preparing for babypart 1first trimester preparation~

Click on the banner to read the complete Preparing For Baby series  :)

I will confess I feel a bit silly.  Back when I was busy preparing for Grace and was talking about it I had quite a few people ask me questions or comment on what I do to get ready, but it hasn't exactly been a topic of conversation recently.  So to help me not feel quite so silly, I just want to say I decided to put all these in post form for a few different reasons.  Namely, I needed to get it off the sidebar.  I mean, talk about a neglected looking blog!  Secondly, I want to be able to reference should there be a next time.  And hopefully it will come in handy for anyone else that happens to be looking for the info; including maybe my own children one day  ;)


With that said...


Preparing for a new baby is one of my favorite things to do.  It helps the time pass by more quickly and helps you focus on something other than waiting and feeling blah.  While I do lots of nesting and preparing toward the end of my pregnancies, another super helpful thing I've found to do is to make some freezer meals as soon as you get two pink lines.  Seriously.  While meals after the birth of a baby are wonderful, having meals in that first trimester when you don't feel so hot can keep your family from eating pizza five nights a week  be such a blessing  to those around you that do feel like eating.


With the advent of early pregnancy tests, it is not uncommon for women to find out they are expecting as early as four weeks.  That gives most women, give or take, two to four weeks to do a little advance cooking to make that first trimester a bit easier.  Longer if you're lucky.


So what I do as soon as I can is plan a cooking day.  Or a couple.  This really depends on the needs of your family.  Not to mention how badly you are affected by morning sickness.  I usually spend about two full days making some freezer meals.  I plan out in advance the meals I want to prepare and make my grocery list.  I then spend all day Saturday in the kitchen.  And then I usually do it again.  But that's because I have a big family and I really enjoy having meals on hand.  


So part one is pretty straightforward.  When you find out you are pregnant, make some meals for your freezer.  Brown some ground beef and put it in bags in your freezer.  Roast a few chickens, or take the easy way out like me and buy some from Costco, pick them, and store them in your freezer.  If you're really ambitious, make broth for your freezer to have some super nutritious baby-growing food on hand for easy soups.  Stock up on some items for easy meals like noodles, frozen or canned veggies, spaghetti sauce, etc.  


The other thing I attempt to do after I stock my freezer and pantry, but before I start feeling yucky, is do a really good house clean and make sure we've got the whole kids and jobs things figured out pretty well.  No one wants to clean when they feel yucky, and no one wants to be in a messy house when they feel yucky, so if you are able to get your house in a really good order, by all means do it.


Trust me on this one.  You'll thank me for it.  I just wish I had figured it out before baby number six!


To read about my cooking day adventures when I found out I was expecting Grace, read here.

how to be lazy and save money(aka) how to make homemade chicken broth~

I know, I'm supposed to be writing about preparing for a baby, but in trying to put that together I kept running across the fact that I keep chicken broth on hand and seeing as how I had this homemade broth brain block for so long I thought I'd just type up what I do in case some other poor soul ever comes along and things, "Wow, Shyla, thanks so much for posting that.  I never knew."   :)

Anyway, I was always intimidated of making homemade chicken broth.  It just seemed a little too much.  Right up there with grinding my own wheat and canning my own vegetables that I had grown in my very own garden.  I'm busy on facebook raising children and homeschooling, people, what do you think I am, Super Mom?  (If you do these things, and I know many women do, then you qualify for Super Mom AND Super Wife AND Super Homemaker but you should probably keep quiet so the rest of us don't throw things at you.)

I digress...

But I hated buying broth, the good kind was expensive for the amount of soup that I make, not to mention that I have to use it in making sauces for Glen with the whole celiac thing.  So I finally just got over myself and asked someone.  And I found out it was super easy.  And then I found out I could justify doing it the lazy way.

So, this is what I do.  I buy rotesserie chickens from Costco.  They cost $5.  They are amazingly yummy.  I buy one every week and we either eat it plain (as in roast chicken) or I'll use it in a recipe.  If I have time I pick off the dark meat and save it for tacos, soup, or casseroles.  I throw the leftovers in a bag in the freezer.  That was a lot of words to basically say that first we eat most of the meat or save it for later.

Then I throw the entire carcass into the crockpot.  I cut an onion in half or fourths, toss in some carrots, garlic, and whatever else I have on hand, and let it cook on low all night.  Pretty much until whenever I can get to it the next day.  Then when I have time, I put my colander into another large bowl and pour everything into it.  Then I take the broth, set my strainer (it's different than a colander in that it's mesh) over another large bowl, and pour it through again.  My colander catches the big stuff, the strainer catches the grainy stuff.  I let it cool, I skim the fat, then I pour it into containers and put it in the freezer.

Wa la. Homemade, nutritious chicken broth.

But you said be lazy AND save money.

Oh yes.  The lazy part is buying the Costco chicken instead of roasting my own.  For me, the savings of buying an unroasted chicken, plus spices, plus time is insignificant compared to the taste and convenience of the Costco chicken.  They are delicious.  And we don't usually eat them the same day.  I usually reheat them a few days after I buy them and they are still yummy.  The saving money part is because I estimate I can make $10 worth of the good broth from one $5 chicken.  

So there you have it.  You know, since you asked and all.

preparing for baby~

No, this isn't an announcement  :)   Grace is refusing to let Aunt Flo visit (which is completely fine since we don't like her much anyway) so this is actually the first time EVER that I've had a 14month old and not been expecting again.  It's kind of weird.

