What I've been up to...

Daniel Joseph

He's here! I know I didn't get back while pregnant, but he's here now, so I hope to a little more. At least as often as I have two hands!

Daniel was born two days before his due ate at 7:54 in the morning, 30 hours after my water broke. He was 7 lbs. 6 oz. and 21.25 inches long. He is beautiful and we love him more than could have ever imagined.

As for my birth story, absolutely nothing went according to plan, but I'm okay with that. My water broke in the middle of the night. Contractions started shortly after, but only about 10 minutes apart. So we cleaned up and went back to bed. After about 4 hours of contractions every 10 minutes, I fell asleep for about an hour. Then woke up and they had stopped completely. I spent a couple hours washing my sheets and trying to get them started again, but with no luck. We called the midwives and they asked us to come in that afternoon.

By the time we got to their office, the contractions still hadn't started back up, no matter how many times I climbed the stairs. The midwife checked me and I was dilated to a big fat ZERO, 0% effaced and all the way to the back. Not good. At this point, my water had been broken for 13 hours.

 Since there we no signs the contractions were starting again on their own, we concluded my water had broken early (stupid full moon) and decided to go get induced. I was a little upset at this point, but we really had not choice.

10 hours into labor, I was only a 2-3, but finally 100% effaced. I was devastated. I had spent time in the tub, even tried some nubain at half-dose. But nothing was helping. i had thought for sure I was in transition: I was shaking terribly, I kept throwing up and on the monitor, my contractions were plateauing. I broke down when she said I was barely at 3cm. We decided to get the epidural. I didn't think I had any energy left, especially not enough to push. At this point it was VERY early Thursday morning and I had had about 5 hours of sleep since Monday night when I went to bed.

 The epidural let me get some on and off sleep for a few hours, after which I was dilated to 10, finally! I was checked in the middle and we all gave a little sigh of relief when I finally from 3 to 5, my mom especially. I could start to feel my right leg a little, and just a hint of a contraction when they came, so I started to push.

I pushed for nearly 3 hours. I tried to get three good pushes with every contraction, and towards the end I was vomiting with about every other one. I think they still weren't very regular, thanks to the pitocin, and my energy was fading quickly! At the 2:45 mark into pushing, the midwife called the doc and we all decided to use the vacuum. A few good pushes assisted, and he was out! My beautiful little boy! He was very alert, looking around, and nursed great right away.

8 days old!

He's been doing great ever since. We're loving parenthood, and I'm dreading my return to work. He's putting on weight like a champ.He was down about four ounces when we left, and at his 1 week check, was already up to 7 lbs. 11 oz.! And now, at 5.5 weeks, he's 11 lbs. 3 oz.! He's focusing, tracking and holding his head up great. Breastfeeding is awesome, and we're loving his cloth diapers.

Same outfit at 5.5 weeks. He's so big!

There is now a link to Kelly's Closet in the right-hand tool bar. It's where we've gotten nearly all his diapers. We love them. They have some great coupons and deals all the time, and great customer service.  It is an affiliate link, so buying from them through me will help me out just a little! If you're interested in cloth diapering, please check them out. Enough of the cuteness for now. Hopefully we'll be back to some regular programming soon. I need some good recipes and meal plans in my arsenal before I head back to work next month!

Adventures in Amish Country

My friend Kira and I left at 6:15 am Saturday morning headed for Berlin, Ohio. The heart of Amish Country in our area (at least the tourist-friendly part). The main purpose for the trip was to stock up on bulk food items and just have a girls day. Both were accomplished!

I left my camera in the car most of the trip because the Amish really don't like to have their picture taken and I didn't want to run the risk of offending anyone. It's a good thing I didn't try, my hands were too full most of the time to have taken a picture anyway!

Alpaca farm on the way there!

Bulk food haul! We also stopped at a Goodwill on the way home and

found the stacking tins you see at the back. After a good washing,

that now houses tea bags, hot chocolate mix and drink mix packets.

