Boys? Girls? Take a Guess!

We had our 16 week drs visit and ultrasound today! Everything went great, the twins are doing well. I wish I could have seen them move around a bit more, but the ultrasound literally lasted 1 minute to check the heartbeats (both strong) and the ultrasound machine is pretty old and doesn't show very much. Its pretty blurry!

Here are the pictures I got from today, they are not the best, but there is one of each baby, not that I can tell them apart!


Can anyone tell if they are boys or girls?? :):)
We won't actually find out until week 20 in another month, but I'd love to hear all guesses. :)


I also had to do my 16 week glucose test today... YUCK. The drink wasn't so bad, it was just like drinking an orange snow cone without the ice. And it didn't make me feel horrible, so hopefully that's a good sign that I passed. I also have to do another one at 28 weeks I think. For those of you who don't know what a glucose test is, it is a test for gestational diabetes. You drink this disgusting sugary drink, wait an hour, and then they take your blood. Hopefully I pass, because if I fail apparently I have to do a 3-hour test, where you drink the gross drink and then get your blood taken every hour. No thank you!


It was a long day of babysitting and dr visits, but when we got home Matt and I made chicken sausage with summer squash succotash! It was delicious. We also made corn on the cob and Ellen ate almost a whole ear of corn - it was her first time eating corn on the cob and she LOVED it! It probably helped that I smeared butter all over the corn first, but what other way is there to eat it?


And lastly, as Ellen keeps telling everyone - we shaved our cat. Our poor cat Puff is quite fat, and has a lot of hair. This makes for a very hot summer for her, and a very frustrating summer for me vacuuming up all of her stupid hair. So, we decided for the first time to just shave it all off. And while she looks like a ridiculous fat rat, I think she's more comfortable, and I am so much happier to not have her hair everywhere!!! I think we will all be happier this way. For example, before the shaving I would not have let her, and she would not have wanted I don't think, to curl up next to me while I type, but post shave all she wants to do is cuddle! Maybe she is cold.... oh well she'll survive, its summer!

Here's a picture of Puff with her new summer haircut. It's not pretty to look at, sorry! :)

The Secret Gluten-Free Ingredient

I was really craving oatmeal raisin cookies the other night, and so I decided to make them! I was feeling kind of lazy, and just wanted to effortlessly "whip them up", so I used and easy recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (which I love) and just substituted gluten free all purpose flour for regular all purpose flour. And while I wish that I was someone who could just whip up perfect baked good whenever I felt like it... I'm afraid this is not the case. ;)

The cookies turned out delicious, but a little strange. They did not rise AT ALL, and so turned into flat cookies with all of these holes in them. Matt was helping me bake and when I mentioned that I had added baking soda and powder which is supposed to make cookies rise, he explained that baking soda and powder simply create gas, and that gluten or something like gluten is needed to actually rise. Turns out gluten free flour will not rise without some extra help! This is when Matt mentioned that I hadn't included any xanthan gum. There wasn't any required in the Better Homes and Gardens recipe (obviously since its not GF) so I hadn't added any. We had about 4-5 cookies worth of batter left when we made this realization, and so decided to do an experiment!!

We added about 1/8 tsp of xanthan gum to the remaining batter, made the cookies - and it was AMAZING. The difference in the cookies was extreme. The cookies without xanthan gum were flat and crumbly. The cookies with xanthan gum had actually risen, were a little cake-y (not too cake-y) and even tasted better!! Unfortunately since we made this discovery quite late in the game we ended up with about 24 flat cookies and 4 good cookies. Oh well, next time I make any sort of baked goods without gluten - I'll add xanthan gum!!

Here is a pictorial description of the experiment:

Cookies without xanthan gum:


Cookies with xanthan gum:


Cookies side by side: bottom cookie has no xanthan gum, notice the hole and how flat it is. The top cookie has xanthan gum - notice how its actually risen and looks more like a cookie!


I know you are asking yourself - what does xanthan gum do?!?!? From wikipedia:
"Xanthan gum is also used in gluten-free baking. Since the gluten found in wheat must be omitted, xanthan gum is used to give the dough or batter a "stickiness" that would otherwise be achieved with the gluten."

I'm guessing the stickiness is where the rise from the baking powder and soda happens.

Only slightly disturbing... literally the next paragraph in the wikipedia article says this:
"In the oil industry, xanthan gum is used in large quantities, usually to thicken drilling mud."

