What Do Your Cravings Mean?

Recently I came across some charts explaining some common cravings, what they mean, and what you should eat instead. Having read a few nutrition blogs myself, I consider my own opinions about nutrition to be superior to these charts, which are obviously flawed since they conflict with my opinions, so I decided to make a chart myself based on the thorough and accurate research I have done after reading so many nutrition blogs. Here is what I came up with. *

*Disclaimer: I am not officially an expert on nutrition and I cannot be held responsible for any decisions you make about your diet based on the suggestions I offer in this chart. In fact, I recommend that you do not take anything in this post seriously except the disclaimer because this post is intended to be silly and I wrote it while taking a break from studying for a midterm, so my sanity may currently be in question.

various happenings

After thinking about it for a long time (probably a couple of years) we decided to buy a computer armoire. We've had our computers in our bedroom since before Kevin was a year old because that was the easiest way to keep him from constantly messing with them, but for a long time I have wanted to reclaim that space and get the computers out in the living room again. With the computer armoire we can lock it using our Safety 1st child locks over the knobs on the doors so that the kids aren't playing with the computers all the time, and so far it's been a good solution to the problem. It's been really nice to not have any computers in our bedroom anymore. I feel like we spend less time on the computers now and it's easier to go to bed at night without having the distraction of my laptop on the side table. We're getting ready to sell the old desk, and it will be great to have that extra space in our room again, although I guess soon we'll be putting a crib there.

We also got a copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and I've started working through it with Kevin. It has been slow going at first, but he's getting more comfortable with doing the activities. He doesn't like doing it alone with just me, but it seems like if Heidi is there trying to participate too then he is more responsive. (This is pretty typical of Kevin--he loves learning things in a group with other kids.) The lessons so far are well within his abilities; he just has to get used to the types of activities. He also doesn't have the attention span to get through a full lesson yet, so we're doing a couple of tasks per day. We'll see how things progress. I'm impressed with the book, and the theories behind the method seem sound. It's working well for teaching the kids the letter sounds, which is something I was having trouble teaching Kevin. Even Heidi will randomly open the book and make the sounds while pointing at the letters, so she's internalizing it. Kevin likes the say-it-fast activities and he will sit and make up his own after we've done the ones in the book. I'm not dead-set on Kevin learning to read right now, but so far he is definitely capable of what they are doing in the book and he is learning things, so we'll keep doing the lessons as long as they are working. And if he does learn to read, then great, because I think being able to read will open up a whole new world of learning for him.

I hate Daylight Savings Time. It's causing Kevin to sleep in really late a couple of mornings a week (~10:30), and Heidi needs a nap an hour earlier than before, which means that she ends up taking a fifteen minute nap in the car on the way to get Kevin from preschool and refusing to sleep during actual naptime. Kevin has mostly given up naps and I am trying to enforce quiet time for him, with pretty mixed success. Some days Heidi comes out of her bed three times asking for her diaper to be changed and often a couple more times to just look at me or open and close the door. As an introvert I really depend on that time by myself to recharge because when I am around people all day it's really draining, plus my body really wants afternoon naps these days, so on the days when they don't stay in bed very well I am struggling to keep it together in the evenings before Ryan comes home.

I am not sure what to do to get Heidi potty trained. She has incredible bladder control, but she is in the habit of going in her diaper and we haven't had any successes since before she was two. The idea of actually going in the toilet makes her upset. If she stays in underwear long enough she will sit on the potty several times with no results, and then eventually she'll start bringing us diapers, and if we refuse to put one on her she tries to put it on herself. Unless something magic happens we are probably going to have two in diapers this May, because I don't have time to focus on it right now and after I graduate we will be too close to having the baby come. Someday can I have just one child who is easy to potty train?

Heidi loves to talk about her eh-heh-heh. Don't ask me what it is. Probably Heidi doesn't really know and she just says it to be silly. But that's her favorite word.

------

We have had a problem with the lock on our front door getting stuck occasionally and making it so the handle sticks and the door won't open. This week it happened fir the fifth time, and this time Kevin and I were inside the apartment while Heidi was stuck outside. Yeah. I tried shaking the handle really hard and fiddling with the lock and I couldn't manage to get the door to open, so I was about ready to give up and try to call for someone to fix it and get a neighbor to take care of Heidi. But when I stepped back, Kevin came up and said, "Here, let me try." Hmmm, that's actually a really good idea, I thought. He grabbed the handle and jumped up and down while jiggling it really hard, and in about three tries the door popped open. (That was the part that I thought was funny.)

