In pursuit of health

I'll preface this with an apology...I'm going to talk about weight/food/diet and I usually hate all of that talk. Also, this is absurdly long.

In 7th grade, my English teacher dubbed me a "firecracker." She said that I got super fired up about a project/idea only to shortly thereafter fizzle out. I was insulted, but I couldn't help but admit that she was somewhat accurate in her assessment of me. I think I just get obsessed with things very easily but I have neither the time nor the attention span to sustain those obsessions.

Fast forward to today, and I have diets on my mind. I would really like for this to not be a firecracker fad. The thing is, I've never been good at diets. Until I went away to college, I tried my damnedest to gain weight and could not. The cruel 6th graders used to call me "Stick-Stickly" (anyone remember that talking popsicle stick from Nickelodeon?) and "Twigessa." Then in 7th and 8th grade, I grew 8 inches in 2 years! So to say I was unattractively skinny is to put it mildly. I ate whatever I wanted and lamented that Seventeen and YM constantly preached about body image and losing weight, but never touched on difficulties that come with being too skinny.

College. No one warned me that beer every night, 5am pizza runs and breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria could negatively impact my body. You would think a smart girl would know that, but I either didn't know or I didn't care. I gained the freshman 25. This is WHILE I played volleyball. For the first time that summer, I actually dieted. I worked out. I cut out anything sugary, fatty or highly caloric from my diet. I lost all that weight before going back to school for my sophomore year.

The following four years living in New York, I was much closer to my normal weight, but always a bit on the heavier side of that. As many New Yorkers do (or at least Manhattanites), we ordered delivery A LOT. I was too lazy to work out regularly. I enjoyed drinking a bit too much.

PJO and I moved to CA in 2006 and I instantly dropped 5 pounds. I still don't work out regularly (although I'm fairly active), but I also don't eat as much as often. Once I started having kids, my normal weight dropped about 10-15 pounds.

So here I am, about to turn 29 and I never even think about my weight or size of clothing or how what I eat affects either of those (because it doesn't). I like a lot of food, healthy and unhealthy, so I always just eat what I feel like getting and assume there will be a balance. My weakness is sweets, I completely indulge with no portion control, but I wasn't motivated to change that. And yet, I need to go on a diet.

Somewhat surprisingly, it has very little to do with the dietitian we met with. I have been meaning to talk about that, but essentially she told us that she saw no problems with Timmy's diet, thahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift she thinks he's healthy and just needs to be more active to be at a healthy weight.

This has to do with my lungs. The 2 minute background is that I have had asthma since I was little. Not the kind where I have asthma attacks but the kind where every cold turns into something awful. Over Christmas break of my junior year of college, right before I went to study abroad in Spain, I had double pneumonia. I thought it was the flu (per the diagnosis from Columbia's health center) and sat on my dad's couch for a few days, unable to do anything. Finally, my mom made me go to the hospital when she saw me. I thought she was crazy for overreacting, but it turns out it was good she did. The ER doctor said that if I had waited another day, I might have died. My blood oxygen level was at like 60% or something crazy low. I had pneumonia in 3 of the four lobes in my lungs. I was put on IVs (I had 5 bags on my "Christmas tree" at a time) and I was in the hospital for 3 or 4 days. I had never before felt so weak or been in so much pain (and at that point, I had been through "bad" cases of chicken pox, Mono and Shingles). I argued and fought with doctors to make them let me go to Spain as scheduled, and, like any 20 year old, I felt invincible. I recovered (obviously), but I feel like my lungs never FULLY recovered.

This past year, I had bronchitis about 8 times. My form of asthma essentially causes my body to produce too much mucus, so every cold started as a sinus infection and 1 day later, it would all be dripping down into my lungs. I was miserable. I decided to make an appointment to see the lung specialist I saw when I had the pneumonia.

He said to me, "it's probably the asthma. When you get sick, you'll need to ask me to prescribe you a steroid and you should reduce foods that cause mucus in your diet." Guess what those foods are? Red meat, white flour, white sugar, dairy, caffeine and chocolate. I mean, everything wonderful in this world has just been flagged as dangerous.

