Baked Wings

This weekend I finally found of the energy I’d been missing.  The house is cleaner than it’s been in months and a clean house just makes me so happy.  After being so productive Saturday, we had time to just relax and do some fun stuff.  We spent some time on Sunday looking at paint colors and chairs for the nursery and it’s sooooo exciting!  We found out last week though a blood test (was it just last week?) that we’re having a girl and I couldn’t be happier!  I’m super anxious to get the walls painted, the floor laid, and start decorating for this little girl!

I’m getting back to my normal eating habits with the exception of the ice cream that’s continuing in my otherwise sugar-free lifestyle.  Sunday evening Mr. C made this chicken while I whipped up a salad and some sautéed corn with jalapenos.

I usually ask Mr. C if he has any meal requests when I sit down to meal plan for the week, and this chicken and my Chipotle Avocado BLTS seem to come up every single week.  My aunt introduced us to this simple recipe and since then it’s been a regular in our meal rotation.  These chicken wings are one of the easiest things to make and the hardest part is waiting the hour for them to bake.  The best part is that while the skin probably isn’t the healthiest thing, it’s a heck of a lot better than it’s usual fried form.  Add some corn on the cob, a salad, and you’ve got yourself a great meal.

When you buy the chicken, make sure you’re buying wingettes instead of wings.  The wings have multiple parts and you can use them but you have to cut them apart.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not the type of person who is okay touching raw chicken longer than necessary.

Here’s the super simple recipe:

Line a baking sheet with foil and preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Spread chicken wingettes out on the tray.  Season with salt and pepper on both sides.  We like a lot of pepper on ours.

Bake for one hour or until brown and crispy.

That’s it!  Easy peasy!

Where's my Glow?

This pregnancy has not been at all what I expected.  I'm not sure why but I always thought I'd be one of the lucky women who had no sickness.  I just expected to feel amazing and I'd be glowing and so happy about the baby growing inside of me.  While I still think the entire process is pretty amazing, I have to say that so far this pregnancy thing is not fun.  Whoever said it's "magical" was a liar (probably a man), and the more I hear about new things I'll get to experience the more not fun it sounds.  I think there was a week where I knew I was pregnant and felt normal and thought that things were pretty great.  Then the sickness hit.  Well meaning people keep telling me that it will pass and sharing their simple solutions like "eat crackers".  Well people, I've eaten crackers and tried candied ginger and raspberry leaf tea and everything else you can think of.  I'm on pills to make it better and they seem to work for only a few hours of the day. I'm grateful it's something but when I feel like my eyes are going to fly out during one of my puking fits it sure doesn't seem like it's doing much.  So when these well meaning people say these well meaning things, it takes a lot of self-control to not just punch them in the face because I'm not a moron and I've tried it all.  

I thought I'd be glowing, journaling daily, blogging about the wonderful things that happened along the way, and writing in my pregnancy book, but at this point I'm still too tired or sick to do anything.  My pregnancy app currently tells me that things should be "low maintenance" now but again it's just lies.  LIES!  

Our house has been in a constant state of disarray over the past few months with no signs of anything changing.  I went from having a "to do" list of 5-10 things per evening to settling for 1-2 per week.  This week I hope to paint my nails before the nausea turns to the migraine that nothing can help.  Our nursery has no floor and the office is so full of stuff from the guest room (from moving things to redo that floor) that it's barely identifiable as an office.

In other news, we just found out it's a girl and couldn't be more thrilled!  Since I can remember I've pictured myself with a little girl and now I'm so excited to start really planning the nursery and buy some overpriced cute clothing.  In the meantime we've purchased a few used things like a baby sling and a play mat and it's so weird to see baby things in my house.  I see them and think "who the heck is that for?"  It's a weird concept, this baby thing.