I put in a request for them to fix the lock and included the story with all the drama, and some people came to take a look the next morning. Unfortunately, they did the same thing they did the other four times, which means they oiled it, hemmed and hawed and couldn't see anything wrong with it, and said, "Well, if it happens again let us know." Even when Ryan protested that this was the fifth time it had happened and that this could be a serious hazard if we had to get out in a hurry, they just said to call them if it happens again. So that's the not-so-funny part. But when they sent us the satisfaction survey later I expressed our frustration in the comments using pretty forceful language, and the next day the apartment manager came down herself with the locksmith to take a look and discuss what to do and make sure we were satisfied. We ended up deciding to get a new lock put in and get new keys so we wouldn't need to worry about it. So it's nice to have that over with.

-----

Once upon a time, I bought a bottle of Worcestershire sauce for 50 cents with coupons. After bringing it home, it turns out the bottle really liked to leak from some unknown place. I'm sure I cleaned up a couple dozen spills from the bottle leaking before I finally decided to transfer everything to a mason jar and throw the bottle away.

One day, a hungry little boy opened the fridge and everything on the top shelf in the door fell on the floor. Yep, the mason jar full of Worstershire sauce broke all over the floor and I had to clean up a mixture of glass and brown sludge.

So considering all the trouble it caused me, I'm thinking that bottle was definitely not worth the fifty cents I paid for it. But I'm kind of glad it's all gone now.

I told Ryan about what happened and he said, "Wow, that's the worst-for-sure," which made me smile.

-----

The kids really love to help me cook. My mom was really great with letting us help her cook when I was growing up, and I've always thought it was important to do that, but now that I'm the mom I've found that it's really frustrating to have little ones help. It always seems to result in twice the mess. However, I've discovered that a lot of the reason I don't like letting the kids help is because I don't like letting them both help at once. If just one of them is helping it's a lot more manageable because I can focus on just the one child and there aren't three spoons in the bowl at once. So lately I've started having the kids take turns and telling the other one to go play, which does result in some sulking and crying, but overall it works better.

One of the things the kids love about helping to cook is opening up the spice cupboard. They love to smell the spices that we're adding to the food, and it's fun to see their reactions.

-----

We started having a problem with Kevin taking things from preschool or at friends' houses. He would put things in his pocket and take them home and then I would realize later what he had done. I thought about it a lot and realized that he probably didn't understand that it is wrong to take things that don't belong to you, so I decided to teach a family home evening lesson about it. I put a lot of thought into how I should approach the problem, and at some point I had a feeling that I should teach it by telling a story. At the last minute I remembered something I had done when I was little and decided it was a good story to demonstrate the concepts I wanted to get across. I specifically wanted Kevin to understand that it hurts other people if you take their things, but also that if we do give in to the temptation the best thing is to be honest and make it up to the person by apologizing and returning what was taken.

The story happened when I was in first grade. My teacher, Mrs. Nicholson, had some pink markers that she often used to grade our assignments. I had always been fascinated by those markers and wished I had my own. One day, towards the end of the year, I happened to be standing by her desk while she was somewhere else, and I took one of the pink markers and put it in my own desk. After the school year was over, I was thinking about what I had done and I started to feel bad because I realized Mrs. Nicholson wouldn't have her pink marker to use the next year because I had taken it. So I had hurt her by what I had done. I went to my mom and explained what happened and asked if we could call her so I could say I was sorry and arrange to give her marker back. We looked her up in the telephone book and I told her what had happened. She appreciated me being honest and forgave me.

After telling the story I talked about specific parts to point out that it hurt my teacher when I took the marker away from her and that it made her happy that I was honest and told her I was sorry. Then I explained that our rule is that we can't take things from our friends, and if it happens we have to give the thing back and say we are sorry.

Yesterday I took the kids with me to turn in a homework assignment, and afterwards they ran into an empty classroom and were looking at it. Kevin saw a red dry erase marker sitting in the tray by the whiteboard, and he held it up and said, "Oh, Mom! Is this the pink marker you took from Mrs. Nicholson?" I was really impressed because he remembered her name perfectly and it had been several weeks since we had that family home evening. I also realized that he hasn't taken anything that didn't belong to him since we had that lesson. So I think he did internalize the lesson. I was grateful that with the guidance of the spirit I was able to come up with a way to help him understand being honest.

almost 7 months

Miraculously, I cleaned the bathroom and got dressed nicely on the same day, which means I could take an awkward mirror selfie without being embarrassed about the state of my bathroom or being in exercise clothes.