I know people are told to adjust their diets all the time and usually they don't listen. My father in law had a heart attack at a young age and he eats lots of terrible stuff. But my mom was talking to me about the pneumonia the other day, telling me about how she sat by my bed in the hospital and watched the number on the blood oxygen monitor hover for hours at the level her dad's did when he was hospitalized with leukemia. She told me how she really thought I might not live. And I lived through it, but the gravity of the situation didn't hit me until now. Thinking about ever seeing my kids or husband like that, or how difficult it would be if I couldn't be there for them, made me realize I need to do what I can to make myself healthy. And yes, I love cheese and cupcakes, but if I have to give those up for a while to see if my lungs clear up, the mature thing to do is give that a shot.

My plan is to be as strict as I can for March and see how I feel. I can always gradually add back some of what I like to eat. Even if this diet makes no difference for my lungs, it was time for me to cut back on sweets and dairy anyway. I am guessing that if it makes a difference, I won't want to go back to eating like I used to. So for March, I am trying to eat vegetarian except for fish and chicken once a week each. I'm not letting myself have any sweets if I can help it. I wanted to cut out wheat completely, but I'm sure some whole wheat will sneak in there. Dairy will be excruciating, so I'll probably let myself have a piece of cheese or yogurt every so often.

I had no idea how hard it is to find breakfast foods that have no eggs, no dairy, no meat and no wheat. This morning I had oatmeal with walnuts, honey, banana and berries. It was good, but I will be sick of that in a few days. There are always non-cream soups or veggie sandwiches without bread for lunch. With gluten free pasta, rice and quinoa, I think I can come up with plenty of dinner ideas. If anyone has any ideas for recipes to try, let me know!

Productive Weekend

Now that I'm a full-time working mom, the times I cook dinner during the week are few and far between. I would like to say that I cook on weekends, but that's not always the case either. We like to be out of our apartment on weekends, so we often pick up food wherever we end up going or make dinner plans with friends at nearby restaurants.

This weekend was a perfect storm of being work-free and minimally scheduled, so I used it to cook. A lot. Every few months, I make some chicken tamales. Besides being delicious, they freeze exceptionally well, so one batch makes enough for about 6 dinners. On Mother's day, I tried (for the first time) a mole chicken tamale and I've been dreaming about them ever since. I made mole sauce back in the fall and it was a huge hit with PJO and I, so I thought, why not combine these two loves of mine and make two batches of tamales, one regular and one with mole?

Two friends of mine recently had babies, so I figured I would just give them some of my extra instead of freezing it all.

Oh, and then I thought that it just wouldn't be right to give them an entree with no side dish or dessert, so I decided to make some sweet corn cake, guacamole and strawberry cupcakes.

And since I was already going to have to clean the food processor and the cupcake tins, I decided to make a batch of the veggie muffins we had run out of a month or so ago.

Between the cooking, the baking and the dishes, this is how I ended up spending approximately 12 hours in the kitchen this weekend. My back was literally killing me at the end of it.

While I was in the kitchen, PJO was re-arranging the living room. We got rid of our china cabinet and moved our computer to our bedroom to make room for the glider and ottoman. We had to carefully wrap and pack away all the china and crystal and clean the layers of dust that had been untouched behind furniture for nearly two years.

I also did my share of a babysitting swap for a friend so that PJO and I can have a date night this Saturday (with free babysitting!!) and met up with my best friend from law school for brunch on Sunday before she moves out of state. Tired doesn't adequately describe how I feel today.

But I would say it was all worth it. We've been eating the "scraps" of my efforts for dinner the past two nights (mole with shredded chicken and cheese in corn tortillas) and the fridge is still full of tamales, plus our apartment is ever so slightly more organized and ready to accomodate baby #2.

