4:00 am Muffins

A new thing that my body has started doing in the past few days is waking up ridiculously early in the morning ... Like 3:00 or 4:00 am early... All chipper and ready to start the day. Sometimes it's been fun because I can visit or eat breakfast with Nathan before he heads to work or school. But sometimes I just want some more hours of regular sleep time, ya know? When it's dark outside...

Is this my body's funny way of preparing me to take care of sweet Clementine in the night? 

This morning when I woke up at quarter to four, I remembered that I needed to make some cute little muffins for cute little Ammon's baby blessing today. The plan was to wake up at a more normal time, you know, like 7:00 am or something, and bake them before church. But since I was wide awake with nothing to do, I headed to the kitchen and baked to the accompaniment of The Paper Kites on pandora, and crickets chirping in the night. 

I'm a little apprehensive to blog about baking because one of my besties is an amateur baker extraordinaire. And I'm self conscious. Don't judge me, Ashley, but I used a Betty Crocker pre-made muffin mix. 

But before I decided to use the box mix, I actually read a bunch of muffin recipes and found an awesome muffin-making trick that I wanted to try. I am not an amateur baker extraordinaire, so I don't have a reusable frosting bag, but I thought I could execute the Kitchen Magpie's trick with a ziplock bag. Here's a link to the real trick if you want to see the real thing: 

http://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/how-to-make-perfect-mini-muffins-recipe

It's true what the kitchen magpie says about muffin tins being one of the worst things to clean up.

Thank the heavens for cute little mini muffin tin liners! 

Next, I mixed up the batter according to the package directions, 

and then scooped it all into my little ziplock. 

I was feeling pretty awesome about myself at this point, because it was all so easy.

 But not 2 minutes after I took this photo, the zipper popped open 

and batter spilled all over the counter. 

So I rescooped and cleaned up and tried again. 

If you ever use the ziplock trick, make sure there isn't any batter caught in the zipper. 

You'll regret it.

I snipped off one corner of the bag and squeezed batter into each tiny cup- 

much easier than using a spoon! 

Wahoo! Love this trick! The recipe said to fill each cup 2/3 full, but I went a little over board. 

You know you've overfilled the cups when the recipe says you'll yield 48 mini muffins 

and you run out of batter at 26. Oh we'll. 

Now this is what I call major muffin top! They weren't kidding about the 2/3 full. 

But I still think they look delicious! 

Now I'm sitting in my dark and quiet kitchen that smells like cinnamon, 

waiting for a muffin to cool enough to sample, 

before most of the world (or at least this time zone) gets out of bed.

 I'm calling this 4:00 am baking experiment a

Success! 

My Favorite Room and an Update

Nathan made a nursery for me (well, for Clementine, really...) as a Mother's Day present this year.

And it is definitely my new favorite room in our house. 

Before we knew if we were having a boy or a girl, and that her name would be the same as an orange fruit, we picked out nursery colors- orange and grey, inspired by this and this and especially this!  We also decided to accent with foxes because besides that they are a darling shade of orange themselves, we are cazy about The Little Prince and the symbolism of "taming the fox. "

So Nathan found a darling crib and changing table set for us on KSL, and immediately began painting them bright orange.  In my hormonal pregnant skepticism, I accused him of choosing "cheeto orange" paint and I hated it at first.  

After my Dad got married, and we officially moved into the upstairs of the house (our first above ground living situation in our whole marriage!) Nathan worked SUPER hard turning the old computer/TV room into a Clementine room.  He moved furniture, stripped wall paper, patched holes, then repatched holes when I was picky and asked him to do a better job, then painted walls, stripes, and base boards and the door.  

And it turned out DARLING! Here is a peek of what it looks like now that it is all the way finished: 

I am always amazed at peoples' generosity, and we have been on the receiving end of some pretty awesome donations lately.  THANK YOU to those of you who are letting us use your cute and useful baby stuff!  I had fun this afternoon sorting through and organizing itsy bitsy little baby clothes, size preemie to 6 months previously worn by my nieces and nephews.  If you ever want to get excited about having a new baby, just look at newborn baby clothes!  I could die! 

And here are some other pictures that I thought you might have fun looking at:

This is the "view from here" of Clementine at 28 weeks along.  I feel huge, but I'm trying to be positive and keep it in perspective, because I have quite some time still to go! 

Here is Clementine and me at 30 weeks:

Here is a picture of my awesome new carpal tunnel braces.  Who knew pregnancy could cause carpal tunnel?  But now with my new "fighting gear" I don't wake up with hurty hands in the night, and I am not too swollen to make a fist any more and life is just better in general.  

