Again with the braiiiiiins

Well, the Guajolotita #1 was overtired and semi-hysterical by bedtime tonight. I think she needs 2 naps per day right now again. Perhaps she's growing a lot right now? She had 2 naps per day all weekend and tonight was really hard for her.

Anyhow I passed out after she was finally asleep at 10pm, and woke up when THCSITU was getting ready for bed at 12:30. I was SO HUNGRY and tried to sleep, nothing sounded good, blah. Then I remembered I have a ton of waffles from the last two weekends!

So I got up and have eaten a 4 quarters of waffle, had two cups of milk, written a couple of posts, read some articles... and kid will be up in 2.5 hrs so I better go back to bed!

Cravings

I want something salty! Like Ramen. Or Lays. Or seasoned croutons right out of a package. Pretzels aren't good enough, but maybe the vending machine has something else appealing.

UPDATE: Lays were so good! I had one bag before lunch and spent another dollar on a second near the end of the day. I was thinking I should get a stash for cheaper, but I'd consume so many more chips if they were just sitting in my office. I have to go 2 buildings and 2 flights of stairs and spend a dollar to eat them, so at least there's some disincentive.

Maybe this is for real.

I've got something like sciatica again. It's too early for that, isn't it?

I am eating a McFlurry for the first time in my life, which THCSITU got for me, because I asked for it. And it's freaking awesome.

Here it goes again

Awake and hungry since 4:30 am. It's the second day in a row that I've been up for the day at 4:30.  At least yesterday it was the Guajolotita who woke me up, and I just couldn't fall back asleep.

Today I woke up hungry at 4:30, but I'll be dammed if I'm going to risk waking a child who slept through the night!

She woke up on her own around 5:45, but I got her back to sleep easily - so I have to keep waiting to eat.

I better get some granola bars for the bedroom or something!

Dinner

We had this for dinner tonight.
Quinoa Wilted Spinach Salad (with citrus)

Only two modifications: we didn't have any dried cranberries (and THCSITU doesn't like raisins, and wouldn't share his mango), and I added some lime to the dressing so it would be a bit more interesting.

I was surprised how well it came out. Not really a good dinner, but a great filling side. Baby Girl loved it, she helped mix the dressing & dump it on the spinach. To eat it, she mostly grabbed spinach leaves, sucked the dressing/quinoa off, chewed it up and spit it out, moved on to the next leaf. The spinach wasn't fully mature, but still pretty crunchy - to much to get down without molars, I think. She liked crunching the toasted sliced almonds between her front teeth.

Kitchen Helper!

When I agonized about going back to work, a coworker with the wisdom of 5 yrs' parenting told me something like, "You'll have the best dishwasher-unloading helper, grocery shopper, etc." (because being at work during the day means quality time and basic chores often overlap.) And it's true.

Loading and unloading the dishwasher always has the Guajolotita gleefully participating. At this point, her efforts are nearly always detrimental to the short-term goal of taking care of the dishes (pulling all the silverware out, on to the floor, is her main self-appointed task) but great for the long-term goal of spending time together, learning the names of different kitchen implements, and having her grow up to be expected to participate in such mundane activities. Or at least, that's the hope.

Also, she has become a not entirely unuseful cooking assistant. She always helps mix eggs for baking or scrambled eggs. She dumps the flour from a full measuring cup into a bowl, and helps mix the contents of the bowl together. She helps sift baking soda into a mixing bowl. She hands me the containers of vanilla and cinnamon when asked. (She doesn't know which is which, of course.)

This weekend, I made huevos con chorizo. Super fast and easy. I got the chorizo started, then sat on the floor with a mixing bowl, whisk, and the egg carton. We were going to use all of the eggs, so I just opened it up, and took one out and broke it into the bowl. Then I asked her (in Spanish) to hand me an egg. I think she knows the word for "egg" from "Are You My Mother," one of her recent favorite books. She handed them to me one at a time from the carton, and watched with great interest as I broke the egg, dumped it in the bowl, and stacked the two halves of the shell together back into the carton. For the mixing of the bowlful (for pancakes it's the bowl of flour, etc.), I asked her for the whisk. She grabbed it and stuck it the bowl and waited for me to grab her hand and help with the scrambling. Then I mixed in a bit of milk, more joint stirring. Then I picked her up so she could watch as I poured the eggs on top of the chorizo and she was so interested (as she always is) as I combined them in the pan and the eggs cooked.

Not to get to long and drawn out, but she also knows how to make coffee! OK, sort of, and with lots of help. First I put the water in the coffeemaker so it's ready to be started. I take out the coffee filters and hand her one, and she puts it in the filter basket. I take out a cinnamon stick and hand it to her, and she puts it in the filter basket too. I replace the filter basket in the coffee maker. Then I fill the grinder with the beans (under her supervision) and together on the count of  "Uno, Dos. TRES!!" we press the grinder. (It's high up on the counter, I have to lift her for this, don't want her messing with those blades herself.) Then we make an inspection and observe how the beans are now polvo, and dump the coffee into the basket (I do that part, under her supervision). Then she presses the button to start the coffee maker.

Since she was 12 months if you ask her anything about "cafe" she will go to the kitchen and point at the coffee maker because she helps me with this every morning. I'm hoping by 6 or so she can make (pre-ground) coffee for us all by herself. :)

Strawberries

The Guajolotita looooooves berries. Especially strawberries. Last year I got some strawberry plants and put them in pots amongst our thicket of mint. (That mint is going to become sentient in a year or two. It's insane.) In the postpartum, back-to-work, unpacking-from-having-just-moved-5-days-before-giving-birth disorganization I created/lived in I DID manage to keep them alive. However, lots of flowers shriveled from lack of watering on hot days and many berries rotted forgotten on the plant.