Now is the time

Lately I've struggled with reconciling the kind of parent I am now with the kind of childhood I always imagined my children would have. It just doesn't seem like anything counts as the real thing when my only child is still at an age where he won't remember anything and he can't speak his mind yet. Couple that with the fact that I find being a stay-at-home mom exhausting, and it's easy to see how I've let myself fall into a routine where I am just "getting through" the hard years and telling myself I'll be the kind of parent I want to be later when it counts (and when I have the energy).

My sister-in-law, full time SAHM to 4 kids (the oldest is 6) doesn't allow her kids to watch TV. On a rainy day when they're all a little bit sick, she still refuses to bust out a movie to buy herself an easy hour or two. I found myself thinking she was crazy, but at the same time respecting that she is sticking to a system that enforces the ideals she thinks are important for her kids. If she can get through the day with a 6 month old, a 2 year old, a 4 year old and a six year old with no extra help and still be the kind of parent she wants to be, I should sure as hell be able to do the same with one 17 month old.

So the most important thing to me as a parent is setting an example for an active and healthy lifestyle. Playing outdoors and running around instead of being sedentary inside all day. Eating healthy, fresh food and being fit. I want my kids to prefer playing catch outside or going swimming to playing video games in the living room. I want them to prefer eating a home-cooked meal to ordering pizza from Dominoes.

Around the same time as this visit to NJ, I watched Food, Inc. and Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. I found myself disgusted by what these "fat Americans" were eating and the lack of physical activity they were getting, as well as completely dumbfounded by the fact that they weren't jumping at the chance to change when given the help and opportunity to do so.

Then I started thinking back to what I ate as a teenager. In the morning I would eat toaster strudels or pop tarts or sugary cereal. At school for lunch I would eat pizza and soda, usually with a cookie. Dinner was often fast food or some heavily processed frozen food because my mom was a single working mother with very little time to cook for us (and somehow it never occurred to us to cook for ourselves). We always had fresh fruit, but we were getting the majority of our calories from, as Jamie would say, "a load of crap."

I cringe when I think of what that must have done to my body. My fast metabolism is both a blessing and a curse because I should have been FAT from eating all that, even if I was a varsity athlete working out 3 hours a day. It's so easy to ignore a horrible diet when you don't need to lose weight.

Anyway, I made a promise to myself that I would start taking control of this now. I am the only one who controls what food Timmy gets. I am the one who is in charge of shaping his environment and showing him how great it is that we live in a place where we can play outside almost every day. I am the one who has the chance to take him on camping trips like the ones my dad took us on, showing him the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and Yosemite and Mesa Verde. I can teach him how to ski and hike and fish and surf. I can teach him how to pick out the good produce at the farmer's market, grow vegetables in his garden and cook with natural ingredients. As someone told me, it's my job as a parent to put healthy food on his plate, it's Timmy's job to eat it. It's also my job to feed my body and soul so that I'm healthy and active when Timmy has kids and PJO and I grow old and retire together.

We try to buy things that are less processed and more fresh. No high fructose corn syrup, no MSG, no nitrates and no preservatives or additives (especially Red 40). We also buy organic for at least the dirty dozen, milk and eggs. We are making the effort to buy locally grown products and support vendors at the farmer's market. We're far from perfect and we'll still eat out at restaurants or occasionally buy something that is prohibited by our list. But I feel better eating chocolate cake when I made it from scratch and know everything in it than eating a mystery slice that is filled with preservatives and who knows what else. I try to spend as much time outdoors with Timmy and PJO as I can and we're planning a fun vacation for the the end of summer before I start working, hopefully the first of many memorable family vacations. I may not always be the parent or wife or friend or lawyer or person I want to be, but if I try to do something right every day, at least I can be proud at the end of it all.

Hiding the goods

When Timmy started eating solids, we delighted in the fact that he seemed to prefer green vegetables to fruit. Our kid LOVES his vegetables and shuns the unhealthy or sugary food YOUR kid is eating, we scoffed. At the time, my mom reminded me that she would hide vegetables all the time in our food so we would get some nutrition. I laughed and thought, you must not have introduced healthy and delicious food to us early enough. You must have caved and fed us sugar-laden treats and heavily processed meals.

