By "the heat," I mean inside the house. It's starting to really cool down here. Today, it didn't get above 60'F, yet lovely sunshine all day.And autumn means it's time for PUMPKIN COOKIES!! This recipe is worth sharing (yum!):
Matt's Fav Pumpkin Cookies
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
{dissolve 1 tsp baking soda in 1 tsp milk}
1 TB vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips (dark, milk, white, your choice!)
Combine pumpkin, sugar, oil and egg. Combine dry ingredients except soda/milk, then stir all together with pumpkin mix. Add vanilla and choc chips. Drop onto greased cookie sheet and bake at 350' F about 12 mins or til brown.
Last week, Mom and I canned rhubarb jam, except we added apples to this recipe. Turned out pretty well and was a good way to use all the rhubarb from our garden.
This last weekend, since I finally am starting to feel more energetic, we worked on our backyard to clean it up for winter. All our plants had grown a bit unruly because I hadn't been cutting them back or trimming. We've covered our tomatoes but I don't think most will ripen so I'm looking to try out this parmesan crusted green tomato gratin recipe.
At 17 weeks: baby's skeleton is changing from soft cartilage to bone, and the umbilical cord — lifeline to the placenta — is growing stronger and thicker. Baby weighs 5 ounces now (about as much as a turnip), and is around 5 inches long from head to bottom. Baby can move joints, and the sweat glands are starting to develop.
I, however, don't think I've grown at all in the last two weeks :( We started taking weekly pictures and Matt's trying to measure my belly, but last week and this week looked exactly, and measured, the same as the week before. And for two days in a row, people have said: "you don't look pregnant." I've heard people say that women suddenly "pop" so maybe that's what I'm waiting for.
Since my OB said that swimming is good to loosen tight/sore hips, I tried out a swim class this week, which was listed online as a deep water running & prenatal class. Every bit of that sounded appealing to me but when I got there, it ended up being mainly old ladies and myself. Plus, I had to wear a floatation belt that fit right over my belly and I couldn't get it tight enough to keep from slipping up. As it was, it was making me feel a bit nauseous so I let is slip up to under my armpits. I may try shallow workouts from now on. It's also really hard for me to tell how hard I'm exerting myself, particularly since I've only been walking in the past few months. But cardiovascularly, it felt great. I remembered how much I used to enjoy swim practice in high school, aside from our dick hippy coach, and the butterfly laps he always made me try to practice (umm, I'm not good at them nor do I care to be good. Really, I think the problem was 1- I don't like to put my face in the water, and 2- I hadn't figured out how to really move my hips yet, but anyhow...). Still, I'll try some other classes, or maybe just lap swim. They also had some prenatal yoga, which only appeals to me for a social reason.
Ugh, so it's the time of year when we have open enrollment for our health benefits for the next year, meaning I've had to spend bunches of time reading over options for short-term disability, flexible spending accounts, etc. It's tough to try to sort through all that, weighing options for 2013 since we're expecting, from taking the dependent care tax credit or opening a dependent care flex spending account (cafeteria plan), which it sounds like the latter is a better option, assuming that we can adequately determine how much to contribute. Basically, we can contribute a certain amount of my gross pay taxfree into an account that can pay for certain expenses not covered by insurance, including childcare. But if we don't use it all in the year, we lose it. And the expenses we cover with this account can't be claimed as part of the dependent care tax credit we could take, but it sounds like a fsa is still the route to save us more.
I also found out more about my maternity leave options at work, so that's... helpful. For the record, yes, it's 12-weeks leave in which my job is protected but, uh, it's unpaid so it's not all that exciting now is it. Fortunately I both am rarely sick or on vacation so I have saved time of both types. Unfortunately our vacation time has a cap so once I reach the cap, I can't earn any more vacation time. And I won't tell you how long I've been at my cap, because I have no idea, it's been that long. Well, I guess I took time for our honeymoon, but I'd been at the cap before that too. And unfortunately I'd have a lot more sick pay but after my 2008 leave following my car accident, in which they let me draw advance sick pay while I was out on disability leave, I went in the hole pretty deep on sick pay. Though the UO didn't make me repay it when I quit six months later (surprisingly, because they did let me cash out vacation time), when I returned six months after that, I started back at my job with negative sick pay that I've been slowly repaying. I think it took me at least two years to pay them back.
So, anyhow, now I have to decide how to use my leave; I'm considering a full-time leave for at least 6wks then a part-time leave gradually increasing back to full-time. And, if I play it right, I may be able to also collect short-term disability in the beginning. We'll see. A lot will probably need to depend on the personality of our baby, which, despite my Type A tendency to want to plan this all out ahead of time so I can stop worrying, we won't know until March. And despite what it may seem, being that I work from home (which, yes, will make a lot of things easier), I'm not going to be able to work 8hrs/day and care for a baby at the same time. Luckily my employers seem like they are really open to me working flexible hours, which could include late at night when Matt can be home watching the baby. I know babies sleep a lot, at some ages, but I also know one just never knows if the baby will be fussy and need a lot of comforting or want held often, or will have trouble nursing, or won't sleep. And I don't know how I'll feel... so much unknown. It feels really daunting and a little terrifying. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to worry about the financial aspect. And maybe if we made some different lifestyle choices, we wouldn't have to worry as much either. But at this point, I do need to work full-time for our family. I'm just glad I have a supportive and involved husband who will try to help out as much as he can.
In other exciting news, I think MAYBE, possibly, I *might* have felt the baby move yesterday... but I'm not 100% on that. A few days ago, I had just one sudden sensation of what felt like a very large goldfish darting across my stomach just under the skin. Yesterday, as I was eating breakfast, I felt a few gurgles/bubbles that felt a lot like sorta strong digestive/stomach gurgles. But when usually then I have gas, there was no gas. That's it. I thought it would be more obvious. But it's around this time I should start to notice movement; for first-time moms, the books say I'll notice around 18wks (which is Sunday) or maybe 19-20wks, though thinner women (and depending how they're carrying) can notice sooner. |
| Look at this hot daddy-to-be |
