Camping With a 5 Month Old

Daniel got a new job, which he started Monday. Once his school semester was wrapping up he decided before he went to work and didn't get a vacation fr a year, we needed to go on a little trip.  His first idea was to our land in Colorado, where he would finish the roof our little shack. To that I said, "It's too cold in Colorado for Jeremiah this time of year, and it's too long of a drive (like 12 hours too long) with a baby, but you could go yourself if you want."

He didn't want to leave me and the baby, thank goodness, so he suggested St. George. A two night camping trip, to a place were it is warm during the day, and half the length of drive for baby. "I'll take it!"

Jeremiah was very good on the way down. He started to fuss about the last hour of the drive, but I don't blame him, my butt hurt too. By the time we got to Snow Canyon State Park to pitch our tent it was dark, and the baby was tired, so Daniel did all the set up. That night wasn't bad, Jeremiah woke up once to nurse like he always does, and then he and I slept in while Dad made breakfast in the morning.

When the sun came up it was a Beautiful day! We started off with a little hike to a geocache, and by the time we where heading back for lunch I was sweating. Daniel reminded me, "It's December, by the way, just in case you forgot." Oh my! I wish December was like this everywhere!

We planned on gong into town for lunch, but when the time came we didn' feel like undoing the tent (which was a covered wagon style in the back of the truck), so we pulled out our 72 hour kits and ate our ravioli, saving the can for hot chocolate that night and oatmeal in the morning. It was time to replace the food anyway... the beef jerky was crunchy and the dried apples were soft and sticking together.

After a bike ride and another brief hike we decided to settle down camp for the night. Just as Daniel started the fire, Jeremiah started freaking out! He was screaming and I knew he was tired, but he really only likes to sleep in his crib. He would fall asleep in my arms only to wake up screaming a minute later. We tried putting him in his car seat, laying him on the air mattress, bouncing him up and down, going on a walk, nothing would calm this child down! We decided the only thing left to do was put him in the car seat in the truck and let him cry himself to sleep. That lasted about 10 minutes before I just couldn't take it anymore. Finally he fell asleep when I picked him up and remained sleeping until he woke up to eat before bed. I loved being in St. George, but when that baby started to cry I just wanted to be home!

I spent that night squished between my two favorite people. Daniel was no just touching my back, he was pushing into it, and later informed me that was because the place where my pillow and his pillow overlapped was the perfect comfort level and he was not going to give that up under any circumstances. And no matter how many times I moved Jeremiah over, he always slid right back next me. Squished as I may be, it's my favorite place to be!

The worst thing about the trip, in a close second to the two hour screaming affair, is the fact my camera is now no where to be found. I wish I could post the cutest picture of Jeremiah playing in the sand for his first time, but I don't have it. SO you will just have to imagine the cutest baby you've ever seen (Jeremiah of course!) sitting up by himself with bare feet, grabbing hand fulls of red sand...

Adding Variety to Breakfast!

Do you ever get bored with breakfast? I mean how many times a week can you have waffles or pancakes (which are pretty much the same thing!)?  I was tired of having the same things... waffles, eggs, pancakes, cereal, oatmeal... so I decided to try something new, and this is what I came up with.

Stuffed Biscuits!

 

 Just in case you, too, were bored with breakfast I decided to blog about how to make them. There are probably a million ways you could do these... okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but there are several ways you could change up this recipe to meet the needs of your family, or use left overs...

 

 

You need:

 

Biscuit dough (I used homemade wheat biscuit dough, but refrigerated would work perfect, get the big ones!)

eggs ( I used 3 and made 4 biscuits, adjust for the number you are making)

a little milk

a little pancake mix

breakfast meat (I used sausage left over from our homemade pizza! bacon would be yummy too!)

CHEESE!

Hash browns might also b good in this, I just used scrambled eggs though...

 

First get out your biscuits and spread them thin...

Then make your scrambled eggs.  I used three eggs, added a dash of milk and about 3 tablespoons of pancake mix to make yummy, fluff eggs. Scramble over medium high and add your meat, and some grated cheese. Stir, and add more cheese!  Yum!

Divide your egg mixture for the number of biscuits you are making spoon it on top of your biscuits.

Stretch the biscuit over the egg mixture and pinch together.

Flip your stuffed biscuit over so the pinched together sides are facing your baking sheet.

Pop in the oven at 450 for about 12 minutes.

Top with  more grated cheese and enjoy!

I think this would also be tasty with some sausage gravy on top.  You could also make a bunch of these and freeze them to zap in the microwave when you a quick yummy breakfast! Enjoy!

 



Diapers...

OK, I know a bunch of you thought I was crazy when I said I was going to use cloth, but I really, really love it! Here are some reasons I love my cloth diapers...

