Ethan loves to sing

Tracy, this one's for you :) He didn't quite focus long enough to sing the whole song, but enough to be cute!

Ethan's first love

As many of you already know, one of Ethan's favorite people to play with in the world is Molly, our neighbors' 7 year old granddaughter. Molly "loves that little guy" and Ethan "loves Molly". The pure innocence of a 2 year old's first love :)


She came over not too long ago to help rake the leaves off the driveway.

Being  "silly silly"

Ethan <3 Molly

21 weeks!!!

I know I say this practically every week, but I can't believe I'm 21 weeks pregnant with Eva! I'm over halfway there and before I know it, I'll be meeting the little hellraiser (more on that in a bit).


Let's see...official developments...Eva weighs in the neighborhood of 3/4 of a pound and is about 10.5 inches long. Her movements are more coordinated and are definitely becoming strong kicks and nudges. Strong enough to wake me up in the middle of the night and strong enough to stop me from falling back asleep...doesn't she know a girl her size isn't supposed to be this strong quite yet? I digress. 


Weekly bump picture - 

20 weeks!

I can't believe I'm 20 weeks (and 3 days now) pregnant with Eva!

She weighed approximately 12 oz (can of pop) this past Thursday and is about 8-10 inches from head to toe. One of the big skills she's working on this week is swallowing, which we may have seen on the ultrasound when we caught her opening her mouth :)

On a personal note, I managed to make it to 20 weeks without having to wear maternity clothes - it's just pants now, my shirts (as long as they're stretchy) are still fitting! I'm happy :) I detest maternity clothes (they don't make anything good in my size), so the more I can avoid them the better. I'd be perfectly happy in sweatpants and fuzzy slippers for the rest of the pregnancy, but I don't think that counts as business casual. Or casual :P

I digress. Random nursery stuff - rather than painting the whole room pink, we (and by we, I mean Chris, of course) chose to paint the north wall of Eva's room pink (exact shade is Poetic Princess by Behr). Her crib bedding has also been purchased (crib skirt, fitted sheet and quilt in Scarlett from Pottery Barn Kids). Decorations and theme have yet to be decided. Rest assured there will be lots of pink!

Here's the 20 week bump :)

Thinking...PINK!!!!!

I think the title of this post gives it away, but in case you haven't quite figured it out, we got confirmation today we'll be having a little girl!

Little Eva (and yes that's what we're going to name her, no middle name picked out yet) was quite the little show off today - she enjoyed showing off how well she could move, how well she is growing, her precious little feet, her little tongue, I could just go on and on! All of her measurements were perfect - she measured at an average of 20 weeks and has an estimated weight of 12oz (can of pop).

Please enjoy the ultrasound pictures (apologies for the poor quality - I don't have a scanner, so I have to take pictures of pictures with my camera)!

You can't tell from the quality, but the ultrasound tech labelled this one girl! According to the internet, they look for the classic 3 lines, 2 lines or lack of a boy part. With Eva, there was a distinct 2 lines and no evidence of boy parts!

Eva with her legs pulled up in the classic fetal position - if you look closely, her mouth is open!

Close up of Eva :)

Eva's little feet!

Gaufre de Liege

Who doesn't like breakfast food for dinner? We love breakfast food at my house, and my waffle maker has gotten quite the workout lately - from cornmeal waffles to go with chili, to regular buttermilk waffles and now Liege waffles (gaufre de Liege just sounds so much more exotic!).

I had just gotten my new issue of Food and Wine magazine this week and while flipping through it, I came to a stop when I saw the Liege waffle recipe. It was exciting because Julien is from Liege (in Belgium).

Recipe here - http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/liege-waffles

The exciting part is that I actually found the Belgian pearl sugar that the recipe called for right here in Geneva at a more reasonable price than I found on Amazon.

OMG, it was totally worth it - this batch of waffles was seriously the best ever! The pearl sugar caramelized in places, and in others, it stayed crunchy. You didn't even need syrup or any sort of topping - just a plain Liege waffle is happiness on a plate and in your tummy :)

Belgian pearl sugar, waffle batter

steamy waffle maker - I love my KitchenAid pro line :)

Tower o' goodness!

"Ethan eat waffle!"

19 weeks!!!

19 weeks down...nearly halfway there! Sometime in late February or early March I will finally get to meet my little girl :)

Baby E weighs about 8oz now and is 6 inches from the top of her pretty little head to her adorable baby butt. However, with how strongly she's kicking me already, you'd think she is a lot bigger! I can see some of the kicks already :) Back to Baby E - she's busy working on developing all of her senses, but I've known that already. I know she reacts to certain voices (mine, Ethan's) and it's been that way for several weeks now. Her arms and legs are in the right proportion with her body now and she'll just continue to grow and develop over the next few months. Baby E is also starting to sprout a little hair - I have dreams of ponytails and pink ribbons :) Well, maybe next summer!

Weirdest craving this week? Ramen! Just the noodles, not so much the soup, so I'm going to pretend it's not TOO unhealthy;)

Baby E is starting to pick up with her kicks, so I should probably go pay her some attention now...here's the bump picture!

The bump is popping out a bit!

Tartiflette!

One of my favorite parts of working with the French guys is all the new and interesting food and cheese recommendations I get! Sometimes I just get stuck in the same rut of making the same old thing and buying the same old cheese and it just gets a little repetitive.

The latest food idea is tartiflette. When I was first given this idea (thank you Antoine!), I was thinking is this a dessert? Then I looked it up - it's sort of a "hash" of sorts, with potatoes, bacon and reblochon cheese - yum! And tartiflette just sounds so much more exotic than "potato, bacon and cheese hash". Sadly, however, I could not find reblochon (apparently this is a cheese from the French Alps) at Whole Foods :( I did find this lovely French brie that was a tasty substitute - a soft buttery brie from Normandy.

