learned that she had retired from doing deliveries, I was so bummed. I knew women who found her direct approach to be a little harsh, but I (being prone to bluntness myself) appreciated her no-nonsense attitude toward pregnancy and birth.

One of the things she stressed as important in pregnancy (really for everyone) is eating a quality breakfast. I have always been an eater of breakfast, usually hungry soon after I wake up (unlike my brother and father who eat like boa constrictors, seemingly going for days before they're hungry again), but until recently I was also a dedicated cereal and milk girl. Mostly because (cringe), I don't like eggs.  And growing up, no one in my family made anything for breakfast except the occasional egg.  Otherwise, cereal it was!

But this midwife. She gave me endless grief about eating cereal for breakfast.  No protein! Refined sugar! Leaves you hungry by 10 AM! And she was right. I finally called it quits after seeing how quickly the MM and I could go through a box and realizing that we were spending insane amounts of money on expensive, organic cereal that had the same issues as the conventional brands: refined sugar, no protein, heavily processed.

Once Ford started eating real food, we were that much more motivated and have developed a breakfast rotation of: peanut butter toast, 5-grain oatmeal, eggs (for Ford and the MM), French toast, greek yogurt with honey, bananas, and granola, and these amazing oatmeal pancakes from a local Amish farm for Saturday mornings. And always fruit of some sort. It's a good list, but we're getting a little burnt out on it too.

I wish I liked eggy breakfast food.  I really do. I'm sure I'd make it to early afternoon on breakfast if I ate a breakfast burrito with eggs, black beans and avocado. But I. just. can't. Yuck.  So here are two non-egg, but still healthier-than-cereal additions to our line-up:

 

Blueberry, oatmeal and flaxseed muffins from Food52.  I'm going to experiment with reducing the brown sugar by half and seeing if something like applesauce works just as well. 

Lemon Blueberry Quinoa Porridge from Southern Living (no joke!).  We tried this last week and the combination of almonds, lemon and blueberries was almost like eating a lemon poppy seed muffin, only this was good for us! Since we don't keep almond milk on hand, I used regular cows milk and it was fine. I also used frozen blueberries since eating blueberries in January means they're shipped in from Chile: both punishing and expensive.

I'll keep trying to convince my taste buds to like eggs, but no one has come up with a recipe that doesn't...smell like eggs.  With enough extras, these breakfast omelette muffins might be the ticket. 

Also, toddlers apparently love anything shaped like a muffin. Bluffin' with my muffin? I'll cut myself off there. 

Bon Appetit!

Holiday Frocks and Finds

We have holiday parties and family events to attend this year and we're hosting our first big(ish) party at the new house before Christmas. I'm looking for one go-to piece that I can accessorize up or down in hopes of looking at least a little chic at seven months pregnant.

I haven't made a final decision, but here's what I would be eyeing if I wasn't starting to waddle around like an emperor penguin:

Emerson Fry

J. Crew

J. Crew

J. Crew

And then there are these HATCH Collection pieces that a drapey, soft and actually transition to non-maternity wear:

Investment pieces to be sure, but the handful of other HATCH items that I picked up on sale are my regular favorites because they feel like real clothes.  

Thanksgiving is right around the corner! It's one of my favorite holidays and I share in the general lamentation that this year more than ever, it seems like Christmas decorations and Black "Friday" starting on Thursday are trying to make us skip Thanksgiving all together. I'm thankful that we will be in western North Carolina, far, far from a big box store.  I'm taking my stand against skipping Thanksgiving with pie:

Cook's Illustrated Fool-Proof Pie Crust

Garden and Gun Bourbon Pecan Pie

Southern Living Pumpkin Pie (sans streusel--why gild the lily?)

Sugar and Spice And....

 

We're about to find out, at least. We are expecting a little girl in early March, 2014! We are all very excited and feeling quite blessed today.

Already crossing her legs at the ankle. Such a lady!

As you can imagine, I am itching to start some new knitting projects, think about lending some "little girl" to the children's bedroom and trying to restrain myself when it comes to the mountain of promotional emails I receive from various childrens' clothing companies. All the little girl stuff is so.darn.cute.  Ruh-roh!

Apropos of Nothing: Pregs Envy

Not that I am or plan to be in the immediate future, but if my fairy godmother is reading this post, would you puh-leease make me this cute next time I'm knocked up?

Thanks.  Images via A Cup of Jo and clothes from HATCH

Summer Wardrobe Staple

Boden is offering 25% off + free shipping through the end of the day, so I ordered this and plan to live in it all summer; pregnant and in a state of belly deflation.  I can't wait to be out for a quick errand without the munchkin and have someone ask me when I'm due and have to smile sweetly and say "Last month, but thank you for asking."  That will be really. awesome.  Anyway, maybe this dress will help.  It will at least be super comfy with sandals and a cardigan on cool Montana evenings. 

Spring Spiffery

After I let Easter sneak up on me with nary a nod to seasonal decorating, I decided that it was time to wash the windows, draw up the shades and take a hard look at the spots in our house that were getting a little bedraggled and sad. Let's start at the front door, which got a new doormat from Ballard Designs:

Frenchy and fun with the black planter and wrought iron chair on our little porch. 

Then our "entryway" table got an upgrade.  Here's the before with a makeshift shade on the brass candlestick lamp and the glass compote with bamboo.  More recently I had hammered metal and straw balls in the compote:

New burlap shade and springy boxwood topiary and bird.  Don't quote Portlandia to me again on birds!  I know they're ubiquitous and I just don't care. I like them.

Our dropleaf table got re-tablescaped:
Before

After

And I took this little bookcase that my great-grandfather built for my mother when she was a little girl and gave it new life--with her permission, of course!

You can hardly see it peeking above the bed here in this early photo from our move-in procees, but clearly it fades into the background.

Paint prep

Woah!

Back in place.  I followed in Jenny from Little Green Notebook's footsteps and used Rustoleum's Safety Red.  I love the color so much, I'm going to paint the frame of the Munchkin's chest of drawers the same color with white drawer fronts, like this:

Photo from Little Green Notebook.  This upcoming project will also get me out of any work related to laying sod in the backyard.  That and being 7.5 months pregnant, you know.