Fast forward 6 months or so...

Picky picky pickiest eater. He loves a lot of fruit, most dairy and almost any grain. Vegetables? Almost never eats them. He'll tolerate a puree mixed in with his morning oatmeal. He'll eat corn, beans and some other small diced veggies he can eat with his fingers. He eats yogurt with fruit and veggies in it. But you can bet your ass he will NOT touch steamed broccoli "trees" or cut green beans. I still offer fresh veggies every once in a while, but it's really not worth the effort to prepare them every day only to be turned down without even trying them. I needed something that I knew he would eat so that at the end of the day, I could tell myself he had a small serving of veggies in his diet.

I found this recipe and modified it (a lot). Timmy LOVES them. I plan on making these tomorrow (also heavily modified).

3 finely shredded carrots
2 finely shredded zucchini
1 14.5 oz can pureed pumpkin
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar (plus 1/4 C brown sugar)
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 C no-sugar added applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Gently toss together carrot, zucchini, and pumpkin; set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
3. Combine eggs, applesauce and vanilla; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened (batter will be thick). Fold in carrot mixture.
4. Fill greased or paper-lined mini-muffins cups two-thirds full. Bake at 375 for 16 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Cool in pan 10 minutes before removing to wire rack.

How do you get your kids to eat veggies?

Modifying expectations

Apparently my low expectations weren't low enough. The very first day of the month, we ate lunch out. Granted, it was In-n-Out, so it was under $10. But. it. was. the. first. day! How easily I succumb to laziness.

Since then we have operated within our food budget constraints (the only constraint being no eating out). I realized that maybe limiting eating out to once a week would be a better start for us than complete elimination. PJO's 29th birthday is Sunday and I get bar results two weeks from Friday. If I pass that test, you better believe I am celebrating with a delicious meal on the town. (If I don't pass, I sure as hell won't be cooking that night anyway).

The meals we made this week will all last more than one day. First I made chicken tamales, slightly changing this recipe. I think they're delicious and they freeze well, plus they're super easy to make. There were enough for 4 meals, so I froze half.

Today we made really simple pulled pork sandwiches and roasted red chard. Prep time for both was about 30 minutes, but we let the pork cook all day. Oh how I love my Le Creuset Dutch Oven!

We also bought sausage on sale and will make pasta with sausage and broccoli in a few days. We like to make our own sauce because it tastes so much better, but I don't think it saves us money at all.

Lunches are either left overs or PB&J sandwiches and fruit. Breakfast has incorporated a lot of eggs lately because we got a good deal on an 18 pack and need to use them up. (I should say breakfast and lunch for Timmy and I; PJO gets his meals for free at work, lucky duck)

We tried to cut out beer but failed miserably. A 12-pack of Pacifico is chilling in our fridge as I type.

So there it is...our little status report only 4 days into November. I hope we can become accustomed to cooking at home more. Once you get in the habit, it's really not so bad.

For whatever reason, people tend to modify spending habits only when it's absolutely necessary. I'm not at the point yet where I have to spend less, but I want to do what is best for my family instead of what is easiest for me. Because our top priorities are paying off student loans and saving for a house, the plan is to spend as little as possible while still enjoying our life while we have the time to. I would much rather eat at home and spend the money we save on fun family activities. So, the first reward for the food sacrifice? This weekend PJO and I are going skiing for his birthday. The first time we are together without Timmy...ever, I think!!!

Frugal Friday

A friend in law school had a joke she liked to tell; the punchline was always, "in this economy?!?!" Example:

"I've been eating a lot of hot dogs lately."

"In this economy?!?!"

The further into this recession/meltdown/depression/whatever we get, the more funny this joke becomes. It's everywhere. Every commercial makes a reference to the poor state of the economy and how you should buy their product because of it.