Being pregnant is totally cool, right?  

I love feeling Clementine moving around.  Well, it's more like she pushes lately more than moves.  Sometimes I have to push little elbows and knees or whatever back inside, because she is kind of sharp! Also, we finished hypnobirthing class, and I practice self hypnosis on a daily basis.  That's pretty cool, right?  

 64 days to go until we can meet our favorite liil' lady.

:) 

Adventures with produce

As I'm sitting here eating a whole kiwi fruit for only the second time in my 27 years of life, I thought I'd write a blog about my lifelong adventures with produce. 

I was lucky to grow up in a really awesome family where I was introduced to many wonderful things... You know, things like good music, good books, fun games, hard work, etc. But since my mom thought vegetables tasted more like grass than edible food, we weren't exposed to many vegetables in our family. Luckily my Grandma B grew a huge garden every year so we benefitted from her excess corn, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, pears, peaches, and home made spaghetti sauce. But besides that, and the usual bananas, apples and oranges, we didn't see (or taste) much else that grew from the ground. 

When my mom got sick with cancer, I did a fair amount of research on healthy eating associated with lifelong health, and decided to try being a vegetarian for a while. Meat had never sat very well with my stomach, and I already limited dairy for the same reason. You'd think that as a vegetarian I would have, out of necessity, eaten LOTS of veggies, but unfortunately I was mostly chicken about trying new things and mostly stuck with the produce that I was familiar with. I did venture into the world of green smoothies, but besides that, I think I was mostly a carb-a-tarian. Totally lame. 

Then I married Nathan, who loses excessive amounts of weight unless he eats meat regularly, so I gave up my no meat lifestyle to accommodate. I had fun trying new recipes for meat and meat related dishes. We even juiced fruits and veggies, made green smoothies and ate salads with added meat. But we didn't venture far from my original Beckstrom diet. 

NOW we're caught up to the present, and as mentioned in previous posts, as a pregnant lady, veggies are the LAST THING my tummy wants to eat. After  months of peanut butter toast, plain noodles, popcorn, Popsicles, desserts, cafe rio, and other such food, I'm in trouble with my midwife for gaining too much weight too fast. Meaning I need to add more fresh fruits and veggies and less empty calories. 

Our wonderful friends, the Humphreys, recommended to us a while back that we should try winder dairy produce boxes. And the idea that I didn't have to stand among the fruits and veggies in the grocery store gagging at the thought of putting any of them in my basket, sounded appealing, so we signed up. Last week was our first produce box, and it was so much fun! Since we paid for it, I feel like we have to eat it, but some of it I had never tasted or cooked with before. Including kiwi fruits and sugar snap peas. This weeks box is even more unique, including plums, shallots, zucchini, yellow squash, and red leaf lettuce... Among other more familiar stuff. 

But this has made eating healthier more fun for sure! I have to try new things otherwise they go to waste. I have to try new recipes that incorporate ingredients I've never tried before. And I have to be brave and open minded- and ADVENTUROUS about fruits and veggies. 

And hopefully besides being a fun new culinary adventure, our little baby Clementine will benefit as well as she grows healthy and strong. And maybe she will appreciate the wider exposure to a variety of edible growing things in our home. 

Mountains, Memories and Butterflies

One time I dressed up in my wedding dress, brought along my awesome wedding high heels, got in the car with my mom (who had just undergone port surgery for chemo) and my fiancé, and met up with our awesome photographer to take bridal/groomal photos on basically the last day of beautiful autumn leaves in 2010.  The next day it snowed, and all  the beautiful leaves started falling off of the trees. But we hiked up the beautiful canyon behind the Bountiful Temple in our wedding best, posed on dirty logs, dragged my dress through the dirty ground, and even stood in the middle of a waterfall.  We were brave.  And we got some truly gorgeous pictures.

Even though my mom was pretty fussy about making sure that my dress was laying the right way, or that my veil looked just right, or that I was smiling like a normal human- and her incessant fussiness was obviously bothering the photographer- I'm glad that she came.  It's hard for me to believe, in hind sight, that she was willing to hike through the mountains the day after surgery just to be there for my bridal photos.  

Fast forward two and a half years...

I found this cute idea on pintrest and sort of fell in love with it. 

 And since Nathan just got a new fancy camera for Fathers Day, he was excited for us to go back to our picture spot and reenact our favorite engagement photo.  