Our little monkey still seems to be doing well and is enjoying plucking my ribs just like Kevin did. The pubic symphysis dysfunction has also let up somewhat recently, which has been a relief.

movies and music

Matt Walsh made some excellent points recently in his blog post Dear America, you’re too smart to listen to Beyonce. I have been thinking about it a lot in the last few days. We are living in a time where eating healthy, organic food has been raised to the level of a moral issue while people continue to feed their souls poison in the form of music and movies that depict immorality as acceptable and desirable. It's degrading. And Matt is right when he says the songs are stupid. There is nothing creative or beautiful about them. Unique and interesting melodies from modern music are hard to come by. A lot of the modern singers can't even sing in tune.

That being said, if you look for it, there is still great and inspiring music to be found if you look around. With modern tools like Youtube and Pandora you can discover some good stuff. Here are a couple of youtube videos of uplifting music that I like:

Gabriel's Oboe is one of my most favorite pieces. It is so compelling. I love the one in the soundtrack from The Mission, but here's a version I found on Youtube that is also nice:


We love both The Piano Guys and Alex Boye.


And here's another one by the Piano Guys.

6 things I like about my birth center

When people find out that we are having this baby at a birth center and that Heidi was born there too, they usually want to know why I like the birth center better than the hospital. I find myself uncertain how to answer because the list is so long that I don't know where to start. So I thought I'd make a list of some of my most favorite things so that next time I get asked I will have a better idea of how to answer (or I can just refer them to this post). For the record, I've had babies with midwives at both a hospital and a birth center, and I think UNC hospital is a great place to have a baby, especially with their midwives. At most other hospitals I probably would have ended up with an unnecessary c-section when Kevin was born. If I had to have another baby there for medical reasons, I would not have too much of a problem with that. But I like the birth center even better. : )

1. The atmosphere. This is probably my top reason for why I like the birth center. The office is small and kid-friendly (I take my kids to my appointments all the time and they do fine). The birth rooms have double beds and pictures on the walls. For most of my labor with Heidi, Ryan was sitting right next to me on the bed, and after she was born we both took a nap. There was medical equipment there, but the rooms were designed so that they feel like bedrooms, not like operating rooms. In comparison UNC felt like a prison. I always felt like I was inconveniencing the nurses or breaking their rules, and people barged without knocking. Plus I had to drag an IV pole around, which was a pain, although I guess that wouldn't be as big of a deal if you had an epidural and were staying in bed.
2. They sent me home early. I know initially it might freak you out if I tell you that we went home about 14 hours after Heidi was born, and most moms go home earlier than that. But here's the thing. At UNC they basically ignored me after the first 12 hours of Kevin's life. We both would have been just as well off and more comfortable at home. If there are complications or they feel the baby or mom needs monitoring for a while, the birth center will send you to the hospital or keep you at the birth center a little longer. They also call you at home every day for the next few days and they send a nurse to visit you at home a few days after the birth. They also have you come in with the baby two weeks after the birth. With UNC they never said another word to me until six weeks after the birth at my appointment, and by that point I had healed improperly, which is a complication they would have been able to fix better if it had been caught earlier.
3. They are medical enough. The birth center does all of the important tests like GBS screening, glucose tests (for gestational diabetes), ultrasound, and so on. They followed the same standard of care as the hospital for late babies (ultrasounds and non-stress tests) to make sure that Heidi was still doing well. They check the heartbeat frequently throughout labor. They also know which cases are too risky (for example, breech babies and twins) and refer those people to UNC hospitals. I have heard of midwives who are not well-trained enough or who are too casual in their care and end up with disastrous results, so I like that my midwives have a higher standard for training and that they are cautious about their care.
4. They let me make my own decisions. At the hospital the midwife broke my water without any warning. I was already at about 8 cm at that point, so I wasn't too concerned, but I felt uneasy that she didn't ask. And after Kevin was born the midwife started pulling hard on the cord as soon as he was out, which is dangerous because if the placenta is not completely detached it can result in hemorrhaging. Probably most of the time practices like this don't cause a lot of problems, but I didn't like that they did it without asking my permission. In contrast, at the birth center the midwife said it might help to break my water (I was at 10 cm at that point), but she would only do it if I wanted it. Eventually I did ask her to break my water, but it was my choice and there was no pressure. Also, Heidi swallowed and inhaled some amniotic fluid when she was being born, and it was causing her some discomfort. The nurse said, "I think it would help if we suctioned her. This is the process. Would you like me to do that? It's up to you." At the hospital it would have been, "We're going to suction her." To me that made a big difference.
5. They are upfront about how much it will cost. One of my biggest frustrations with medicine is that so often they won't tell you how much a procedure or office visit will cost. When I was pregnant with Kevin, I tried many times to get a straight answer as to what they were going to charge, and every time they got uneasy and said, "Well, every birth is different and it's hard to figure it out with insurance and everything else, so we can't really predict the cost." Nobody could give me a ballpark estimate of what an uncomplicated natural birth would cost. In contrast, the birth center told me what their global fee is at my first visit and calculated my estimated cost based on my insurance. I love to give my business to healthcare providers like this who are upfront about what they charge, even if they have to add that there may be additional charges if complications arise.
6. They didn't tell me how to push. At UNC the nurse made me push on my back because she said I was pushing more effectively that way, and with every push she would say, "Push push push push push, more more more more more." It was really discouraging because I hated the position and I felt like I was never doing a good enough job. At the birth center they didn't coach my pushing, and for me that was a much better arrangement.