1-) They are sooo much cuter than disposables! He has airplanes diapers, so cute!

2-) He has less diaper rashes. In fact Jeremiah has only had one diaper rash since we started using cloth.

3-) If he decides to poop or pee right after I change his diaper I haven't wasted 15 cents, I can just wash it and use it again.

4-) Yes my water bill was $7 more last month, but I washed about 360 diapers, which would have cost about $54 dollars. That's a savings of $47 dollars every month... so my diapers will pay for themselves in about 4 months... AWESOME!

5-) I only have to take the trash out of Jeremiah's room about once a month. When we were using disposables it had to be emptied at least once a week. (that means we are saving money on trash bags too!)

6-) I can choose how absorbent I want his diapers to be. Just add a prefold or a doubler and I don't have to worry about leaks when he sleeps 11 hours at night.

7-) I love how the sun takes the stains out. Its been 3 months and we still have white diapers.

8-) I like feeling a bit "old fashioned." Or maybe it's just that I don't like following the crowd. how many mom's do you know that grind wheat, bake bread and use cloth diapers?

9-) His pants fit better. Jeremiah has a really long body, but short legs and a little bum, so his pants look huge when he wears disposables, and sometimes they fall down.

10-) I was trying to think of ten reasons, and I'm sure there is one more somewhere in my brain... but for now 9 will have to do!

Coming soon is a "how to" post for cloth diapers, and which ones are my favorites!

Jeremiah Daniel Matthews

                With just less than three weeks left of pregnancy I had a lot to do.  Friday, July 6^th, Daniel went on a hike with my dad and brothers to the top of Ben Lomond Peak.  I spent the day with my mom and Chris.  We ate lunch at Javier’s and spent the afternoon walking around Ikea, which is probably me favorite store.  The boys returned home really late, around 10:30 pm.  Daniel was exhausted from spending all day on the mountain, in the sun, and he had to work early in the morning. I went to bed with a to-do list in my head for Saturday.  My mom was throwing me a baby shower Saturday evening and I planned on picking up my nursing garments, a package of newborn diapers, and pad for the changing table before going over to help her set up for the shower.

                I was having trouble getting to sleep in our hot bedroom, regardless of the three fans we had going.  Suddenly I felt a trickling and thought I had peed my pants.  I laid there stunned for a few minutes and decided I better go check and change my underwear.  I got to the bathroom, noting there was still liquid running down my legs. I sat there for a good 15 minutes thinking, “This can’t be my water breaking. I haven’t even felt any contractions! The baby shower is tomorrow. Is this really happening?!”

                Once I realized it was real I decided I better wake my exhausted husband. It was about 12:30 in the morning. I shook him awake and told him I thought my water broke. “What do you need me to do? I’m calling your mom.” He said. She didn’t answer when he called, so I tried calling. She told me to call the doctor, who told me to go up to the hospital, and call her back.  My doctor also told me she was on vacation, but was in town till morning. I couldn’t stop laughing on the way to hospital. This wasn’t really happening; I still had three weeks to go…

                By the time we got to the hospital and all settled our room it was about 1:30 in the morning and I still hadn’t felt any contractions. The nurse hooked me up and said, “You are having a contraction, can you feel it?” It barely felt like a tense muscle. I was dilated to a 3 and they decided to give me pitocin to help labor progress.   By the time they got back with the medicine (about 2:30) the contractions were strong enough I wanted my epidural.

                It took about an hour for the epidural to work on both sides, at first only my right side was numb.  I thought it was pretty cool that I could hear on the monitor when a contraction was starting and not feel anything! About 4 o’clock when I was finally all numb the nurse checked and I was now dilated to a 5. Thinking I had a ways to go I decided to take a nap. About 20 minutes later I was about to call the nurse because I stopped hearing the baby’s heartbeat on the monitor. I heard running footsteps and the nurse burst into my room.  She tried moving the monitor to find the baby and then started to check. Her next words were, “We have a head, don’t move, don’t do anything, I’m going to call the doctor.”

                Since I was numb the nurse had to tell me when to push. Two contractions and 5 pushes later little Jeremiah was here to greet us. The placed him on my belly while Daniel cut the cord. I couldn’t believe it! This little baby I had been waiting just over eight months for was here, and he was so beautiful!

                At 4:39 am on July 7, 2012, we welcomed Jeremiah Daniel Matthews to our family. Weighing just 6 pounds and 3 ounces and 18 inches long, he was to most beautiful thing I had ever seen. We are so blessed to have this little guy in our lives.

 

Our Colorado Hideout

As soon as school was out for the summer we took a trip to our land in Fort Garland, Colorado. Ever since we purchased the land about a year ago, Daniel has been making and revising plans for building a cabin for our retreat.

