It's a boy!

I'm late in posting this, but most of my friends and family already know we found out on Monday that this little one is a boy!!!! I love that each of my kids gets a brother and a sister and that they each have a sibling of the same gender to grow up with. Granted, the difference between my two girls is 8 years but they have such a special bond that the age difference barely matters.

Nicholas has been told that he'll need to share his room with the baby someday and he's fine with that, but he does not want to give up his crib. He tells me that the baby will sleep in the firetruck toddler bed that sits unused in his room. He's 27 months old right now and wants nothing to do with any sort of bed other than his crib. He calls it his "bootiful cib" We still have plenty of time to work on that, as the baby will probably cosleep for the first 6-8 months or so. Keeping him in his crib is nice since he can be a little too adventurous. It's nice to keep him confined and out of trouble til he gets a little more common sense!

Anyway, here is my baby boy! We didn't get a very good picture, but I need to go back in 4 weeks for another scan so maybe a better picture is coming.

Lollipop Slippers

A few weeks ago, Maddie asked me to knit a pair of lollipop slippers for her and chose this yarn from my stash. Unfortunately I don't know the type of yarn or name of the colorway since I bought this yarn from another mama who was purging her stash and I'm not experienced enough to know by sight and touch. I used the Little Turtle Knits Stripey Slipper pattern but I didn't do the stripes. I've made this pattern a few times and never tried stripes actually. I think it covers my mistakes better!

Keilbasa Apple Pasta Bake

This is yummy stuff! I've been making this for years every autumn and it's my husband's favorite. I made it for dinner last night and thought I'd share the recipe. As you can see, it's not organic or healthy in any way, but I bet you could use healthier ingredients like organic milk and cheese, whole wheat pasta, and organic turkey sausage. If you try it, please leave a comment and let me know what you think :)

Kielbasa Apple Pasta Bake

1 lb rigatoni
2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 large onion, sliced
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 quart milk
3 Fuji apples, cut up into 1 inch cubes
3 cups extra sharp cheddar cheese
1 package fully cooked kielbasa, sliced

Heat oven to 350 and coat a 10 cup baking dish with cooking spray.

In a large deep pot, cook rigatoni.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan heat oil over med-high heat. Add onion, cook until soft. Stir in flour, cook 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk. Bring to a boil. Boil 1 minute.

Stir in 2 cups of cheese into milk. Stir until melted, then toss pasta, cheese sauce, kielbasa and apples. Spoon into baking dish and bake covered for 30 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle 1 cup of cheese and bake an additional 10 minutes.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Yesterday we spent the morning at our local state park's observation farm. The weather was perfect, the animals were friendly and the kids had a blast!

Update on the recipe list!

I never did update about those recipes, huh? Well a few people asked so I'll give my reviews.

Rachael Rays Peanut butter and bacon on Banana Bread

This was good, though I like my banana bread recipe better so I'll use my own recipe next time. The bacon flavor didn't stand out as I expected. It seemed to be all bread and just a little pnut butter and bacon. My banana bread recipe can be sliced a little thinner than RRs without crumbling, so I'll use mine, cut the bread thin and use more bacon for more even flavoring.

Curried Hummus

This was okay. You'd think a curry lover like me would have been all over this recipe, but I made it, tried it and it sat in the fridge til my friend tossed it after realizing it had been in there for way too long. I'll stick to the hummus recipe I usually use. In fact I just made a batch yesterday and Nicholas ate a bowl of it with a spoon. The boy will have garlic breath forever now!

Bodacious Broccoli Salad

This was really good! I wouldn't change a thing. My teenager even ate it, so if she likes it anyone will like it!

Rachael Ray's cold ginger soy and honey noodles

I never got around to trying this one, but I will. Maybe today. This was planned for a lunch food for my teenager. Unfortunately she forgot her lunch container at school and until she brings it home, she's getting pb&j, apples and grapes for lunch in her brown bag. Hopefully soon she'll get sick of it and want some real food.

Wow! I'm really gonna have a baby!!!

I'm 18 weeks pregnant today. I tested positive before the 4 week mark, so you'd think by now I'd be used to it. I'm not though. I've seen this child on ultrasound at 7 weeks, listened to his/her heartbeat many times. I even borrowed a doppler from my wonderful midwife so that I could reassure myself when having moments of doubt. I don't feel pregnant and seem to forget all the time that certain things might not be a good idea, like having a glass of wine, or an extra cup of coffee. The other day I was working outside sealing our deck and a friend mentioned "Is that okay with the chemicals?" For about a half a second I had to think about what she was talking about. Oh yeah, there's a baby in there!

It's not that I totally forget completely every day, though. I do check my blood sugar from time to time since I had some blood sugar problems in the beginning that miraculously got better on their own. I'm slightly worried about developing gestational diabetes, so I'm careful about what I eat. I take my prenatal vitamins daily. Please don't think I'm just ignoring this pregnancy and living on the edge (though that would only mean that I'm eating sushi and drinking an extra cup of coffee every day!). It's just that many many times throughout the day I get this reality check that yes I am pregnant.

I think today it's finally hitting me. I'm 18 weeks exactly today. Three days ago I went to a prenatal with my midwife and her assistants. Monday we are going in for our big ultrasound with the OB. I hope this baby will reveal himself/herself because I think once we know the gender it will be easier to bond.

This morning I was reading a message board and someone a really cool ticker that said she was 18 weeks, so I had to go get one for myself.

I've been scrapping!

Would you believe I have over 3400 pictures on my pc?? That's insane! They date all the way back to 1999. The reason I have them all is because I have great intentions of making digital scrapbook pages with all of them, so I take out my old photo discs, load the photos onto the computer and forget about them in favor of more recent pictures. I will eventually catch up I hope, but in the meantime this is what I've done recently. I'm still learning photoshop, so these need some improvement, but I think they are pretty good.

The 2Cute and Oak Mountain pages are ploppers from the freebie gallery at Digital Scrapbook Place.

The Jiminy peak page elements came from the freebie download section at Scrapbook Bytes

Ice Princess

Madelyn is taking Ice Skating classes at our local skate school and I'm so proud of her. By the end of the very first class she was already able to skate on her own with no help from her instructor.

She's even signed up to be in the annual Christmas show, which occurs during our town's annual Tree Lighting Ceremony.