Boy or girl

Some people are ADAMANT that they know what we're having! So here's a list for bragging rights:

BOY:
Parry
Yvonne
A million random people

Girl:
Sarah
Amie

Here are some words that we want for our child for the future. We consciously conceived this baby and we want to consciously parent as well - so the first part of that was to work out what that meant!

• Happy
• Thriving
• Cherished
• Loved
• Time
• Play
• Learn
• Talk
• Love
• Hope
• Learn
• Sleep
• Eat
• Walk
• Run
• Swim
• Free
• Best
• Fair

I then want to use Wordle to make some word clouds - I may have to cheat to get the effect that I want though, by repeatedly saying Puggle's name (or I could just put Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle!). We want this colour too: #80F6C3

Might have to go and paint some with that colour now!

Things to do this week

Post letter and receipt to landlord
Make apple pie
Buy yeast
Make bread
Register for Easterfest
Fold up gazebo
Put away pool
Fold clothes
Shave legs
Paint toe nails
Print stuff out
File
Craft declutter
Call Centrelink
Update FB train details
Email committee with newspaper details
Burn dvd of big love
Pick up portfolio
See Rachele
See KT
See Lucy

Destitute gourmet - not quite

I've been looking at destitute gourmet, as I've got a lot more time on my hands at the moment to cook and think about food and shopping. Plus I'm on annual leave at the moment, and will then be on maternity leave and then on Centrestink payments (ah - must call them to work out how much that might in fact be). So $$ is a little more steady but also a little tighter, and TheHusband and I need to get over our 20s mindset of "yummo food!" and more into "can't be bothered going out - what's to eat here?".

I've spoken earlier about default shopping and destitute gourmet sort of steps that out further. She recommends that you look at basic pantry essentials and then indulgences.

So building on her list, our basics would be something like:

• Fresh fruit and veg – onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, garlic, apples, bananas, whatever is cheap and in season*
• Staples – plain flour, vegetable oil, olive oil, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, milk, butter, butter-like spread, baking powder, salt, cheese, white rice, brown rice, pasta, pulses, dried beans
• Baking stuff – coconut, vanilla, sultanas, cocoa, yeast (MUST BUY YEAST!)
• Spreads – peanut butter, honey, jam, vegemite, promite
• Cereals – Weetbix, muesli, rolled oats, steel cut oats
• Canned food – tinned tomatoes, pasata, kidney beans, white beans, tuna, peaches, mango, apricot
• Sauces – tomato sauce, sweet chilli sauce, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, kecap manis
• Seasonings – all of them!
• Frozen food – peas, corn, beans, spinach, pastry sheets, berries
• Meat – mince, chunks of kangaroo and beef, boneless chicken breast, bacon bits
• Cleaning products
• Toiletries
• Pet supplies

Which is not the most exciting list of course but it's not supposed to be. I could cook for approximately 2 months out of our pantry alone, as we have lots of carbohydrate staples (polenta, cous cous, flour, pasta, rice) and lots of proteins. In fact, the staples above are similar to that post though cream isn't.

Her 2nd piece of advice is to eat healthily, and eat in season. I had a craving for chocolate the other day (probably the first time in my life I've ever NEEDED chocolate!) and there was none in the house. Nada. No sweets either. It was horrible when I'm 36 weeks pregnant and so not wanting to walk in 41C heat to the servo to get some chocolate. So I settled for a hot cocoa instead. The only thing we deep fry is papadums when we have a curry. We don't over eat because the yummy things we make are leftovers destined for lunch the next day. We eat a lot of what is in season because it's cheaper, and if it's not in season or is quickly perishable we buy it frozen - such as spinach now that our silverbeet is done, and berries.

*Food that's in season in Australia

Our plan once Puggles arrives is to go to the Farmer's Market here in Adelaide each Sunday, and shop locally and in season. We'd like to eat to the 100 mile diet but it's a little harder to apply without effort, and the time to do it. The Farmer's Market is kind of this by default as it's local produce and in season produce. We do shop at the Central Markets here in Adelaide as well but being pregnant has put me in a bit of a mind set of "too much effort", and a small amount of trauma as I hate people touching me or bumping me and a busy market - not the best place for that.