Um... what? I thought it was a food product.... also, if its used in large quantities in the oil industry, they probably paid a lot less per pound or ounce than I did for my tiny bag that I bought for $11! Oh well. Clearly it works and that is what matters. Hopefully its made of food.


And here is me at 13 weeks! :) Belly is starting to get bigger! Go twin-ies go! :)


The only recent picture I have of Ellen is of her wearing sunglasses in her diaper. She had just pooped all over all of her clothes (sorry gross) and so she was "neeked" as she likes to say! She WOULD NOT look at the camera or stay still for more than 2 seconds. The only reason she is standing still in this picture is she was obsessed with getting this light / key-chain to turn on and off. What a silly girl! We love her. :)

Made it to 12 weeks!

Today we had our long awaited 12 week doctor's appointment. It has been a long anxious month waiting to finish the 1st trimester, but we made it. :) Thankfully the rate of miscarriage after 12 weeks drops significantly so we can relax for a while! I posted an official announcement on Facebook today, and then proceeded to sit on my couch and cry. It was a happy / relieved cry. Also I'm blaming it on having double the hormones. :)

The nice thing about twin pregnancies is that at least at our doctor's office, their dopplar machine thing that they use to listen to the heartbeat with a singleton pregnancy, doesn't work well with a twin pregnancy. I think the babies are too close together early on to tell a difference in each heartbeat, so instead, every 4 weeks I get another ultrasound! This means I get to see the babies every month which is awesome.

Today's ultrasound was especially exciting because they are now big enough that I have graduated to a tummy ultrasound. (for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you don't want to know / TMI) :) This was good also because my doctor isn't great at working the ultrasound machine, and he forgot to turn on the printer that prints out the ultrasound pictures, so at the end of the appointment, there were no pictures. :*( Fortunately he is a smart man who probably didn't want to see me cry / scream, so he quickly did another ultrasound and snapped this adorable picture:




In other news, we went to Eagles Mere for Memorial Day Weekend and had a great time with my brother and sister-in-law. Since I am now forbidden from being around paint fumes, they awesomely finished the nursery!! And it looks amazing. Here is a progression of the project:

The wallpaper in the nursery used to be really cute - it was white with stars and had cute little sheep in the border at the top of the wall. Unfortunately, while the wallpaper lasted a really long time, it was about 30 years old and was falling off the wall in several places. It was time for a change!

Before:


After I tore the wallpaper down (it came down in literally 10 minutes - it was put up well!!)


After painting the walls - half blue and half green. (you'll see why soon!)


And after adding the wallpaper border (Thank you Mike & Sara!)




Doesn't it look amazing? I'm so proud of how great it turned out. Thanks to everyone who helped!

Sorry there was no mention of food in this post!! I'll get it together and post something from this week's meals. I think tomorrow we are having lemon chicken. Yum! :)

I still have 10 fingers

So this week's Fresh 20 menu has been exciting! I sometimes have some trouble with some of the Fresh 20 recipes - they are not always worked through ahead of time - sometimes the cooking times are off or the spice / salt is way wrong. However, they always keep our dinners exciting and unusual!

Ok I guess the first item on the menu this week wasn't that unusual - Roast Chicken! However, for anyone who knows me as a cook, I HATE cooking chicken and am pretty terrified of roasting a WHOLE chicken. But, the Fresh 20 menu told me to, so I roasted not one, but two chickens this week. The roasting itself went pretty well, before work I was able to clean and rub the chickens with some olive oil and spices, and put them in 2 gal ziploc bags so they would be ready to put in the oven as soon as I got home. The recipe had us first roasting the chickens at 500 degrees. 500 DEGREES!! I have never set my oven that high to cook anything! Now it was only for like 20 minutes or so... but our house definitely filled with smoke - not from the chickens, probably from whatever else is stuck in the bottom of the oven! Thankfully we turned the oven down for the remainder of the roasting time. The recipe had warned me not to be scared of the 500 degrees, that it would turn the chicken golden brown and seal in the juices - and it did just that! The chicken turned out delicious and was a perfect dinner with a side of greens.


