Lucy! Lucy!

I've never been to Cuba and I hear the food is bland but this sandwich that is apparently Cuban inspired wasn't bland. In fact, I'm still tasting the cilantro and onions...

It all started when I watched the last five minutes of an episode of Eat Street. I don't normally watch Food TV, especially with my current "health condition". I just get bored of watching someone make food if I don't also get to eat it. (I enjoy cooking classes because I actually get to eat the food too!) The featured food cart was Babaloo Food Cart in San Fransisco. Every sandwich they showed, I wanted to eat. And this Lucy! Lucy! sandwich especially stood out.

This is the photo of the Lucy! Lucy sandwich from the Babaloo website.

Mine looked different since I used a panini bun and was going off memory. Now that I'm reviewing what was in the Lucy! Lucy! I bet Babaloo's is better, but mine was pretty good.

Here's what I did.

Chicken breast marinated in Chef Ann's Tequi-Lime marinade
Diced mango
Diced avocado
Finely chopped red onion
Chopped cilantro
Lime juice
Salt

Mash the mango, avocado, onion, cilantro, lime juice and a little salt together. Grill the chicken breasts on a grill pan (they ended up being much more char-grilled than I wanted, but they were cooked). Spread a little mayonnaise on the bottom of your bun/bread and then slather the top with a thick helping of the avocado mixture. Lay the chicken on the bun and eat! (If you have a panini maker I bet it would be a perfect time to use it, but I don't and it was fine as is.)

The real Lucy! Lucy! has meunster cheese also... I think that would have just topped it off perfectly. Also, I recall that they put the breast on whole, but I sliced my chicken up a bit since it was so char-grilled.

I liked it so much that I had it for lunch today, and then made two more for Jordan and I for dinner. He agreed that it was keeper recipe.

Finding Out

On Saturday, October 22, we were planning to host our monthly wine club. Our wine club is four couples who appreciate wine, getting together for some blind taste tests. The host couple also makes the food for the evening, so I knew that my day was going to be busy and full. I planned on spending most of the day in the kitchen. Since I knew I'd be tasting a few glasses of wine it was best to double check that I wasn't pregnant.

I'm not regular so to be seven days "late" is pretty normal for me. I got up first and grabbed the test. There was no "two-minute wait" necessary - as the liquid soaked into the wand, the + sign appeared just as fast. There it was. I was pregnant again. Definitely not planned. Sort of prevented. I threw the test into the garbage and started my day as usual: got the kids' breakfast ready and did my morning things. 

Jordan got up shortly after and came into the kitchen. "So, when does this mean you're due?"

"I haven't figured it out yet... but probably June."

"So, I guess we're not going to France, huh?"

My dad has a business meeting in Paris in September, so they planned to rent a house for us all to come and stay for a few weeks. We were planning on joining them, without kids, for two weeks. We had discussed the third child that we wanted and that we would be exactly 4-6 months pregnant while in France - feeling good, not too large and no newborn. It was a perfect plan.

I know that many people have gone on holidays with a 3-month-old, but that's not something that sounds like an enjoyable vacation to me. My babies all were up a few times each night until 6 months old, so a vacation with no sleep is not a vacation at all!

Shortly after breakfast, the news hit Jordan. He started to panic, "You need to make sure you get your maternity hours in" and "are you going to up your hours?" and "what are you going to do with childcare?" and "this is definitely our last child!"

I responded, "Can we just get through this day and worry tomorrow?" I'm a worrier by nature, so these questions weren't helping me! He responded with, "I'll come around, just I'm a little shocked. Give me a few days."

Later that night with our friends over I started the meal with, "When you are hosting a wine club at your house, the thing you hope doesn't happen is find out you are pregnant. Well... I'm pregnant."

With my previous pregnancies, I didn't share until 10-12 weeks pregnant, so this was very early. I just wasn't really sure how I was supposed to pretend to taste the four wines without my glass ever emptying! So, a few of our friends found out the same day we did. 

And as for Jordan, yes, he came around a few days later. Now we're both excited. I'm excited for all these little movements and to meet this baby in five months and enjoying all these pregnant moments and then the bonus of all the newborn cuddles. Jordan? He's happy that we will be done this baby stage soon and he's still excited because this is our last child!