This year they came up in and all around their pots. After I noticed the plants flower ing from the living room window, I went out and watered them once or twice. Then a few weeks ago I saw the proto-strawberries!

Kiddo pulled the first ripe one off Friday night, and almost every day since. It's so fun to watch her jam the fruit into her mouth and start signing "more" before the juice has even begun to drip off her chin.

(Well, she always does that with berries, even sitting at the table - but it's especially sweet outdoors with home grown ones!)

Midnight (ok, 4am) snack

Sigh. We had fun sex again tonight, but I fell asleep afterwards. The Hottest Computer Scientist in the Universe had to work at midnight (logging in from home) and came to bed at 3:30. But the readjusting in bed woke me up enough I noticed I was hungry and here I am catching up on this blog instead of sleeping. I polished off the Cheerios though so now I will head back for a couple more hours.

Protein!

The Hottest Computer Scientist in the Universe is very concerned about my protein intake. I am not someone who eats a great deal of protein every day, more of a grain sort of person. Baked goods and pasta will do me for a long long time. I don't get sick of them ever.

However, overall, I think it is helping us to eat healthier at home. If we are going to have porkchops, or lasagne, or something good like that, I am pretty conscious that there's a lot of fat and no fiber in there! So we also have a cooked vegetable and a salad. Otherwise I usually get lazy about making balanced meals.

It's kept our evenings pretty busy though, and our house a disaster. SO MANY dishes are made each day, and we have no dishwasher.

More brains

Well heck. "What to Expect When You're Expecting" has a list of foods that cause gas. Onions are on the list. They make me burp for like 2 hrs now. But.... Mexican food has onions. There's no way around it.

After a childhood spent hating onions, I have embraced them in most forms. Maybe I was right all along and they are the enemy??

I woke up sometime, then went back to bed at 4:30. At 5:30, I gave up. I was too hungry to sleep. But this egg-and-toast has left my stomach feel all burn-y. Salt and black pepper - I have that on an egg every day!

I guess I'll brush and floss again and see if I can ignore the burning and fall asleep...

Mmm Brains Braaaiiiiiinnnns

Zombie HUNGRY.

Despite the chicken-skin-fest that was dinner 7 hrs ago, I'm hungry. I'd probably always be hungry at this time, I guess, since I wake up and eat a lot most mornings now. BUT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE ASLEEP.

At least I'm coping with it better now.


I blame it on the "house." In quotation marks because

• it's not a single-family home
• it's not ours yet

but whether this house is the right decision is stressing me out big time. Convenient, since we're already committed to it. Ugh.

You are what you eat

I got this today via email:

10 PreNatal Power Foods from 100 Healthiest Foods to Eat during Pregnancy

Does Chipotle count?

Protein

Ugh so after the previous post, I went to bed. And laid there. And realized I felt yucky. I had very little protein of any kind yesterday, pretty much only the beans in the Pasta e Fagiole at Pompei around 7pm. So I toss and turn, trying to find the position where my stomach doesn't revolt, which bothers The Hottest Computer Scientist in the Universe, and I finally get up, knowing I won't sleep until I eat.

So I am shuffling around the kitchen in the dark to wash a pan and make an egg (with toast). Crying because I am so pissed off that I have to eat NOW and brush and floss AGAIN and not only was I up from 2:30 till 4 but now it'll be more like 5 before I sleep.

And sure enough, at 8-something I have to pee again and that is it. No more sleeping. Ugh.

STTN? wtf.

STTN is shorthand on parenting message boards for Sleeping Through The Night, as in "My kid isn't!" or "When did you kid finally?"

However this is a subject I think about several times a week, although this Guajolote won't be here till March. As it is, this is the second time in this week I've gotten up at a stupid hour because I am hungry. Actually I wake up because I have to pee, and then can't sleep again right away because of being hungry. At least today I figure I can go back to sleep. Friday morning I woke up at 4:51am and that was it for the night. :(

Side note: this "hunger" is weird. I still feel mostly full, where my belly is sort of poking out (I'm almost 8 weeks, so it's not poking out because of that yet.) but also hungry. I can scarf down fruit, for instance. But it doesn't feel like a bowl of cereal would fit in there. It's the same at work during the day, I go from eating, to feeling hungry-but-not, to vaguely ill, to I-might-kill-you ravenous. Annoying.

Pregnancy symptoms

I have none.

Well, almost none. At 7 1/2 weeks, I ought to have morning sickness if I am going to get it. But I don't. I don't have headaches, and I no longer have extreme exhaustion (or I am ignoring it, also possible).

The rundown right now is just this:

• sore nipples (which I don't even notice because it's been a month, so it's my new normal)
• have to pee kind of a lot
• I feel bad/vaguely ill/gross more often than hungry, but eating fixes that
• eating is much less fun

I love to eat. Eating and having coffee is what makes each work day fun. Now in the late afternoons I feel doldrum-y from 3-6 or so. I still eat (so I don't feel crappy) but it's not the psychological pick-me-up it was before.

Today I wanted Joy Yee's lemon basil stirfry for lunch. But I knew if I went down there, ordered, and waited for my food, I would eat two bites and again feel "meh."

The little things in life should bring joy. I hope this "whatever, I'll eat it" response to food goes away after the Guajolote gets here and I can be thrilled again about leftover cornbread with jam and afternoon coffee.


Post script: maybe since I am eating before I identify that I am hungry, the food is less enjoyable?