Like everyone else, PJO and I have our own unique concerns and priorities when it comes to our financial situation. In planning for the next year of living off of one income, we have started looking much more closely at our monthly expenditures. No matter how many times we track every single purchase, I am always shocked at the final numbers.

I don't pretend to be the best example of living frugally; many of you reading this are probably much thriftier than I. That is why I wanted to write this post, which I hope will end up being a series of posts. Starting on Sunday (beginning of November), I am going to try and think of new ways to slim down our monthly expenditures. Full disclosure: it's not so much meant to be informative or educational for you, it's to force me to be honest about my weaknesses in budgeting and get some good ideas for ways to improve. If there happen to be other people like me out there that have a lot of room for improvement and don't know where to start, then maybe this will get you started on your own journey.

This week: Monthly Food Budget.

In September, PJO and I tracked everything we spent on food. I would say it was a pretty average month. We didn't go overboard on spending compared to our usual habits, but we also didn't try to minimize expenses. The verdict?

Eating out: $300!
The average meal was about $20, and we ate out 13 times. Several of these were brunch.

Groceries: $460!
I didn't clip coupons because I felt a) it took too much time, and b) the coupons are usually for things I wouldn't buy anyway. This includes a lot of beer and wine (we tend to have a beer or glass of wine with dinner most nights). Almost everything we cook for dinner is based on meat (usually chicken or pork) and we buy a lot of fresh produce.


Eeek.



Clearly reducing our monthly food expenses will be a significant first step to reducing our overall cash outflow. The reform-our-food-budget plan?

1) No eating out at all in November. Without trying to limit the money we spend at the grocery store, we are going to see how much this helps. (and how hard it seems to not have that crutch to lean on when it's 7:30pm and you have no desire to cook anything yet are starving).

Luckily, fall and winter are the perfect times of the year to try cooking cheaper meals. The crock pot and dutch ovens are in use constantly and meat is stretched over several days.

2) Collect information. I'm not at the point yet where I can limit my grocery purchases to sale items only. There are certain things I will buy no matter what price and I like to try and cook a semi-well balanced meal. To be totally honest, I'm not even sure sometimes what a "great deal" is on certain items. I read this article yesterday, and realized I have no f*@king idea what the heck I spend on meat.

I'm taking the advice from a commenter on that article and collecting the circulars of nearby grocery stores for the next 8 weeks (supposedly a typical cycle of full price and sales). I'm going to make a list of things I buy frequently and chart out the best prices I find and where. Hopefully around the start of the new year, I will be able to buy meat only when it is marked down to the very best price and keep my freezer stocked with it so that I have what I need on hand whenever I decide to make certain dishes.

3) Reduce alcohol purchases. We probably spend $60 a month right now on this category that is admittedly not necessary and not healthy. It is so hard to resist buying pumpkin beer (one of my favorite seasonal items!) and we've always been suckers for Pacifico. I think for now, we'll try to cut this by a 1/3 or 1/2 and then reevaluate.



There it is, my first step. I have some more ideas that I'll share next week. In the meantime, what do you do to keep monthly food expenses down?

Loose skin and chubby thighs

Do any other mothers out there have a hard time preparing a roast chicken?



The chubby round thing that doesn't quite fill out the skin, the bones that can still sort of be felt through the soft pudge. Even the size. A little bit too similar to a brand new baby.

Kind of makes me want to be a vegetarian.

I can do it myself!

It seems that Timmy just wanted to feed himself. Once we gave him control, he ate the whole bowl of sweet potatoes. (well, what didn't end up on him)




At times he ate directly from the bowl.



It was a delicious mess.




It all came off in the bath afterward though.

Refreshed and Ready for Summer

This morning I woke up to silence. No alarm clock. No baby crying. Weird. I lay there trying to remember what time I had fed Timmy, and upon realizing I hadn't, I freaked out. Jumping out of bed faster than ever before, I raced into the nursery. Staring up at me with eyes wide open and fingers in his smiling mouth, Timmy was perfectly happy in his crib. He had slept from 7:45pm to 6:30am. It wasn't the longest he's ever gone without waking up, but it was the first time he woke up at a reasonable hour.

