Baby 5: Week 24

How Far Along: 24 Weeks (16 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I'm feeling good! A little tired for general kick related night-time hijinks (what's up almost 4 year old??? Why all the waking at night, kiddo?), but surprisingly energetic. I was thinking back to not too many weeks ago, when all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and eat a little, and sleep some more. I'm finding eating isn't the highest on my list (I'm still eating, just not in all-day snack mode), nor is sleeping (except at night, obviously). During the day I'm up and buzzing about. The TV has been turned off all day for 4 days, and I've been baking muffins, playing with the kids, and simply enjoying them!

What I'm Thinking: My brain has been working double time. We got the results of our ultrasound on Friday, and everything was great. Apparently this baby is a very energetic, healthy baby growing nicely (not unlike my waist-line). We also decided for the first time to find out the gender, and have been spending the last few days passing names back and forth. We were SO sure we were having a girl that we had a perfectly beautiful girl's name picked, so when our doctor said this little munchkin will be our third BOYYYYYYYYYYY, we were stumped. We had a name, but the second it became so real that this is in fact a boy, we ditched it. We have a new name in mind, but we'll be praying hard about it before we make anything official.
 

What I've Done This Week: Besides baking, I also went nuts cleaning in the kitchen. It's not pristine by any stretch of the word, but as of right now there are no dirty dishes. Rejoice! This shouldn't be a big deal, but it totally is. I've also been busy with things at Church, like our Moms' group, the Welcoming Committee, Baptism Formation sessions, and some odds and sods. I've also gotten a pretty cool gig transcribing some audio files of my parish priest's talks down at a conference. He's writing a book based on some work he's done giving presentations on the New Evangelization in the Catholic Church. I've been doing that in the quiet times and enjoying it all.
 

What I Hope To Do Next Week: I hope to finish the bulk of my transcription, and then, (ha, how many times have I said this?) clean up baby boy's bedroom so we can lay the flooring. We're so close to getting it done, but as that room has become a kind of a drop zone it'll take some doing.

Baby 5: Week 17

How Far Along: 17 Weeks (23 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I've been having some mild resurgence of my nausea. I'm not sure if I should be chalking this up to pregnancy Advent related baking. Or maybe the fact that most of my cooking lately has been greasier than normal. Oh well! I'm also feeling particularly large in the uterus, if you know what I mean. I am now %100 in maternity clothes, which is a relief, especially since a dear friend gave me two big bags of her old maternity clothes. I'm feeling glamorous!

What I'm Thinking: We're really in the Advent spirit here in the house. The tree is up and our few decorations are out. We decided to not put up so many random decorations this year. We have our Advent Wreaths (yes, wreaths. One we made at Church and one we already owned), a few kitchy theme decorations (snow men and Santa), our gorgeous and somewhat large Nativity Scene (without baby Jesus), and today as I said we put up and decorated our tree. I feel like these modest decorations have put me in the spirit, and helped me bring my heart closer to Mary's this week. I've been praying a lot about how she must have felt, so young, unmarried and travelling far while ponderously pregnant. My concerns about enough of the luxuries for this baby are nothing compared to the poverty of her life, but the abiding richness of her faith. Her faith took her to a stable to give birth to the King of Kings. Her littleness bringing forth the greatness of God is the most unexpected surroundings. I'm praying I can find a way to come closer to that kind of faith Mary had.

What I've Done This Week:  This week I've done a lot of baking! I managed to make 14 dozen cookies for my two cookie exchanges, as well as have guests over twice, including this baby's Godparents and a friend of ours, who is a priest in a nearby parish. It's so wonderful to have the kinds of friends who hold you accountable, and lift your spirits at the same time. Thank God for the blessings of our friends, new and long standing!

What I Hope To Do Next Week: My Mom had carpal tunnel surgery last week, so I've been trying to help out as much as I can. This week I'll be over there as many days as I can manage it! I doubt much will be happening around or house, but I don't mind. I suspect this week is going to fly by!