(And yes, God surprised us with this one, so He could always surprise us with another one...)

Deep Freeze

We've been getting some cold weather in our area. Minus twelve is what I refer to as cold... and then the wind chill makes it -23. That's WAY too cold for me to venture outside with the kiddies in tow. Especially when the boy instantly cries when it's windy - cold or not. (Anyone from outside of the Lower Mainland, laugh away. We just ain't used to that type of weather down here, okay?)

But this deep freeze I'm referring to is the type that I can store food in. We don't have one. If you have one, you're likely thinking, "How do you live?" We barely survive... it's true!

It means that my Costco shops have to be done very cautiously. I can't purchase all the frozen foods that I want to have on hand. I have to take an inventory of our freezer before I leave and see if I have room to store anything extra in the side-by-side freezer we have in the kitchen. Our side-by-side isn't small, but I can't get the frozen appetizers, frozen hamburger patties, two loaves of bread we go through each week, muffins for Jordan's breakfast on the go, ground beef broken up into Ziploc bags, ice cream, frozen chicken breasts, and other fast meal ideas in the freezer. There's just no room. So Costco suffers greatly (ha!), and my bank account wins, because we don't have a deep freezer.

It means that when I don't have any idea of what to make for dinner, I literally don't have any back up food on hand to whip up. It means that our back up dinners are made up of pasta with a tomato sauce (boring and my kids don't like tomato sauce this week), or like tonight, waffles.

It means that when it's berry season and I want to flash freeze some raspberries for the year, I can maybe max out at one flat... maybe! I would have to plan ahead to make sure that I hadn't already filled up the freezer with other foods. And really, one flat!? That lasts one week! Barely worth the hassle.

Freezer jam? Not gonna fit.
Preparing casseroles to freeze for future dinners? Not possible.
Frozen pizzas? There's only enough space for one to slide in very carefully next to the ice maker.

But then it comes down to this... I could spend the money and purchase an upright deep freezer (we have room for that in our basement), or I could purchase the bookshelves that I want to help organize our den/toy room. I'll probably choose the bookshelves and continue living on waffles.

What can I say?

I love me some waffles.

The Birth of my First Child

I started this blog when Sloan was nine months old. I never told her birth story on the blog and I'm feeling kinda nostalgic today, along with feeling like typing. So here's the story of Sloan's birth.

My due date was August 23rd, and I never intended to have my baby on that day. Our city's old hospital was closing on August 24th, meaning that the brand new, state of the art, beautiful, sparkling clean hospital was opening on that same day. I was NOT going to have my baby in the old, crappy hospital if I had any control over it. So, when at 38 weeks, my doctor asked if I was interested in being checked, I told him, "No way. We're keeping this baby in here until after that hospital is open!" August 23rd ended and I was still pregnant... and relieved.

I also figured that I would be late. I never was one to wish that my baby was out - I was happy to keep the baby in as long as possible. And because I value natural things, I was also willing to go as long overdue as needed for my body to naturally release the child. My doctor had also told me that he was on holidays until the 26th and I REALLY wanted him to be the one who delivered my babe. I knew that he was on a rotation with three other doctors but since I had 95% of my prenatal appointments with him, I was emotionally attached.

On August 27th at 4:00am, I got up to use the bathroom. After I had peed, I heard a "pop" sound and continued to pee. Because I was somewhat still sleeping while on the toilet, I slowly clued in that I stopped pee-ing, but was still pee-ing. Maybe it wasn't pee? Maybe my water had just broken? I wasn't sure what to do so I softly yelled for Jordan (you know that voice when you want to yell but you don't want to wake up everyone in the house so you yell quietly... ya, that voice). Well, Jordan didn't hear me and I realized that there was no one in the house so I could scream if I wanted to and then he may hear me. (Yes, he's a very deep sleeper.)


I realized he wasn't waking up and because the dripping stopped, I walked on the tiled bathroom floor to wake him up and ask him to get the towel from the laundry room and put it on the bed. I already was sleeping on a towel but I wanted another one. He came into the bathroom and like a confused child asked, "Do I have time to have a shower or do we need to go right now?!" I told him to just get the towel and go back to bed.

