Life Lately #6

Reading: Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi. I just started it the other day so I don't have a lot to say about it yet!

Watching: Totally binging on season 2 of The Great British Baking Show on Netflix. HOW I MISSED YOU AND YOUR SASS, MARY BERRY.

Listening to: The Goo Goo Dolls' most recent album, Boxes. It's pretty darn good if you're into them at all. Different in a way from their older stuff, but not in a "they've totally jumped the shark" way.

Wearing: A few actual maternity shirts here and there, but mostly a lot of the same tops I wore pre-pregnancy. It's amazing how much you can get away with wearing when your style tends to include oversized/flowy shirts to begin with. Ask me in three more months how that's going...

Smelling: Not a whole lot at the moment. I've had a cold for over a week now. More on that in a minute...

Eating: This chicken and rice soup. I've made two batches in the last two weeks, each batch feeds both Isaiah and me for a good two or three nights, it's really easy/cheap to make, and it is delicious. There are stovetop instructions at the bottom of the recipe if you don't have an Instant Pot/pressure cooker. As usual, I leave out the onion and just throw in whatever bags of frozen vegetables I happen to have around. The first time I made it, I used corn and carrots. The second time, corn and carrots and a few leftover green beans.

Loving: Finally knowing that the baby is a girl! We're making some serious progress on her room and buying a few baby clothing items here or there, and it's just been so fun. We're not making the nursery extremely girly, probably because *I* am not an extremely girly person either, but we did spring for a floral crib sheet and I'm in love with it. I'm also in love with this Lord of the Rings print we found on Etsy. Hashtag nerd alert but seriously, how cool is this:

Not Loving: That our anatomy scan three weeks ago cost us A THOUSAND DOLLARS. $800 for the ultrasound itself, and $200 for them to send the results to some lab in Oregon who actually deciphers and reads those results. On the bright side, that's our entire 2017 deductible right there in one single office visit. On the dark side, I had way better plans for that thousand bucks.

Creating: So many projects...a baby blanket, a yarn pom-pom rug that looks like moss, a few other semi-secret projects for the baby's room...

Wanting: Someone to come and clean out my tiny little quarter-sized kitchen pantry and reorganize it for me. I'm tired of things falling on my head and feet all the time but I'm also exhausted just looking at the stupid thing. It's small, there's not enough space for an actual human family, I have a bad habit of buying new dry goods/canned goods without checking first to see if I already have what I need...it's just a mess. 

Laughing at: Not so much laughing as completely identifying with this meme I stumbled across on Pinterest:

Feeling: Uncomfortable and sick. I managed to catch the cough/cold that's been circulating around my workplace lately, and it's been over a week and I still feel terrible. Not as bad as the first few days, but when your body is focusing on growing a person instead of fighting a virus, it's rough. I'm tired of coughing, and I'm tired of blowing my nose, and on top of it all, I think this baby's having a growth spurt or something because my stomach feels like it's stretching like crazy and the band on my maternity jeans is too tight at the top all of a sudden which makes me nauseated and just UGH. I'm enjoying being pregnant because of the reward at the end, not because I feel like some empowered rockstar superhero woman. I don't. I just feel sick. 

Contemplating: Deleting my Twitter account. The few friends I follow(ed) on there either barely use it anymore or don't use it at all, and while I do use it primarily to keep up with current events, it's still pretty boring when you're Tweeting and nobody's interacting. Because that's the main point of Twitter in the first place. Also, I'm tired of random Twitter trolls somehow finding my posts (sans hashtags, mind you) and trying to pick fights. Over it.

Wishing: Winter would hurry up and end so we can get to spring. Ha ha, who am I kidding. Spring in Alaska is the same as winter. All you people bragging about your 60 degree weather...stuff it. It snowed here yesterday.

Mountain pillows are gender neutral but this baby is not.

A week and a half or so ago, I posted a photo on Instagram saying I was celebrating being halfway done with this pregnancy by working on hand sewing a mountain pillow for the baby's room, while simultaneously wondering if it might take me the last 20 weeks to actually finish it. The other tidbit I haven't shared until now is that a few days later, we had our anatomy scan at the hospital, and we made it very clear that we did, in fact, want to know the sex of the baby.

I am happy to report that not only did it NOT take me another five months to finish that pillow, this kid also cooperated really well during the ultrasound (the one and only time you want your child to be a public exhibitionist) and we were able to find out if he or she is a he or she!

So, I would like to officially announce that we are having a GIRL!!!

We did politely ask the ultrasound tech (who has been in the business for 31 years and made it clear she is not often wrong) how sure she was, and while I can't remember her exact words, the gist of her response was, "Well, you can never be 100% positive until they're born, but that'd be a funny looking boy if it's not a girl." I lol'ed.

On a related note, baby girl clothes are quite possibly the cutest thing in the entire world and it's taking all my self control not to buy certain items in multiple sizes just so she (she!) can wear the same outfits for longer than 3.6 seconds.

I mean, just look at these... 

Things I like

This recipe for zuppa toscana (soup) is delicious. I made it in the Instant Pot, as the recipe suggests, but you could totally do it on the stove top. Just saute the onion, brown the sausage, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until the potatoes are tender, then proceed with the rest of the recipe. I would recommend buying spicy ground pork sausage. It adds a little extra needed flavor. I also used spinach instead of kale. I like kale, but oftentimes it doesn't wilt enough and I don't like crunchy greens in soup.

I apologize in advance for linking to this recipe for a giant, single-serve peanut butter cookie. I only made it once a few weeks ago, but I've been dreaming about it ever since. The only reason I haven't made another one is because the only thing that freaks me out more than diastasis recti is gestational diabetes.

This trailer for the new Beauty and the Beast hits me right in my core. Right at about minute 1:50 when the orchestra fully kicks in with the theme song...oh my goodness. I have not been this excited for a movie in a long time. Come on,  March 17th!

If you need a laugh, this YouTube video of a dog who can't catch food had me crying I was laughing so hard.

If you have a Keurig, these coffee pods are delicious, specifically the Fog Chaser version. They're also some of the most inexpensive I've found. You get 80 pods for $29, which works out to about 36 cents per pod. I don't know if you'll find a better deal on Starbucks or Tully's brands at Costco or Walmart or something, but since we don't have access to any of those stores, this is the best deal we've found for the best tasting coffee.

I've tried not to buy too many maternity clothes yet, considering I can still fit in most of my pre-pregnancy shirts without too much trouble, but sometimes you just need something new to make you feel cute while your waistline is expanding and you're feeling less svelte by the day. This sweater from ASOS is technically a maternity sweater, but it doesn't look like it. There's no ruching on the sides and it's not tent-like either, so it will totally be wearable post-baby. They only have one size left, but if you happen to wear a size 8, I recommend snagging one of these. You can't beat fifteen bucks for a cute sweater with suede elbow patches.

Update: It JUST went out of stock. Sad face. Keep an eye on it, though, if it comes back you should grab one.

Please note that none of these links are sponsored - I don't play like that. They're just things I like, therefore you probably need to know about them.