So yesterday afternoon, we drove back up to the spot, hiked my practically 6 month pregnant self back up the mountain in the hot hot sun, set up the new camera on a music stand that I conveniently had in the back of the car, and DIY'd some photos.  

It's not quite the right angle, and definitely not the same season, but we had a good time trying to make this shot work. For as long as I can remember, any time my mom described what she thought life would be like after death, she described us all signing up for committees in heaven- like the committee to design beautiful sunsets, or the committee to inspire beautiful music.  She said the committee she was excited to join in heaven would be the committee to keep butterflies beautiful.  Ever since she has been gone, every time a butterfly flits around nearby, I can't help but think of my mom fulfilling her committee duties in heaven, keeping the butterflies here on earth beautiful for us.  As Nathan and I were messing around, trying to align the trees in the frame just right or get posed before the self timer went off, a beautiful orange butterfly spent some time hanging out close to us.  

And it seemed appropriate that she would be near by.  

The Awesome and Awkward of Growing a Human

I've seen a few other blogger friends use this format to blog their current situation, and although I'm not sure who deserves credit for the original idea, I like it.  :)  Here are the awkwards and awesomes about being pregnant- from the point of view of a first-timer, about 21 weeks in.

Awkwards:

• I feel weird lately knowing that I look ...bigger.  I know that people who know me can tell that I'm pregnant, but I wonder sometimes if people who don't really know me- like strangers at the grocery store, can tell that I'm not just a chunky monkey.  I don't know why I care what they think.  
• Along those same lines, it's recommended for healthy pregnant women to gain anywhere between 25-35 pounds.  And I've already gained 16! Yikes! It's scary to see the numbers on the scale get bigger than they've ever been before! 
• During the first little bit of pregnancy, I craved red meat like no other- which is weird, since I hadn't had or really wanted to eat red meant since circa 2008.  But I ate my first hamburger in 5 years- a Big Mac- LOVED it, and have eaten plenty since then.  Protein?  Iron?  Fat?? I guess my body knows better what I need than I do, right?  
• Besides that, I just basically crave all sorts of forms of protein: cottage cheese, cheese cubes, string cheese, cream cheese on toast, peanut butter on toast, fatty delicious greek yogurt, and nuts.  
• What do I NOT want to eat?  Vegetables!!! Of any kind. And potatoes (except for french fries). No wonder why the numbers on the scale are getting huge.  :) 
• I am always so so so thirsty!  I think I probably drink about 80 ounces of water a day.  Which also means that I pee an awful lot.  All day and all night.  
• I'm more scared of the dark than I thought- I need a nightlight for the bathroom so I can feel better about getting up in the night without being attacked by ghosts or demon spirits or intruders.   
• Its tricky finding clothes that fit and feeling cute.  My shirts are starting to be too short to fit over my tummy.  My pants stopped buttoning a long time ago.  I finally bit the bullet and bought a few maternity items last week.  I should have taken that plunge a LONG time ago! 
• So-called "morning sickness" was awful for a while.  What a dumb name for a symptom that can strike morning, noon, and night?  Or last through all of those times of day without ceasing?  Thank heavens that's over.  And thank heaven for the magical pill Zofran.  
• I feel pretty exhausted all of the time.  "What to expect when you're expecting" says that I burn more calories simply sitting on the couch than someone lifting weights at the gym, with all of the baby-growing going on.  I don't know if I believe that, but sitting/laying on the couch is one my favorite pass times these days.  And sleeping in is a daily thing.  Thank heavens for summer break! 
• Know what's getting awkward?  Trying to bend over. 
• Pregnancy causes really strange dreams.  Early on in pregnancy, I had an awfully vivid dream where Nathan drowned me in a swimming pool.  :/  
• Feeling this baby move around inside of me belongs mostly in the awesome category, but sometimes, when she's moving a LOT, it makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach- like there's a circus going on in my insides.  
• Isn't it kind of weird to think that there is a human, with all of it's body parts, living INSIDE me? Living off of the food I eat?  It can hear me and sense light and wiggle around?  And its inevitably going to get bigger and bigger, and then COME OUT?  I know this is all very normal, and we all started our own lives this very same way, but now that it's happening inside of ME, the reality of it is so much- weirder.  

