Week 20!

Hey there Baby Fish!  This week she is between 6 - 9.8 inches long and weighs over 11 ounces!  I don't know exactly how much weight she will pack on in the coming weeks, but she is long and weighs more than the growth charts say!  From this point on babies will all develop at a different rate, but my little one will be growing about ten times the size she is now before April!  And starting next week the measurements will be from crown to toes instead of crown to rump...Baby Fish was measuring a bit "Big" for last week when we had our anatomy scan, at a whopping 11 oz, but they did not change our due date, she is still due in April!  And on a fun note, she is no longer a bobble head!  Her limbs have reached the correct proportions, and if you could see her now she is sprouting eyelashes and eyebrows.  Cute huh?  We have also reached a milestone, I'm officially at the halfway point!

Photo from Pregnology.com

While I have been out shopping for maternity stuff there was a discussion as to what month I am in, it is the second trimester, and according to What to Expect I am in the 5th month which goes from about week 18 to week 22.

5 month bump!

Now that we know that Baby Fish is a baby girl I have started "cracking out" on little girl stuff.  And being the crafty person I am have been searching Pinterest for DIY projects...here is one little outfit I have started!  With more to come (and a blog post I'm sure)!

Anatomy scan day!

It is the day we have all been waiting for so prepare yourself for a LOT of ultrasound pictures!!!!!  The scan took about an half hour, cause baby was cooperating! Baby Fish weighs around 11 ounces now!!!

We got to see  eyes...

Hands...

Feet...

Really long legs...

A cute little face...

And drum roll please.....

Week 19!

Our anatomy scan is just around the corner!  I will be posting pictures and the big announcement sometime on Monday AFTER we have called our families!

This week besides the exciting ultrasound, we are almost to the halfway point in the pregnancy!  And in other exciting developments Baby Fish's adult teeth start to form this week!  Not to mention Guppy has hit a growth spurt, and is anywhere from 6 -8 inches this week and weighs a whopping 7 to 8.8 ounces, depending on which source you look at!  If Guppy has hair at birth now is when that mop starts to grow.

I have been feeling the internal movement for weeks now, but recently I have felt some from the outside!  Hopefully Daddy can be able to feel tiny kicks this week so it is hands off the bump for everyone else until he does!  I just want to make sure he is the first to feel it, he has been hands on every day just waiting.  I'm sure y'all can understand!  I will let everyone know as soon as it's hands back on! :)

On a more personal note, and a TMI, I did the "squeeze" test a few days ago and I was excited to see a drop of colostrum!!!  It's the little things...although I won't do it anymore because I need to save that liquid gold for my little one!

Recipes are guidelines, right?

I've said it before.  I hardly ever follow a recipe exactly.  Even when baking I add more spices than required because I love flavors!  Tonight my pregnant self decided to try a new recipe I found on Pinterest.  The name of the blog that featured this yummy photo is Bacon, Butter, Cheese & Garlic.  The recipe?  Baked Italian Chicken And let me tell you, the picture is SUPER enticing! See?

baconbuttercheesegarlic.blogspot.com

You want to make it now too don't you?  And remember I'm pregnant, duh, so any blog that features some of my favorite ingredients must be a hit!  The only issue I had with this when I started gathering my ingredients was that I noticed that the recipe doesn't include bacon....an oversight I'm sure!  I also switched out minced garlic for the garlic powder.

The artichokes are being drained...hence the reason they are not pictured

So I decided to add bacon!  It is a common pairing with chicken (at least in my house), so why not?

While the bacon was starting to cook I got to chopping....onions and tomatoes

The onions go into the pan with the bacon and the mushrooms (I got the pre-sliced)

While those are cooking I put the chicken in a pan...

And melted the cream cheese and mixed in everything else, and ran out of room in my bowl to add the spinach, so I just covered the chicken with it...

Then topped it with the cheesy-bacony-yummy sauce!

And popped it in the oven at 350, for 30 minutes...I think it is going to take a lot longer than 30 minutes, I checked it halfway through and the chicken is still VERY raw looking.....we shall see...in the meantime I am having a VERY hard time not eating the other half of the Italian bread I purchased to go on the side....VERY hard....

Once I determined we would actually be able to eat this meal sometime tonight...I started the Linguine I am serving the chicken on. And put the garlic bread in the oven.   And sprinkled the shredded cheese all over the top of the dish!