I felt reinvigorated. Today was spent walking around in the sunny 75 degree weather, playing with an extremely giggly baby and enjoying life. Suddenly I feel the need to revamp my life and do things that produce some sort of tangible evidence of living well.

The first two things I want to do?
1. Work out ... ok, actually no... I want to be active outdoors. When I study all day, and plan my day around naps and eating schedules, it's easy to become totally sedentary. Which makes me feel lazy. Which makes me be lazy. So I'm going to try out Stroller Strides next week. The first class is free, so I figure I have nothing to lose. I'm hoping to meet some other moms in the neighborhood, although I might change my mind after meeting West LA mothers.

2. Cook more real food. Since we had Timmy, making real meals has fallen by the wayside. Spending time to go grocery shopping, prepare food, cook it and then eat it just doesn't seem worth it when that time could otherwise be spent sleeping. Or studying. Or sleeping.
But I've had enough of frozen meals and ordering out.

My old stand-bys are are getting old: chicken, rice and veggies or pork chops and applesauce. Crock pot meals are more for winter weather. Pasta is ok once in a while, but it's kind of heavy for warm weather. I really want some fun, easy and tasty recipes for summer.

So who has a good recipe or cook book recommendation?

A Hearty Appetite and Hard Work

This is how Timmy found himself in size THREE diapers today.



That's right, my baby is wearing size 3. The same baby born less than 4 months ago.



Suddenly nervous for my grocery bill in a few years...although maybe his income from being a husky size model will help offset that a bit

Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

On Thursday, Timmy got ready for his first dinner out on the town.



We went to Lawry's in Beverly Hills with PJO's parents for some prime rib, and Timmy was really excited. But when it was time to actually eat the steak, he didn't want it.



Turns out, he much prefers the bottle.



And he was satisfied.

I Like Food

I need ideas for food to make in advance and freeze for post-baby. So far we have some delicious split pea soup with ham and eggplant rollatini.
Preferably anything I make will be freezable for a month or so. Any ideas out there?

Thanksgiving

This was the third year in a row that PJO and I have hosted my family for Thanksgiving dinner. My parents are divorced, but they get along pretty well (it's been 17 years since they split, but even then it was amicable), so both of them came and my two younger brothers came up. And of course, the cats joined in, as much as cats can.
The menu is pretty much the same every year, with one or two variations. This year, we had turkey and ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberries, green bean casserole and pumpkin and apple pie. I realize that is a lot of food for 6 of us, but PJO and I eat leftover Thanksgiving food for about 3 days after and usually invite other people to join us.
The decorations are also the same every year. The same candles, tablecloth, napkins, etc... and I still love them all.
I love the tradition of doing the same thing every year, but I would be down for a vacation over Thanksgiving next year. It's exhausting cooking all that food. I started on Wednesday... I made both pies, cornbread for the stuffing, the cranberry sauce and prepped some of the vegetables. From preparation to clean-up, it probably took up 6 hours of my day. Then PJO and I started cooking around 10 am on Thursday and didn't finish cleaning up until 10:30pm. Granted, there was a lot of visiting with family, eating and watching tv after everyone left thrown in there, but that's a long day.

Just to show how dorky we are, here is a picture of us wearing our matching aprons while preparing our feast. You can't see it, but our names are embroidered on them too. They were gifts, but I can't deny that I love them. Pretty much anything embroidered with names or initials gets me. (although I'm slightly too practical to get monogrammed sheets or towels).