This is what our land looked like when we arrived to start build our get away place. Our land is almost completely covered in sage brush, so Daniel had to do some land clearing before he could begin building.

My job consisted of lounging around camp

reading the infamous Hunger Games series waiting for Daniel to tell me he needed help, which wasn't very often. That's me and my 30 week pregnant belly holding a wall while he put braces on to support it. Bellow is me chopping up veggies for our chicken kabobs. Daniel was very accommodating to his pregnant wife, always making sure I was comfortable, in the shade, drinking water, and that I had plenty of snacks :-)

Almost there! This is close to the end of the first day of building. Just one more wall to put up!

Here is Daniel working on the roof. 

While he was busy on top of cabin I started painting as high as I could reach.

And here is the almost finished product! Next time we go out we need to finish up the roof, but we were able to sleep in it our last night in Colorado.

This is our awesome fire pit that Daniel constructed from tire rims. The grill wasn't cooking very fast so we ended up dumping our kabobs into a frying pan and having stir fry instead.

Can't wait to go back out and finish up our Hide Out!

Being Pregnant is Driving Me Bananas!

It's not everything about being pregnant, just a few little things that drive me crazy.  So far I have been very blessed and had a fairly easy pregnancy.  I only had minor nausea and some heartburn in the beginning.  I did puke a few times, but mostly just when I ate eggs, which I now avoid like a plague.  Here are the four things that are driving me BANANAs!

1-) DRY SKIN! I know it's winter, but seriously! I can lotion up my hands 5 times a day and they are still dry and cracked! The skin on my belly is almost worse. I lift up my shirt and dry little skin snowflakes go flying everywhere. I have high hopes that this condition will improve when the weather warms up!

2-) Stairs. I climb up one flight and I'm breathing so hard you would think I just ran 3 miles!  The SUU campus has so many stairs it isn't funny.  We park on the lower end of campus and to get to my math class I have to walk up 2 flights of outside stairs and another 2 flights once I reach the building. Then my English class is on the top floor of a 3 story building.  Since it takes me about 10 minutes to get to each class and I'm breathing hard and have a racing heart when I get to class, I consider this my workout on most days. 

3-) The fact that I should be putting on weight.  At first I was thrilled that I would be gaining weight instead of trying to lose or maintain weight.  Then after I found out I was pregnant I started loosing weight. At my 15 week appointment the doctor wasn't very happy that I had lost weight, a total of 10 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight.  She told me to eat more, which I found difficult due to my lack of appetite, but I had been eating! Most of the time I ate just because I knew I should and felt like an overfilled beach ball after dinner.  Finally at my 19 week appointment I had gained 3 pounds back. With a net loss of 7 pounds to date, it really makes me wonder how my stomach has gotten so big....


4-) And speaking of that stomach... Do you know what is inside?  Baby Center compared the size of my baby to a large banana weighing about a pound. A BANANA? So, your telling me that this huge belly of mine only has something the size of a banana in it?  I know, I know, my uterus has to grow and my baby has to be surrounded by amniotic fluid etc. But still, are you starting so see why I'm going a little bananas? A belly that size and my baby is only a one pound banana.

Our New Little Chicks

As some of you may know, Daniel and I would one day like to be as self-sufficient as possible.  Our goal is to have some land, some chickens, a few goats, and a garden.  Last week we stopped by our favorite store in Cedar City, IFA, and saw that they had little chicks for sell.  Well we came home and the next day Daniel decided we needed to go get some chickens. So we brought home four sweet little chicks, and they should be laying eggs for us in about six months!

This is Brahma. She, like two of her three sisters, is named for her breed, Lite Brahma. Sometimes I call her queen, because she thinks that she is in charge. The other chicks follow her around, and she is most aggressive.  You can kind of see the feathers starting to grow on her leg.  When she is full grown she will be the largest of our chickens and her legs will be covered in feathers.

Red, short for Rhode Island Red, has a lot of energy!  All of the chicks are really active, but Red seems to be the most energetic. And she will poop on you every time you pick her up.

Rock is our runt, for the time being at least.  She is a Barred Rock. She is the smallest of our chicks, but she also the one who runs the fastest when trying to pick her up.  She always seems to dodge the bullet, that is, until her sisters are all out of their little box and she is alone.

Last but not least is Chipmunk. She is an Arucana, but I have tend to try to say anaconda, which she definitely is not, so we named her Chipmunk for her Chipmunk cheeks.  She is the larges right now, standing about a head taller than the others.  She keeps to herself as much as can, but for some reason the others like to pick on her. When she starts laying she will have colored eggs! This is of course the reason I wanted to get an Arucana! Who wouldn't want to crack a blue or green or pink egg for breakfast!