Disclaimer: I did not eat all of that chicken! Even if I am having twins! Matt definitely had to help me finish. :)


We obviously did not eat 2 whole chickens for dinner that night, so this morning I took out the rest of the chicken to cut up for sandwiches and a future meal where we need shredded chicken. And this is where I almost lost my finger! This almost happened to me the last time I was pregnant and cutting up a turkey my mom and I had roasted. I think maybe I should not cut up roasted poultry while pregnant. I think what happens is that I try to get all of the meat off the bones with my knife because I don't want to waste any, but then the chicken / turkey is slippery and so the knife or my hand slips and runs into my left hand. OW. This morning I was so scared that I had seriously cut myself that I immediately rinsed the cut off and grabbed a paper towel to wrap around my finger to stop the bleeding. I held it on my finger for a few minutes and went to find Matt to tell him we might have to go get stitches... but when I removed the paper towel, there were seriously only like 2 drops of blood on it. So thankfully my finger is fine and apparently I am a big baby. (An addition to this story is that at lunch today I was making a chicken sandwich and I wanted the chicken to be thinner to go into the sandwich better... can you guess what happened? Yes I cut the SAME FINGER AGAIN. I now have two bandaids on my left index finger....sigh.)

Another exciting less dangerous meal that we had yesterday was crab-avacado boats. It sounds strange - but they were awesome. You take crab meat (canned is OK) and make almost a tuna salad with them with lemon, yogurt, celery, spices (cumin and cayenne pepper). You cut an avacado in half, making little "boats" and put the crab salad inside. It is an amazingly delicious and light dinner that is still filling due to all of the protein and fat (the good fats!) Plus it was so easy and took almost no time at all. I forgot to take a picture of the cute little boats. Sorry. We ate them too fast! :)

And tonight, I made my own hummus mixed with feta cheese that we ate with warmed tortillas and fresh cut veggies. YUM. See what I mean about unusual this week? The Fresh 20 is bringing their A-game this week.

Here is a picture of my delicious homemade hummus. Ellen even helped by pushing the buttons on the blender.


I am 10 weeks pregnant this week (less than 2 weeks till the 12 week drs appointment, not that I'm counting or anything!) I have definitely grown a little since last week - last week I could button my nice black pants I wear to work, this week not so much. Thank goodness for cute belly bands!

10 weeks!

Philly Cheese Steaks?

So tonight's Fresh 20 dinner was Philly Cheese Steaks! When I first read this I thought - awesome! Cheesesteaks! I LOVE cheesesteaks! Especially being pregnant I have been craving red meat big time. However, I should have looked a little closer at the title of the recipe. Philly Cheese Steaks. With a space between Cheese and Steaks. Meaning that this was not a recipe for anything close to my favorite cheesesteak ever from Renato's. (yummmmm)

It turned out pretty good, but it did in no way resemble a cheesesteak. :)
I should have taken a picture, sorry, I'll try to paint a word picture. First I took potatoes and cut them up to make some nice thick fries. I then tossed the fries with spices, oil, and garlic, and baked them in the oven for about 30 minutes till they were nice and crispy. Meanwhile Matt sliced up some skirt steak pretty thinly, and cooked the steak in a pan with onions and peppers. After the steak was finished cooking, we put the steak/pepper/onion mixture on top of the fries, and shredded some white cheddar cheese on top. (what no cheese whiz?!?) This whole mixture was put back into the oven for the cheese to melt for about 3 minutes. It ended up quite delicious, especially the garlic fries. The steak was a bit chewy for my taste, nothing like the melt in your mouth meat in a cheesesteak. Ah well, I'll just have to make sure I get a real cheesesteak at Renato's the next time I visit my parents!

We are still doing the fresh 20 (www.thefresh20.com) this has got to be at least 2 months now! And while some of the recipes are kind of kooky, I still really love it. I love that someone else is doing the meal planning for me. Especially now that I'm pregnant I've gotten so picky about what I want to eat, its nice to have someone else deciding for me strangely. I think when I was pregnant with Ellen we mostly ate Central Market takeout (A fancy Texas grocery store, like Wegmans) And while that would be nice this time around... we just don't have the money and Wegmans is too far from our house. We have broken down and ordered thai food a few times, and we even found a pizza place here in State College that delivers gluten free pizza! (Corrinado's)

Speaking of the pregnancy, as far as we know I am still pregnant with twins - today marks 9 weeks!! Only 3 more weeks until we are in the 2nd trimester! (and we get to see the babies again at our 12 week appointment!) I swear my belly grew today - my jeans that fit this morning were super tight by the end of the day. Go babies go!!

Here is a picture of me at 9 weeks, my belly is starting to poke out! Hello EARLY!! I know it is ridiculous to start posting pictures so early. But at least I can look back and see how skinny I was when I am enourmous. :)

TWINS!!!!

WE ARE HAVING TWINS!!!! Oh my gosh I'm so excited / shocked!!! We have known we were pregnant for a while (since March 30th) but I haven't been ready to share with many people because of our miscarriage the last time that happened right after we told pretty much everyone. I was planning to wait another month before announcing it to anyone besides immediate family, but then TODAY happened....