Soup Plantation

Somehow I had forgotten how great it can be... PJO and I were looking for a lunch break from packing today and all I really wanted was a good salad. Unfortunately, the options for getting a good/substantial/healthy salad are few and far between near us. (One thing I'll admit NYC was better at ... those deli shops are everywhere and usually amazing!)
Anyway, there is a Soup Plantation pretty close by, and it was even better than I remembered: For $7.99 a person, you get the all you can eat buffet, with about 50 things to put in your salad, a soup bar, pasta, bread, tea/coffee, soda and dessert. It was comical at the end of the salad line when I couldn't pile anything else on my plate, but I also couldn't leave behind any of those amazing vegetables, so my tray quickly was covered in salad paraphernalia. I left completely stuff and satisfied, but not sick! Amazing.
This may sound crazy now, and I may totally renounce this in a week, but I'm excited to get back to a normal routine... to buy groceries and cook them, to shop at the farmer's market and actually eat what I buy, to not eat out for 3 meals a day, every day, and when I do eat out, to sometimes eat at cheap, casual restaurants.
It won't be too long: this is my last week of work coming up, and we're moving next weekend, yet somehow I still have two firm dinners next week. Unfortunately, this routine I will be getting back to involves school, and I am still SO NOT excited for that.

Exhausting

Nothing could have prepared me for how tired I would be this summer. Being pregnant really doesn't mix well with being a summer associate . Every day, it's coffee, lunch, then coffee again, then dinners ... Most days I don't get home until 10:30 or 11. Eating that much food and not having time to work out is just dangerous. Not to mention, I'm the only weirdo not drinking at events (even the Mormon kid is drinking). This week, I have dinners/events planned every night, Tuesday through next Monday, including the weekend. I could really go for some coffee ... too bad I'm not supposed to drink any!

It's really fun, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else, but I wonder how long I can sustain this schedule. And I wonder if I'll have to tell people at work that I'm pregnant, or if I can make it through the end of the program without saying anything (especially because we're not planning on telling PJO's family until a week after I stop working).

On another happy note, PJO ended up getting a great counter-offer from the place with the expensive benefits, so he accepted! I'm so proud of him! It looks like it will be a great opportunity, and after all, it's walking distance... couldn't ask for a better commute.

Delicious Homemade

This whole second year of law school, I have pretty much managed to come home around lunch time or mid-afternoon, so I rarely eat at or near campus. I hate the cafeteria food, and food just-off campus is really expensive. BUT now that I'm studying at the library and staying at school for a whole day at a time, I realized that I needed to bring something to eat.
After having a great salad at the Ralph's salad bar, I realized I could easily make a better salad, definitely for cheaper than $7. So I went grocery shopping and it brought me back to the good old days of packing a lunch for school. I can't believe I didn't do this sooner; I was missing out on some really delicious salads.
My salad today included:
Mixed baby greens
wild rice salad (with scallions, walnuts, raisins and oranges)
baby squash
bell peppers
green apple
red grapes
cherry tomatoes
slivered almonds
topped off with olive oil, red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar.

If it sounds like a lot, it is. YUMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Birthday Celebration #1

Thursday night we went out with a bunch of my friends from law school for a barbeque at our friend Brian's house. Somehow it became an early birthday celebration for me (my birthday is on Sunday) and it was definitely the best impromptu birthday party ever.

The night started with lots of sangria:

Continued with more sangria:

and ended with a shit-ton of sangria:

oh, and Brian made us some delicious tri-tip bbq sandwiches

and Lexie even brought CAKE!

I guess mid-20s won't be so bad...

Dinner Party, Friends and Wii

Last Saturday, 3 other couples we're friends with came over for a little Italian feast. We all got together first about a month ago at our friend John and his wife Hyun Jung's place for an amazing homemade sushi dinner, and it worked out so well we decided to keep the tradition going. So Pete and I decided to go with an Italian menu: Bruschetta, roasted vegetables, arugula, lasagna, chicken picatta and (my attempt at) homemade cannolis ... oh, and chocolate fondue, because I like dessert ... a lot. We always have fun with them, but we have an especially good time when we bust out the wii. First guitar hero, then dance revolution.
I have to post the pictures and video when I get home, which are something to see, especially the ones of the 8 1/2 month pregnant Hyun Jung dominating the field in DDR.


Here are a few pics, plus one of Furious George hiding from everyone under the tablecloth:

Love you all!