How are you FEELING?

"How are you feeling?" is the question I seem to be getting the most these days, and it's a tough one to answer. Aside from the physical symptoms, there are all the emotional and spiritual effects as well that are hard to put into words. So most of the time I just end up saying, "Fine," which doesn't describe it at all.

My friend pubic symphysis dysfunction has returned. It's happened pretty suddenly, within the past couple of weeks. I think I first noticed it when I was exactly 6 months pregnant. I dealt with this when I was pregnant with Heidi too, and I was really hoping it wouldn't happen again, but I guess I'm not too surprised. Basically it means that my body is making a hormone called relaxin that makes my pelvis get nice and loose so a baby can fit out of there in a few months. But unfortunately that means that where the bones connect in front there is too much movement, and it HURTS. I'm pretty sure you could describe my slow walking as waddling at this point. I'm coming to grips with the fact that it's time to call the chiropractor and start making regular visits, which made a big difference last time. I've just been dreading getting to this point because I really don't have time for more appointments. Then again, I really need to be able to walk, so maybe I can't afford to not go.

Most of the time I think I've been a lot more laid back about this pregnancy. There's a lot of other stuff that has to happen before Baby comes (i.e. homework, honors thesis, taking care of the kids), so that's serving as a distraction.

On Wednesday I was in a meeting (I meet weekly with my advisor and three other students where we talk about our progress with our research and questions that we have), and one of the other students asked if I'm scared. I shrugged and said not really since I've done it two times before. It wasn't completely true since there's actually a lot to worry about, but I haven't thought much about the whole labor and delivery part. I do know that I worry a lot less because I am confident in my midwives and I feel like for the most part their policies/practices match my preferences. So most of the time when I think about it I envision it being a happy and exciting time. I'm also not harboring any kind of hope that the baby will come on/before the due date, because I see no reason to get disappointed when it doesn't happen.

I failed my one-hour glucose test a couple of weeks ago. I'll be honest, I cried the rest of the evening after they called me. I knew I probably shouldn't let the worry get to me too much since I only failed it by two points, but I still worried a lot. I did get a lot of reassurance and promises of prayers from my family, which helped a lot. On Tuesday I had to go back in for the three-hour glucose test. You have to go in fasting in the morning, and they take your blood before you drink the drink, and then they take your blood again every hour for the next three hours, so I had to stay there the entire time. I brought two books and my laptop so I could work on my senior thesis, and I did end up getting some things done. They had to try three times to get the needle in for the last blood draw because my veins just weren't cooperating, which was pretty awful. I don't have great veins. But the next day they called and said my results were normal, so fortunately I don't have gestational diabetes, which is a relief.

I'm feeling Baby's movements more and more, and I think we have a little monkey on our hands. I really have no idea how this child can move so fast. It's a really odd sensation. But of course it's also always a relief to feel healthy baby movements.

The kids are very excited about the baby and they are very curious about everything. They love to come hug my belly and say they are hugging the baby. They've also been really good when they come with me to my appointments and they keep talking about getting to hear the baby's "heart beep." (They also watched when I got blood drawn for the one-hour glucose test and barely batted an eye.) Kevin is convinced that the only way the baby will be able to get out is through my mouth. He also said that when the baby comes my skeleton is going to come out and they will have to put it back in and fix it. I hope not. : ) It's kind of a new experience for me because last time Kevin had absolutely no idea what was going on, so I didn't get these kinds of questions before. I'm really glad we waited another year to have this baby because the kids are both much more emotionally and mentally prepared to have a younger sibling than they were a year ago.