I got myself together and crawled into bed. I had contractions every 15-20 mintues but was able to sleep in between them or maybe even through them. They weren't very intense. At 6:30 am I was done being woken up every 15 minutes and I got out of bed. Had a shower, ate some breakfast and sat on a towel on the couch. I asked Jordan to time the contractions: how long they were and how often. After the first one, I told him and when the second one started I informed him. He said, "That was like 10 minutes or so..." I did the same thing for the next one and then asked him how long it was for. He replied that he didn't know what he was timing... I believe it was then that I used some foul language directed towards him. His response was "If this is what it's going to be like and it's only been an hour, I'm not sure how we are going to survive this day!" True.

I explained exactly what he was timing and tried to fall asleep in between the mild contractions. I woke up at one point and looked at the clock. It had been 30 minutes. Obviously the contractions had stopped. I called the doctor's office and he told me to come in and they'd check me out. We got to his office at around 10:30am and I had a contraction or two while in the waiting room. I wasn't dilated at all, so he doc pulled his mini-ultra sound machine into the room to have a quick peek. The first thing he said when placing the wand over my lower pelvis region, was "Oh Baby, where is your head?" He then moved the wand quickly up to the top of my stomach and then put it away. He grabbed his phone and dialed a number. He said into the phone, "I need to book a C-section for a breech." Then he looked at Jordan and I and said, "Sorry... Ya, you'll be having a C-section."

For the last six weeks, at every appointment, both doctors I had seen just felt the position of the baby and said, "Yep, head's down..." and continued on with measuring, etc. It turns out that Sloan's bum was perfectly in place in my pelvis that it felt like it was her head.

The doctor told us we could head to the hospital now and they would get us in as soon as they could. I wasn't interested in going through more contractions if I was getting a section anyway, so we headed in. It was just around 11:30 when we got there and the nurses were still trying to figure out where everything was, how the paging system worked and what they were supposed to do. It didn't help that every person who was due with a baby within a 50km radius also wanted to go to the new hospital so they were a little busy, to say the least. After two hours of hanging out in room 4030, I was given an IV. I was starving and not allowed to eat so the IV helped with my energy a bit. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that I had insane water retention with Sloan. At four months pregnant I couldn't wear my wedding rings, and it just got worse as time went on. Yes, it was summer, but it was bad from April onward. The IV? Didn't help!

At 4:00 pm my doctor and the on-call OB came to chat. The OB told me that if I really wanted to deliver I could... I cut him off and told him that I had no intention of trying that. Not worth the risk! At 7:00pm, still with no drugs, no food and no nurses caring for me, I was told that I would likely have the baby before midnight. Midnight? That was still another 5 hours away! My contractions still weren't very painful, not consistent but I also wasn't doing anything to promote their progression. I just lay in bed, napped, read, etc. They started to increase closer to 10pm, so at 10:30pm my IV pole and I got into the shower.

By 11:30 I got out of the shower and the nurse came to visit me. She asked if I was having any more contractions. Yep, I replied. My hour-long shower consisted of waves of three. Two horrible contractions followed my one insanely terrible one. She cheerily replied, "Oh great! Well lets check you out!" She checked and rather than saying anything, went into the hallway to ask for another nurse to come check. A more experienced nurse checked and said, "Oh, I could tell you if it's a boy or a girl right now!" and told me I was 6 centimeters dilated. When my doctor returned he gave me a quick lecture that I don't need to be a hero and I should have said I was in so much pain. I wasn't really in that much pain, and I was definitely not trying to be a hero.

Everything was in motion quickly after that. Catheter, waivers, surgeons, Jordan almost passing out, etc. I was wheeled into the operating room and they gave me my spinal. I felt warm and fuzzy all over and was relieved that the shaking contractions had stopped. I told the OB that I wanted a pretty scar (the funny things that go through your mind in the heat of the moment) and the cutting began. A few minutes later he asked for the scalpel again and I reminded him of my cute little scar I asked for. He said that the baby's bum was too big so they had to cut it larger! Darn big-bummed baby! At 1:12am on August 28th my little GIRL peeked over the blue curtain at us.

Unfortunately, after an unscheduled, overnight Caesarean, the baby doesn't come with you, so my new baby went with Daddy and I was wheeled to recovery. By 3:30am we were all united in our room again and we decided on her name: Sloan Elizabeth. Both Jordan and my Paternal Grandmothers are Elizabeth's so it was a perfect middle name for her contemporary first name. The first name was between two finalists. My name choice was for if it was a blonde baby girl and Jordan's choice was for a brunette baby. Sloan was born with brown hair so Sloan she is.