A couple weeks ago I was feeling exceptionally horrible.  There's no break from the sickness, emotionally I was struggling with some things, and it just seemed like the flu that never ended.  I was not in the best of moods when we went to the perinatal doctor, but when we saw little Baby C. on the ultrasound (our fourth ultrasound but best by far), it lifted my mood enough and reminded me that although I feel like it's a bad case of the flu, there really is more going on, and eventually this will all be worth it.  Now that I know it's a little girl it's beginning to seem even more real and being able to say "she" is amazing.  My mom was asking me about "her" room earlier (Baby C's) and it was so nice to be able to think of a little girl in there instead of an "it".  

I hope things get better but for now I'm still trying to just focus on the fact that we're both healthy, I know she's in there growing, and I just keep praying that one day the sickness and headaches cease and I can just enjoy this.  In the meantime feel free to say a prayer for me and under no circumstances should you ask if I've tried eating crackers in the morning to help things.

I'm pregnant!

I began writing this a couple months ago but finally decided it was time to post it.  It takes me a long time to do things these days :)

I am a planner, and I always have ideas of the way I think things will be.  As we all know, the world doesn't work that way.  I had no doubts I was pregnant pretty early on.  Mr. C had been eyeing a messenger bag and I decided to order it for him along with a dad book and I'd give it to him the morning I saw the positive test which I just knew was just days away.  I took multiple tests and they came up negative.  Waiting the two weeks to take the tests in the first place was the longest time ever, but then having them come up negative was more crushing than I anticipated.  I knew it could take time, but I also have worried for years that maybe I'd be that person who wasn't able to have kids.  About a week after the last negative test and some sporatic spotting I came home from work and took another test.  It was positive.  I was optimistically happy but so very confused.  I told Mr. C, my mom, and decided to be the crazy woman who would show up at the doctor's office the next morning and demand a blood test.  I got the first blood test and was told that I'd need to go back monday for the next.  Luckily my best friend was flying in that day and she managed to keep me distracted throughout the weekend.  

Tuesday I waited for my phone to ring.  I stared at it between work appointments and finally I called and left a message.  I received a call back confirming that I was in fact pregnant.  I somehow pulled myself together enough to call Mr. C and my mom to share the news and went on with my day at work.  That night I was finally able to give him the bag with the book.  Telling him through a whispered voice on the phone while we were both at work was not at all how I pictured the moment, but we were happy nonetheless.  Telling my mom was not the fun way I expected to share the news either, nor was telling my dad, but that's how things go.

We were able to surprise Mr. C's family, some friends, and keep things under wraps from everyone else for a few weeks.  

At 6 weeks I remember being relieved that things were going so well and then I found myself in the hospital later that very same day, scared that maybe my worries were true and this wasn't going to be so easy for us.  I was lucky enough to have a friend take me.  I'm not sure how I would have gotten myself there otherwise because I was a mess and about to fall apart but she somehow kept me together and I let a little bit of myself believe that when she said everything would be fine, that it really would be.  It felt like we waited forever in the waiting room.  Finally I had an ultrasound and over an hour later they confirmed that things seemed to be alright.  I was so relieved.

Later that week we went in for our scheduled ultrasound which was surreal.  We actually got to hear the heart beat and this time we left with pictures.  The pictures showed us this tiny blob that apparently was a baby.  We were both excited, but watching Mr. C's eyes light up when we heard the heart beat was my favorite part of that experience.  It was all seeming so real.

We had planned to wait until 10-12 weeks to make the news "Facebook official" and tell everyone at work, but decided that 10 weeks was plenty of time.  We'd had 3 ultrasounds with a heart beat and my issues had cleared up.  We posted an announcement on facebook and sat there for a few minutes staring at the computer as it dinged away with "likes" and comments.  It filled my heart to read the loving comments from people genuinely excited for our news.

It still seems a bit surreal especially since I haven't started showing yet, but I know there's a baby in there.  I've seen it waving its little arms around on an ultrasound.  I feel my body acting in ways it hasn't acted before and I have these food cravings I can only blame on the baby.  I gave up sugar a year ago and haven't looked back but this baby has made all of that come crashing down.  Apparently the baby likes ice cream and tropical skittles.  Although these few months have not been what I'd describe as fun, I am thankful for the time to adjust to the idea that there's going to be a baby (OURS!) in the house soon.