Thirdly - and this is the one I like - is to know what to do with leftovers. My favourite ideas:

• soup
• wrap in puff pastry and bake
• refry with noodles
• bubble and squeak
• calzone-type dish

She has a great page on freezing things and I'm borrowing this list for future reference:

• Fruits can be stored for 12 months,
• Vegetables 6-12 months.
• Roasts and whole poultry 6 - 12 months
• Steaks and chops 4-6 months
• Minced or ground meats or stewing meats 3-4 months
• Cured and processed meats lose quality more rapidly than fresh meats because of the presence of salts so don’t store luncheon meats, franks, ham or sausage longer than 1 or 2 months. Thaw frozen meats in the fridge, thawing at room temperature gives surface bacteria a better chance to multiply.
• Baked yeast bread, scones and rolls are best used within 3 months. Unbaked yeast bread dough within one month or less – Unbaked doughs may require more yeast than usual as freezing will damage some yeast cells.
• Un-iced cakes also freeze well, but storage times vary. Store angel food, chiffon or sponge cake 2 months. Store cheesecake 2 to 3 months, chocolate 4 months, and fruit cake up to 12 months.
• Nuts also freeze well; salted nuts from 6 to 8 months and unsalted from 9 to 12 months.

Her advice about having a whiteboard with an inventory - has been applied here and it is working well! We have for example a large amount of mince, but only one lot of chicken. I've also taken to sticking ads for butchers on there for reference for when we do the meat shopping. We have 3 bulk butchers around here - the gourmet butcher on Magill Road, Austral Meats on Main North Road and also the Gawler River Cattle Company. Lucky us!

36 week update!

Wow I can't believe that I've reached 36 weeks already. Here are 10 things I want to note about this milestone:

1. In 1 week, or up to 7, we're going to have offspring. I'm going to miss having a Puggle under my heart but I am keen to meet them. Not so keen on the regular back ache and slight cramps and other feelings I'm having. Another 7 weeks of that, plus the agony of waking up with sore, will make me a very unhappy person.
2. I have started a "sentence a day" journal for Puggles. This is part of The Happiness Project Toolbox, which includes a Happiness Manifesto:

• To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
• One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
• The days are long, but the years are short.
• You're not happy unless you think you're happy.
• Your body matters.
• Happiness is other people.
• Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.
• "It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light."—G. K. Chesterton
• What's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.
• Best is good, better is best.
• Outer order contributes to inner calm.
• Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.
• You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do.
• "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." —Robert Louis Stevenson
• You manage what you measure.
  

3. I am having my 2nd 30th birthday tonight. My birthday is actually in a month's time, but that of course is roughly when Puggles is due, so I celebrated early.

EDITED TO ADD: Kate from Craftastrophies completely and utterly outdid herself. She organised my friends (which is probably similar but a lot less fun than herding cats or nailing jelly to a tree) to buy me a Kitchenaid Artisan Mixer:


This is completely blowing me out of the water. I have a freakin' KITCHENAID in my kitchen! And I'm not afraid to use it! There will be LOTS more baking going on here!!

4. I have my blessingway next weekend. I am excited about this but it also feels a little like all my women friends are coming to wish me farewell and good luck on a journey only I can go on, alone. Oh wait - that's exactly what I'm doing.
5. Puggles is growing apace, bobbing in and out of my pelvis depending on what day it is, which is all kinds of fun.
6. My plan is to insist on a 10 day baby moon, where I stay in bed and not a lot else goes on. Gloria Lemay suggested how to ask for help during this period for this but I'm lucky to have friends who are not that intrusive!
7. I've been having some issues with my (low) blood sugar so my midwife encouraged me to get a blood glucose monitor. Easy done - just go to a chemist and buy. Or so I thought. Found the one I wanted and nope, the $35 prices was actually $65. Not ok in my book but my midwife is going to buy it off me so it's not really a matter of $$ at this stage. The consumables though - $55 for a box of 100 test strips!!! SHEESH! Then to get home and test drive it before I have to do a fasting one (first thing in the morning) only to discover that I was sold the wrong test strips. So now I'm waiting for the pharmacist to open so I can go back and sort this out.
8. I'm looking forward to my new body. Soft, squidgy, booby and stretch-marked.
9. The next set of 10 will be "10 things pregnant women won't tell you" because there are some lessons I want to share in the last few weeks of this pregnancy.
10. Happiness is handmade pasta and meatballs.

Cloth nappies!

I sorted out Puggle's room today and the nappy stash. We have:

- 14 pocket nappies
- 5 all in ones / snap in ones

- 25 terry toweling flats
- 10 pink liners
- 12 bamboo prefolds (smaller)
- 20 hemp prefolds (larger)
- 5 white nappies to put in covers
- 16 covers (1 Cutie Tooshie, 6 Baby BeeHinds, 9 misc) (different sizes!)
- 1 wool soaker

That is a LOT of nappies and way more than recommended but it was hard to decide which method to go for and then when we'd decided on pocket nappies, people gave us heaps of things! And those things included nappies and the covers.

How many pockets? 7-10 changes, washing every 2nd day, so 20 is the aim and 14 the minimum... ish. So we're not doing too badly there. The AI1s are also there as the second preference at this stage as they have to be washed entirely after each use, though some of them have removable liners that will allow us to get more than 1 change out of them.

Then the prefolds and covers, and the terry toweling flats of old.

Here's a photo!