So today was our 8 week ultrasound. I didn't have any early ultrasounds for this pregnancy, it was my first doctor appointment plus an informal first ultrasound to get an idea of how far along we were. I already knew how far we were since this pregnancy was uber planned (I bought a 50 pack of ovulation tests and took one or two a day until it finally turned positive) plus I had been taking my temperature every morning so I knew exactly when conception happened. (sorry if that's TMI for anyone reading. :)) I was really anxious about this appointment because this was the exact week and ultrasound that we found out that we had lost the baby last time. Basically I've been counting down the days / hours until our appointment this morning.

I was lying on the table and the doctor starts the ultrasound and I'm thinking / praying: please let there be a heartbeat, please please. And then she says - "You are having twins!" And that is where I don't remember very much. Matt says I didn't believe her, I remember crying and the doctor telling me to breathe... (happy / overwhelmed crying!)

After this she told us about 100 facts about having twins, none of which I remember now. I wish they had some sort of a brochure. The title could be "So you're having Twins!" lol.

She also got the ultrasound techs to squeeze us in for a formal ultrasound to measure everything and get better pictures!! :) We waited a while and then we had our formal ultrasound and it was amazing. Baby A and Baby B as they are now called measured at 8 weeks and 5 days (bigger than they are supposed to be by my calculations, hopefully that is good?) They are fraternal twins, meaning that they have two egg sacs, two placentas, two of everything!! This is much more low risk than identical twins that share a placenta, so this is a very good thing!! The ultrasound tech was even able to see that both eggs came from my right ovary - I guess my right side decided to have a big month. I wonder if this is how fraternal twins usually happen? Are the eggs usually from one ovary? I'll have to do some internet research. :)

Here is a picture of the little babies:


Everyone who sees this picture says: OMG there are TWO of them! And yes. Yes there are!

 Here is Baby A:


And here is Baby B:


We are so excited and also a little scared. Mostly I'm scared now because there are so many more risks with a twin pregnancy. I'm going to try to not focus on these though, and just focus on being healthy and calm, and growing these babies!! :) What a miracle. Hopefully these little miracles will be arriving sometime around Thanksgiving! So we at least have some time to get used to it!!

Herb Garden

I'm so proud of us - we planted an herb garden today!!! This is big for me because in general I hate plants. I always manage to kill them. I can never figure out how much or little to water them, and where they should be for the best sun. Basically every single plant I have ever had has died. I have a huge brown thumb. So, its big that we are attempting an herb garden!!

The reason I decided I wanted one is that with the Fresh 20 meal plan we've been doing (this is our 5th week - woohoo!) they require a lot of fresh herbs in their recipes. And somehow I never use all of the herbs that I buy - I always end up with a HUGE thing of parsley left in our fridge and then feel so wasteful. With a herb garden though, I can just go outside, grab a few leaves, and be ready to cook! :) With no waste!

Matt was awesome and cleared away this nice little space in our backyard that is raised so that I can stand on these railroad ties and garden. I don't even have to get all dirty kneeling in the ground. Not that that's bad, but its very convenient for me to come check on them / water them. We planted basil, cilantro, thyme, and parsley. In addition to herbs we also planted two tomato plants and two pepper plants. I'm hoping that we can get some awesome tomatoes and peppers this summer. If the deer/bunnies/groundhogs/racoons don't eat them... and to keep that from happening I bought this "guaranteed" pest repellent spray!! This stuff is POTENT. It is OK to use on edible plants, and nothing poisonous is in it, but it sure is smelly! The guy at Home Depot claimed that it has fox urine in it? Gross. I did not see that on the ingredients label, just a lot of garlic, so I'm hoping that its just the strong garlic smell that I'm smelling when I spray it, and NOT fox urine. Matt offered to just go out and do his business on them every night if that would help. I told him absolutely no. Boys and their wanting to pee on everything. (Did anyone have little brothers? Mine used to regularly pee on our backyard shed / have pee competitions for whose could be the highest / longest) (Sorry to my brothers for this embarrassing story!!)

Anyway, enough talking about pee, I forgot to take any herb garden pictures today, I'll add some to the next post. Here is a cute one of Ellen playing in her turtle sandbox! The weather has been super nice out and Ellen loves being outside. She just ran around doing who knows what while Matt and I did yard-work this afternoon for about 2 hours. It was great, this summer is going to be awesome.


p.s. yes she IS wearing butterfly pants. :)