Awesomes:

• Along the same lines of the weirdness of a baby actually living in me right now, isn't it pretty miraculous and awesome?  How do our bodies know how to take some growing cells, organize them into different body parts and systems, give it nourishment, and grow an entire human?  The awesomeness of that blows my mind.  
• Feeling this growing human inside of me as she practices moving around really is pretty awesome.  It honestly started out feeling like indigestion or gas bubbles on the inside (both of which are pretty common to me these days).  But it didn't take long for those little bubbles and pops to feel more like kicks and wiggles.  Nathan can even feel her moving around sometimes, when she cooperates!
• For the first time ever, I feel like I've got boobs! Ha- when I was a self conscious teenager, my mom promised me this day would come.  :) 
• I don't have any stretch marks yet...  Knock on wood.  Maybe it's too early to celebrate this awesome.  But I do lather my belly with a daily dose of coconut oil.  And yesterday, the enthusiastic salesman at Lush sold me a "buffy"which supposedly will also help ward off the dreaded stretch marks.  Guess we'll see.  
• Nathan spent lots and lots of hours stripping wall paper, patching holes, sanding, measuring stripes, and painting a darling nursery for me.  Best Mother's Day present ever.  :) 

• Nathan also found a darling crib and changing table matching set on KSL Classifieds for us- $60 for both!  And then we painted them bright orange.  I was skeptical at first, but now I love them! 
• I feel my own Mom close by all the time, which is something I worried about when she died.  One of my worst "life without mom" fears was learning to be a mom without my own close by.  But lucky me, she IS close.  And I feel so blessed.  
• Wearing dresses is my new favorite.  Who needs waist bands??? 
• I think our baby likes cello sounds.  Or maybe it just wakes her up from her sleeping.  But when ever I teach, especially when I play, she gets all wiggly.  
• It seems like there are so many friends who are pregnant or brand new moms at the same time with me!  My own sister is due ANY day now, my sister-in-law is due just a month after me, a few friends from the U just had their babies within the last month, a childhood bestie had a baby last month as well, 3 other good friends from my student ward back in Michigan, and two other cello pals that I grew up with, and now consider teaching colleagues- all having babies before the end of this year!  Guess it's just this stage of life?  Who else wants to join in?? 
• I think we've settled on a name for this little girl.  She's going to be Clementine.  Maybe Clementine Terena.  Maybe Clementine with no middle name.  But Clementine seems to be here to stay.  (I hope she's not a red head).  
• It's super fun to watch Nathan getting so excited to be a Dad, and to watch him try to be involved in any way he can.  He is going to be an awesome Dad- it was one of the things that I just knew about him when I decided to marry him.  And I can't wait to see him in action.  I think this little girl will have him wrapped around her finger.   
• The Ultrasound appointment was pretty awesome!  We ended up with a very clinical, non-emotional ultrasound tech who didn't go out of her way to make our first look at our little baby extra special, but it was still very cool!  Nathan geeked out more than me- he's in nursing school and learning about all of the body parts and terms that the tech said and looked at.  I can barely tell a four-chambered heart from a hand print on the fuzzy black and white images.  But I COULD see her little profile and that was fun! When it came time, Nathan and the tech could both tell that it was a girl we were looking at.  I needed a much closer look once we got the pictures home.  But finding out that it's a girl was so much fun! Bring on the hair bows and princesses and ballet lessons.  Unless she would rather play with trucks and kick soccer balls... which is fine too.  Nathan is thrilled.  
• I think the most awesome part right now is just imagining what life will be like 5 months from now, or even 5 years from now.  I want to know what she is going to look like, what her little personality will be, what kind of parents we will be, what she will be interested in, what her talents will be, and how we can help her to be happy and confident and kind.  It's overwhelming!!  

But also awesome.  

The Secret's Out

Last Thursday, Dear Husband Nathan outed our secret on Facebook by posting the following pictures:

I guess it wasn't so much of a secret.  We found out on January 24, and immediately Nathan was too excited to NOT tell anyone, so he shared the news with all of the nurses at his work, all of his friends at school, and his best pal JJ.  I was feeling a little more apprehensive about telling anyone so early on, and I might have grumped at him for being overly excited.

I convinced him to wait until Valentines Day (after the first midwife appointment) to share the news with our families.  Nathan crafted some valentines day cards and we made special appointments with each family member to deliver them.  I was sure that everyone would suspect something when we asked if we could come over to "deliver a valentine," but some family members were still surprised.  Sister Emily cried, Nathan's mom straight up screamed out loud.  There were some good reactions.  :)  Here's what the Valentines Cards looked like:

And then I procrastinated telling my boss at SLCC, my boss at the U prep division, my private students, my music 1010 students, my graduate committee... all because I wanted to have a plan for each of those corners of my life before I jumped in with a "hey guess what... I'm pregnant."  And I didn't feel like we could really make a facebook announcement without telling those important people first.  