For the two people who actually read this entire 40-month-old story, thank you. It was fun to reminisce about how this spunky, observant, sharing, inquisitive, friendly, deep-thinking, little GIRL came into our world. It feels like she's been here forever and I cannot imagine our lives without her. She gives us so much joy with her comments and her behaviours. I love her little voice, even if it's too early in the morning or with the same why question, over and over and over again. I don't love parenting every moment of every day, but the good moments make up for the tough ones and I love this little girl.

I'm a Terrible Blogger

I'm a perfectionist. I hate doing things that aren't done perfectly and because of this, I am also a procrastinator. This is part of the reason that I haven't blogged lately. I have nothing particularly exciting to write about.

In fact, in mid-December I was in line for Santa with the kiddies and bumped into someone who said, "Can't wait to read about this on your blog!" But the whole sitting on Santa's knee thing kinda went off without a hitch so I thought, "Shoot. Still have nothing to write about..."

The other reason is that I'm tired. I work, make dinner, put kids to bed, and shortly there after, I'm in bed too. Working two days a week is tiring! Ha.

But even on the other days during the week we have other things going on and it's the same thing. When the kids are napping, if I'm not also napping, I'm possibly doing things around the house. (Have I mentioned that there are four loads of laundry that still haven't folded themselves!)


So, I apologize to anyone who has visited this blog lately. It's boring over here, I know.

I forgot to do a New Years Resolution this year... and even when I mentioned it to the Hubby he replied, "Oh yeah! I forgot that's part of the New Years thing." But we still didn't make any big goals. The only one I would like to say is:

I will post at least once per week for the entire year.

Wow. I actually wrote that. I guess I need to do it now. Like mentioned above, I'm a perfectionist so I guess I really need to do that now! Look out, blog, I'm back.

And a picture for you from our photo shoot for Grandma & Grandpa's Christmas gift.

#75... expensive but Done!

#75 on my 101 in 1001 is to watch Gone with the Wind.

In August 2011 I borrowed the 4 hour saga from the public library and intended to watch it right away. But then the excuses started. First, I was busy with other things. Then, we were finishing our media room. Then the DVD player moved into the media room, but I didn't want to go and watch all 4-hours in the basement room, but rather wanted to watch it upstairs in the family room. But the DVD player stayed downstairs. Finally after three months the DVD player was moved back upstairs and I took two evenings and watched the movie.

In the meantime, I had renewed my rental of the movie with the library four or five times. It had been three months when I finally returned the movie and realized that I had missed the last due date by one month.

$15 in fines later - I watched the movie.

My review: not worth the three months of anticipation or the $15. I enjoyed the movie during the first three hours, but I was so frustrated with Scarlet's self-centeredness at the end that I was just looking forward to it being over! I did enjoy learning about the South but after the fourth and final hour, I was relieved the movie was over - I was bored and sick of Rhett and Scarlet's back and forth romance. Seriously?! I need to believe that she did win him back by realizing that she loved him all along and somehow proving it to him, but only because it makes me feel that I didn't waste quite as much time!

I'm glad I watched it because it seems like one of those movies that you just need to see, but if there's anyone out there who thinks the same thing... don't worry about it. It's not that great.

New Sideboard

We were just given this piece of furniture from one of our grandparents who is downsizing and needed to get rid of some stuff. Jordan went to pick up the items in his pick-up and came back with the surprise pieces. When I first saw this one, I thought we would just bring it to the thrift store because I wasn't sure what we would do with it... but now I like it!

It's in it's new home although it's not finished how I want, but it's just too cold to refinish it in the garage right now.

I think it "may" need some new knobs. Jordan says big square ones...

I'm thinking I'll just re-stain it a very similar colour to what it is - a warm medium brown. The other option is to paint it a vibrant peacock blue. What do you think? I'll probably choose a brown, not be happy with it, sand it again and redo it... but I think brown looks nice.

I'm kinda excited to do it, but I have a feeling it's not going to happen until March... once the cold has lifted a bit and I'm more motivated to work in the garage for a few hours on this beast.