Antique store finds: 10" cast iron skillet for...$8!! A $9 meat grinder,

a measuring cup/scoop and a $2 linen tablecloth. It's square and won't

fit my table, but I'm going to make it into napkins :)

Cheese! Both my and Kira's hubby's love cheese. We each got a round of baby swiss.

I got a few other yummy hunks as well. I also found a jar lifter (finally :),

a skinny spatula to replace the cheap one I had and melted and

a stopper for my bottle of cooking wine.

Please pardon the blurry shot. But this is freshly ground peanut butter.

Ingredients: peanuts. We each got a big yogurt tub full that we

ground ourselves from the natural food store.

A 50 lb. bag of wheat flour we got for .39/lb.! How crazy is that!

I'm most likely going to be getting some buckets

so we can split this and store properly.

This is a 20-yd. bolt of brown denim. Pre-washed. I got it for $40!

This was in a remnants and leftovers section at a canvas bag store.

I will be doing our furniture in this as soon as I can :)

I got some "overripe" peaches at a fairly decent price at a stand.

Yesterday I canned them. Some were a little more than overripe, but they worked out.

The pieces I tasted while cleaning the peaches were quite yummy!

My fingernails are also stained orange.

And the "after" shot of my haul from Amish Country. Nicely put in jars and labeled.

This is the fruits of half a day's work. I didn't think it would take that long, but it did!

It took a little maneuvering, but it's now all in my pantry where it belongs.

During our antique store trips, I learned that all these blue jars,

bail jars and old lids I have are worth quite a bit of money!

I will try and get a menu up later today as well. I'm a little discombobulated in the kitchen at the moment and need to get my bearings before I do so. Since we ended up with sloppy joe's Friday instead of Funky Chicken, I'm thinking funky chicken tonight!

More on composting and Freebies

I spent a little more time this morning looking around for info on my new purchase and found a link for it here. Apparently my wonderful $39.99 (or $39.88 or whatever) purchase of the SoilSaver Compost Bin retails for $199.99 on Amazon! Craziness. I'm very excited, and a little part of me wants to go get a second one for ferret poop too. I just hope Kira can get there and get one before they're gone today.

And yesterday, when talking to her about said wonderful purchase, she informed me that we're not supposed to have a compost pile that isn't contained and covered. Oops. We live within the village and we do have some critters roaming around. I know there is a wild cat that lives around here with her kittens as well as a couple raccoons that live in the woods behind my house. We have a couple different kinds of large rodents roaming around as well. (From what I can tell there are moles and a very large woodchuck who has made his home in a giant hole under our garage. We need to get rid of him.) So I guess it makes sense they would require that. I'm just glad no one turned me in before!

On to the freebies.

I subscribe to the daily deals at WiseBread and recently received an email with info on free samples of mineral makeup. I've been looking to convert to mineral makeup for a while now, but just couldn't get myself to shell out the cash. But Everyday Minerals has a wonderful package for people like me. You can get three different foundation colors, a concealer and a blush and all you pay for is shipping. These are sample sizes, and they're kinda small, but will last quite a while and they're free! I also got two eye shadows to try and a brush. The brush is amazing, I love it. The eye colors aren't my favorite though. They're very sparkly and by the end of the day there's a crease on my eye lid. I didn't get anything to tell you about this, so it isn't an advertisement or anything, I just wanted to share. I'm pretty sure I will be buying a full set in the near future though!


Another great thing was the packaging. These samples came stacked and they were wrapped next to the brush in the paper and closed with a sticker. That's it. This was sent in a small padded envelope. The envelope was plastic, but I was still impressed with the packaging. Thank you Everyday Minerals!

ReusableBags.com, big discounts

ReusableBags.com has some of their items at deep discount due to over stock and until 1/31 at midnight, you can use the coupon code SALE20 to receive an additional 20% off. If you need a good Sigg or Kleen Kanteen bottle or are in need of produce or grocery bags, this would be worth it. Check it out here.

I've looked, and there's honestly not anything I need. I think that's growth for me. Posting this with the hopes that someone else will take advantage makes me feel a little better. If you do, let me know!