But, seeing as how Grace is fourteen months old and I've never updated the sidebar to remove all my baby preparations, I thought about making them into a few posts.  Preparing for the arrival of a baby is something I actually feel like I've gotten down pretty well, so I thought I'd share.  

And there's no way I'm choosing this topic to write about since the work is already done for me and I don't have the brain energy to deal with photos and come up with anything original.  I'm never lazy like that.  Geez.

Stay tuned...

in which i confess to weenie camping~

I used to be a camping snob.  In kind of a backwards way.  I thought unless you tent camped, you weren't really camping.  You know, you were just weenie camping.  That was back when I only had six children  ;)

Then, I got pregnant with Grace, and had a pretty serious hemhorrage while I was pregnant.  I was released back to "light to normal" activity right as fall was beginning, but somehow tent camping with six kids and being pregnant didn't sound quite like something I should be doing.  

Enter the pop up.  It was great.  Not super weenie like those mini-condo RVs.  It still fell under the category of "roughing it."  Sort of.  I still suffered minor twinges of guilt when I would tell people we liked to camp.  But gee, traveling in general with a pile of kids is not exceptionally easy, add to that preparing meals, dealing with laundry, etc. in an outdoor setting and I still felt that we qualified.  At least a bit.

So for the past year and a half we camped in the pop up.  And the best part was that while we used to only camp twice a year, we suddenly started camping almost once a month except for during the winter.  Camping is super great for family time, and probably the best part for me is that I don't feel like I should be doing something.  I can be lazy  relax.

So when this Spring began we started looking ahead.  We really enjoyed going somewhere every month, but we really wanted to go further.  As in the mountains.  I've never been West.  (Unless you count that layover in Texas when I went on a mission trip to Mexico.  I guess technically I've been West, but an airport in Dallas doesn't really count.  In my opinion, anyway.)  But the pop up takes awhile to set up and even longer to pack back down, so it wasn't really a viable option for a multiple stop trip.  So we sold it.  For a lot more money than we bought it for, actually, which was definitely a bonus.  And then we started watching craigslist for (gasp) a camper.  After some waiting we found one that just happened to be listed by a guy Glen has done some work for.  So he gave us a great deal.  

So now we have a travel trailer.  As in one with a kitchen, and two sets of bunk beds, and a pull out sofa, and a separate "room" for Glen and me.  And the table makes into a bed too!  But guess what!  It's big enough that we don't even have to take down the table at bedtime, we can leave it up the entire time!  Trust me, when you've been trying to get 9 people to bed in a space where you can hardly squeeze past each other this is a Very Big Deal.  We even have enough room to just hang out and play games if it's rainy.  I can wash dishes, cook an actual meal, and we can even leave the pack and play set up.  And it has a bathroom with a shower.  This is also a Very Big Deal when you have lots of little people needing to potty.  Trust me.

Since it's so big, we wanted to take it somewhere close by the first time to make sure we didn't get stuck  didn't crash into anyone  weren't going to end up in a ditch  Glen could handle it easily.  So this past weekend we went to a campground about an hour away that's right on a lake.  My sister even stopped by one night.  It was lovely.  Beautiful weather, and we were right by the playground and swimming area.  I lost track of how many Scrabble Slap, Chess, and Uno games I played.  Grace and I even took a nap on the beach by the lake.  And we didn't even crash into anything.

So there.  I confess.  We are now full fledged weenie campers.  And I don't care one little bit.  You can make fun of me.  I can take it.  :)

What are you doing this summer?

and she turns 1~

My Dearest Grace,


Has it really been a year?  How can that be?  Wasn't it just yesterday you were a newborn baby snuggled up in softness with sleepy eyes and tiny clentched fists?  Delighting me with sweet baby yawns and sighs.  Don't you know your Mama's heart relishes your baby-ness?  Don't you know you're supposed to grow up slower than other babies?  Oh, how thankful I am that you are a snuggler.  And even though I enjoy a good nights' sleep, there is something precious about snuggling and nursing in those sleepy dark hours.  There really is.

You are such a delight to us.  Do you know how many requests I have to turn down from your brothers and sisters to please wake you up early in the morning?  Every day you're like a new gift.  You bring us countless smiles and indescribable joy.  You are such a sweet, happy baby.  We love seeing your face and eyes light up when someone walks in the room.  We love watching you bounce up and down with excitement when someone comes to play with you.  And even though you are just now beginning to show signs of trying to crawl, we're not worried.  That's how your brothers and sisters have been too.  It's a great adventure to set you down and see how far you can scoot yourself  :)


Children are a blessing.  Blessed  is the man whose quiver is full.  We know it.  Without a doubt. We live it every day.  We are so thankful for you.  We are so thankful you are here with us when you might not have been.  Every day we thank the Father for the wonderful gift of Grace.  You are sweet, and beautiful, and such a delight.


We love you, Precious Girl.  Sweet Baby Grace.

one day you’ll look back on this and laugh~

 

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Um, yeah.  I’m sure I will.  As soon as I hear that Noah and Haven have woken up to an entire gallon of milk spilled and a box of cereal thrown all over the floor by their children on a Saturday morning.  And that my grandchildren danced in it.  Then you’ll see me rolling on the floor  :)