Recipe was based off of one I found in "The Country Cooking of France" - I used fingerling potatoes, the previously mentioned brie, bacon and onions. Here are the pictures :)

All of the ingredients :)

The finished product

Tartiflette with a nice green salad

18 weeks!!!

It's hard to believe that I'm over 4 months pregnant with baby E now...and just a little over a week and a half until I have my next ultrasound to confirm that she is a girl!

Baby E is growing like crazy (5 1/2 inches and 7oz now) and moving even more. She is doing lots of stretches and flexing and I can feel a lot of them. Sometimes it feels like she's swimming from one side to the other! Like her big brother, baby E has a fondness for my right side, so I look lopsided. I'm glad she found a comfy spot to snuggle up!

As for me, I'm either okay without a nap, okay with taking a short nap, or like today, take a 2 hour nap! Hungry all the time, but that's nothing new :) I've managed to knock out a few more cravings this weekend - yesterday I had some orange jello and today I had a reuben! My OB appointment on Friday went well - because my blood sugar levels are doing so well, I am only testing twice a day (fasting and after dinner) every other day now. We also got to hear baby E's heartbeat too - a healthy 167 bpm :)

It's hard to believe that I will be meeting my little girl in less than 21 weeks...love her so much already!

Here's the weekly bump shot!

"No be sexy" aka waterzooi

This is going to be one of those catch all blog posts - food, French accents and of course, Ethan!

The Ethan part...Ethan is sort of going through a modesty phase lately and does not like being pantless or shirtless. If he is, he protests "no be sexy"!

The French accent part...my team works with a French company that has a lot of native French speakers. Everytime I break something, it usually means I get to talk to a French guy. Naturally I try to break as many things as possible ;) Honestly though, the guys I work with are just seriously nice and really helpful. One time relatively recently, I had a call with one of the French guys, Julien, and Ethan was home at the time. So Ethan got to say hi to Julien and he had a good time. I mentioned how much Ethan loved accents and Julien said something along the lines of "accents are sexy". Ethan naturally replied "no be sexy!" 

The food part...Julien and I talk about food. Mostly cheese so far - we trade cheese recommendations (my favorite one so far has been pont l'eveque) and talk food in general. One day I was saying I was bored with the food I've been cooking and asked for ideas, and Julien suggested waterzooi. This is a Belgian chicken (or fish) stew. 

I found a Julia Child recipe online (http://events.nytimes.com/recipes/8754/1987/05/17/Waterzooi-Of-Chicken/recipe.html) and made it for dinner last week - it was super yummy, even though I didn't have any eggs to whisk into the sauce at the end. It was a simple tasty chicken soup - thanks Julien :)

Here is a prep picture and a picture of the finished product.

Neatly julienned veggies (not sure why this photo rotated - too lazy to fix it - just turn your monitor on its side!)

Finished product!

A Day with Mommy

I'm trying to spend as much quality time with Ethan as possible before Baby E is born. Here are pictures from a fun day we had at Home Depot.

Side story - Ethan is anti-Home Depot these days for some reason. Every time we drive past one, he announces "Ethan no go Home Depot!". I tricked him into going this past Saturday by telling him we were going to paint a helicopter.

There was some sort of event where they had a bunch of trucks (fire, garbage, etc), events inside the store and an arts and crafts project for the little ones. Ethan largely enjoyed everything (see pictures below), but 2 particular things terrified him - the Illinois State police brought this truck that simulated a rollover accident. Ethan was okay with it while it was just rolling over, but when the trooper unbuckled the "dad" dummy and it flew out during the rollover, he bawled like a baby and grabbed on to my leg. He is still traumatized by that and tells me "Ethan good boy no see bad truck". The second terrifying thing? McGruff the crime dog! Ethan loves dogs/puppies, so I thought a giant puppy would be fine. But as soon as McGruff waved at Ethan, it was the rollover truck all over again - bawling and clinging to my leg. Ethan also added a "no bite you" - not sure where that came from because as far as I know, he has never been bitten or bitten a dog! Oh well - no explaining 2 year olds!

Here are the pictures from the parts of our day that Ethan loved!

"Driving" a garbage truck

Face painting - he sat still so well!

Mommy's sweet little pumpkin

Helping to nail the rudder on the helicopter that he would later paint. Letting a 2 year old handle a hammer is a good idea, right?

Sitting in a fire truck! One of Ethan's current favorite books is Curious George and the Firefighters, so this was an especially fun thing for him to do :)

A few of Ethan's favorite things!

 A pictorial few of a few of Ethan's favorite things...

Breakfast - cereal with yogurt or cereal with milk

Helping mommy in the kitchen - usually with appliance, but he's happy to help "cook" or "bake"

Food again - here are the world's best sugar cookies before baking

Being "silly silly" - trying to figure out how to use a hula hoop

Building towers - he built this stack of blocks all by himself!

Girls - Ethan is quite the ladies' man and likes them older. I'm not quite sure how many girlfriends he has! This girlfriend is Megan :)

17 weeks!

I'm 17 weeks pregnant with Baby E now! This girl can kick - my new nightly routine involves me with my hands on my belly feeling her squirm, kick, stretch, swim, etc. She also loves spending time on my right side (so did Ethan) so I look quite lopsided!

This week Baby E's skeleton is turning from cartilage to bone and now weighs in the neighborhood of 5oz and is 5 inches long! 

I'll get my next peek at her in a little over 2 weeks - can't wait to get a little preview of what my girl looks like!

Bump shot - you can tell there's a little something there! Not bad for 4 months along and not needing maternity clothes yet. Those days are numbered though!