Next time I am going to brown the chicken in whatever is leftover from the bacon onion and mushroom pan....give it a head-start to cooking!  But this time, I'm just going to chow down, because I'm hungry and this smells soooooo good!!!!

Enjoy!

Secrets revealed! Well "what I was cooking yesterday" secrets...

Our adventure started with a food mill (or food strainer)....

Can you guess what we put through that food mill???

Juicy and pulpy goodness...

So what are we making?  If you guessed Blackberries, and making jam....you are correct!  Of course we got all of the ingredients measured out, especially the sugar...cause that has to be dumped in all at once.

And then I got to stir...and stir...

Don't get the baby too close to the stove!

and stir some more

Then the process goes quickly once you add the sugar and bring to a hard rolling boil for 1 minute.  Mom and I have developed quite the smooth flowing teamwork that comes with multiple sessions of canning anything....

Filling, wiping, lids, transfer to the boiling water for canning and grabbing another jar and lids...we are like a well oiled machine

We made two whole batches of straight seedless blackberry jam....then were short about a cup for the last batch, so we thawed and threw in some whole raspberries....YUMMO!  So it's not seedless, but oh so good!

All in all we ended up with 32 jars of jam....

Blackberry on left, Blackberry-Raspberry on right

Week 18! The start of my 5th Month!

Don't look now! Baby Fish has grown almost an inch, and gained almost two ounces!!!  Weighing in at almost 7 ounces, and right under 6 inches long!  Nerve cells are continuing to develop as are the blood vessels.  Guppy's kicks and punches are starting to feel less like bubbles and more distinctive, especially when Daddy puts his hand on my belly.  And Guppy can definitely hear things outside my belly.  I have been talking to him more and more, and fortunately the sounds he hears now will help prepare him when he is born.  So when Fergus barks baby is getting used to it...even if I'm not!

Photo from Pregnology

Sorry Betty, we're not gonna kick it old school.

I think fall is officially here to stay! Yeah! That means it's soup weather. My favorite soup is chicken and noodles. The thick homemade noodles are the star of this dish so JoMama and I are making homemade noodles!!!  JoMama made the chicken stock and chicken in her crock pot yesterday so we get to concentrate on the noodles.  

The only noodles JoMama and I have ever made are the one from the Betty Crocker cookbook.  

But the pasta roller set I own has a different recipe....

The biggest difference is the use of the full egg, and less salt in the new recipe, which is why we are not gonna kick it old school!  Waste not, want not.  We went to get Farm Fresh eggs from The Farm Wife's Table here in Smithville and when we got there the owner had just picked up three duck eggs...so we traded three of our chicken eggs for the duck eggs for our egg noodles!!!!  If you are local, or semi local visit her Facebook page and you too can get some farm fresh eggs!!!  Tho they probably won't be duck eggs they only have one duck and until today they didn't know the duck would lay!

Duck, duck, duck...chicken?

Cracking the eggs was a bit difficult, they have a much harder shell than chicken eggs...who knew!  They also have a different smell, you can tell they are egg-ier...gonna be yummy in the noodles!  At first the dough was very dry and crumbly....

And JoMama said she wanted to add more water, but I told her to wait and see the magic.  I have seen pasta made on Food Network.  After the initial mixing, and two minutes with the dough hook it was time for 1-2 minutes of hand kneading....It's a wrist breaker, but soo worth it, and much easier than Betty's recipe which is all by hand....no thank you!

And then time to let it rest for 20 minutes.

Once it's rested, cut into four sections and then it's time for the magic to happen!  The first attachment is the flat roller and you start with a 1 setting to knead the dough some more until it's pliable and has the right texture.  You will know when it does!

Then set to the second setting and continue...

You will want to cut the pieces in half before changing to a thinner setting.  Otherwise the pieces will get very long and unwieldy

Keep changing the setting on the roller to the thickness you want, then it's time to slice the sheets into the length you want the noodles to be....and then change out the roller for the pasta cutter!  

You can see we just let the noodles drop onto a towel we put underneath the machine, then spread them out a bit.

We did half of the noodles as thick noodles, and half as thin.

There were quite a few more thin noodles, as expected.  And it was so fun and easy we may never buy store bought noodles again!  These can be dried for an hour, then either refrigerated or frozen.  Or you can cook them up fresh.  They don't take as long to cook when they are fresh.  But as you can see it makes a LOT of noodles, so I have some in my freezer for the next time I'm ready to make soup....but part of it we are going to enjoy now in our home made chicken and noodle soup!

Enjoy!