Cookie Exchange

Now that we've hit Advent, all of sudden a bunch of cookie exchanges are gearing up. For those who don't know what a cookie exchange is, let me first say that they are awesome. Not enough info? Fair enough. So basically what happens is a bunch of folks sign up to participate, each offering to make a different kind of cookie. You make a dozen cookies for each other person who will be participating (and a dozen for yourself to if like me, you could never have enough cookies). You get together, and then exchange your dozens of cookies for however many dozen different kinds of cookies from all your exchange buddies. So, if I'm in an exchange with 7 other people, I get to come home with 7 dozen completely unique batches of cookies when I only had to get the ingredients to make 7 dozen of one kind. If you're like me and you've really only perfected one or two kinds of cookies, you come out of this a total winner. It's also really cheap too because you're not buying 7 or 8 different cookies worth of ingredients.

My first exchange is this week, so I'll be sharing the spoils of my labour once they're all in. Suffice is to say I'm over the top with glee. My family is going to have loads of variety snack wise this year, because I'm going to have no less than 10 dozen different cookies in my freezer waiting for their turn to shine. Cookies exchanges can be make even more awesome if you get your friends to include recipes for the cookies too!

Since I can't actually give all my readers a dozen cookies this Advent, let me offer you the recipe for my favourite cookie exchange treat! Straight from my Grammie's cookbook, the ever famous Molasses Crinkles!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter/margarine
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Cream your butter, then add the sugar and mix that in. Add the rest of the ingredients in the order given and mix them in. Your batter will be a little stiff. Roll pieces of the batter into balls and then flatten them with a fork or cool potato masher that has been dipped in flour (otherwise the fork/masher will stick to your cookie, no fun). Bake at 350F for 10 minutes, or until they're golden brown. Don't eat them right away, as they will burn your mouth. True story. Resist, my friends. Resist.

Baby 5: Week 16

How Far Along: 16 Weeks (24 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: It's blistering cold here, so that's taking some of my energy. Otherwise, I'm feeling really great. All these cookies and pre-Christmas sweets seem rather timely!

What I'm Thinking: I feel like the Church calendar is perfectly expressing my mood these days! Today is the first day of Advent, which kicks off four weeks of joyful anticipation as we await the celebration of Christmas. I'm joining in with greater vigour (as I do every advent when I'm pregnant), trying to re-learn the patient waiting that is the character of both pregnancy and Advent. I'm feeling extra close to Mother Mary, who lived the first Advent in a way so deep and incredible! The whole world waits in Advent again for Christ to enter our lives more deeply here and now, and again when he returns in glory!

What I've Done This Week: We've spent this week trying to get ready for Christmas ahead of Advent. We wanted all our shopping done before we started our real spiritual preparations. Nothing steals the joy of Advent like being stuck in the mall with thousands of desperate shoppers fighting over last minute deals. I wrapped the better part of the gifts we bought. Only a few more to go before we can forget about temporary gifts and get back to focusing on the gift of our family.

What I Hope To Do Next Week: I still haven't got my baking done! I have 8 dozen due this week, and another maybe 5 dozen for next Monday for cookie exchanges. Smartly, I've chosen to do the same recipe for both so that I can really work through them quickly. Between that, wrapping, and making some traditional tourtiere (French meat pies. Yum!), I'm going to have a busy week in the kitchen!

Baby 5: Week 14

How Far Along: 14 Weeks (26 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I am feeling energetic! The nausea is gone now. I've been busy getting ready for Christmas, cleaning up the house (a bit...), and doing some baking!

What I'm Thinking: I'm starting show. More than just muffin top here, actual uterus pop in my belly zone. I've obviously hit the 2nd trimester, because I'm starting to think less about surviving, more about getting ready. I'm starting to dream about prepping the nursery and meeting this little one!

What I've Done This Week: Now that we know it's only one baby, we were able to ask the couple we had in mind to be Baby 5's Godparents. They're friends from our Church who we find really inspiring but also very real. I know that this is a couple we can grow in faith with, and who will delight in helping us bring up our new baby in Faith!

What I Hope To Do Next Week: This week I'm going to concentrate on some Christmas baking, and making meals for some Mama friends who are about to have their babies!