I had to tell John, my private cello teacher- because I had to cancel a lesson one awful day because I felt too barfy to get up off of the couch.  And even if I had gone to that lesson, I had felt too barfy that entire week to practice.  So he had to know.  I accidentally told one of my dear sweet music 1010 students ( a non-traditional grandma-aged student who caught me in a particularly emotional moment and asked me if I was ok... no I'm not ok, I'm pregnant!) And I guess I told a few other people here and there- a cute pregnant friend-of-a-friend at a birthday party who commiserated with me about all-day-morning-sickness; a previous professor/colleague/friend at SLCC whom I thought might have advice for me about how to proceed with graduation from the U without finishing this semester's classes on time; a cello friend and fellow federation judge when asking her advice about teaching at home with a newborn- you know, those sort of situations.  And once I had all of my plans made, I fretted for a while (which is what I do) and then sat down one morning and wrote a whole "to-do list" of emails to important people- bosses, students, graduation committee members, head of music graduate studies at the U- and then I felt like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders!  

And obviously so did Nathan, because it was only the next day that he was sick of waiting for me to make a facebook announcement, and took matters into his own hands.  What I WANTED to do was wait until we knew if it is a boy or a girl baby (which will happen on May 6th), write a blog post about it, and then post a link on facebook to the blog post.  I felt like that would have killed 2 birds with one stone, and people wouldn't have to put up with so many "be excited for us" posts on various sources of social media.  But alas.  Now people will have to look at belly pictures, baby shoes with our grown up shoes pictures, gender announcements, and what ever else we post about it, I guess.  

When Nathan posted the pictures, we got some comments back about people being upset that we didn't tell them earlier.  And for that, I apologize.  I'm not one who likes to intentionally draw attention to myself.  And it's awkward to try to elicit excitement.  And for a while there when I was feeling pretty gross constantly, and hadn't figured out how we were going to do life with an extra dependent human, and was basically overwhelmed with the news myself, I didn't feel like I was ready to share it.  Case and point: back on January 24 when I took the initial pee test at home, I sent Nathan a picture test of the results with the caption "This is not a joke" and waited for his response.  He wanted me to come to the hospital where he works and take a more official pee test there to be sure, and so I did.  When the second test results came back positive again, the nurse came out to tell me, and she was SO EXCITED for me, and I felt- I don't know- kind of lost in a million thoughts.  And I think that the nurse thought I was upset because I wasn't all smiles and bouncing up and down hugging strangers.  And I wanted to wait until I had sorted through at least most of those millions of thoughts before I disappointed anyone with my lackluster reaction again.  

But now I'm definitely excited.  We have some of the details of how the future will work, which I'm sure won't even go according to our tentative plans, but the fact that we have a plan makes me feel a thousand times better already.  It's fun and crazy and exciting to think that I'm growing an actual human inside of me.  And it's starting to feel more real the more pregnant my belly is looking, and as I start to feel (what I think might be) a baby kickin' around in there.  I'm going to be a MOM, which makes me feel more humble than possibly anything else ever has, and that is pretty exciting!  

Baby Pinecone (thanks for the nickname, sweet niece Caroline!) will be making his or her world debut in approximately 5 short months!  Bring on the summer and see ya in September! 

March?

Jeez, where did March go?

... where ever it went, it took the nasty freezing cold snowy gross weather with it!

IT'S SPRING!!

Now that the weather is nicer, the semester is starting to wind down, and I have renewed energy for life (more on that to come), here are some things I'm excited to do soon:

Open all of the windows in our house and let some fresh air blow through
Take Samson to the dog park and let him run off his winter pounds
Maybe run off some of my own winter pounds?  Or just run for fun
Eat more fruits and veggies
Wear sandals and skirts
Get a fresh haircut
Finish my dissertation!  Woot!
Take a break from teaching music 1010
Take a vacation- even just a small one
Get a fresh pedicure
Plant something
Take a nap in the sunshine
Watch less TV
Go to a lake
Go on a hike
Go  camping
Go on a real planned date with Nathan
Read for the fun of it
Play music for the fun of it
Get back into yoga
Spend time discovering new bands, artists, and songs

Write in my blog more??

Stay tuned.  Spring is here, and exciting things are bound to happen!