Happy Birthday Jason!

Today Jason is 25, a quarter-century! We celebrated with blueberry pancakes this morning, and then a trip to the mall tonight. We went to the mall mainly to eat dinner at a favorite pizza place, and then brought dessert home. Definitely not the most exciting birthday ever, but I'm hoping it was a good day.

Okay, we are definitely going to the Dead Sea next weekend. Especially since it is the next-to-last weekend that Ellie and I will be here!

31 week belly pics

Here it is; the big belly. Actually, comparing it to my last picture 9 weeks ago, it doesn't look too much bigger. I guess I just popped pretty early. Nine more weeks to go til baby brother gets here!

Opinions, please!

We went grocery shopping today, because we were in desperate need of food. The little store on our street that we use for necessities during the week was closed for some reason this week, so we have been out of bread for a while. Our bread doesn’t last long, since it’s all freshly baked in Amman, not stocked with preservatives like in the states. I guess that’s one thing we’ll miss :) Guess what we found at the grocery store?? Generic Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Captain Crunch w/berries! It sounds weird to be so excited about, but American cereal is one thing I’ve really missed while here. There are some things available, but who wants to buy Special K with berries for $7 a box? There is an Egyptian brand of cereal that we usually buy that is about $1.50 a box, but it’s not as good as American. I have bran flakes just about every morning (with a spoonful of sugar of course). This cereal we found was only about $3 a box, so not too bad at all.

Last night we treated ourselves to an expensive, but delicious dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Houston’s, which is similar to…Chili’s, I guess. Ooh, the nachos we ordered as an appetizer were sooo good. The meal, which would have been around $20 in the states, was more like $35 here, but we needed that extra boost to make it until we come home.

Ok, I have a dilemma that I would love opinions about. Ellie has been waking up dry during naptime for a couple weeks now, and the last 5 nights her diapers have been completely dry in the morning! I'm afraid to let her go without a diaper though, because if she did wet the bed, it would be a huge hassle to try to clean her foam mattress. Here are my options (that I see anyway):

- use a new diaper every day
- reuse the diapers if they are dry (I do reuse them after nap for that night). One idea that I saw recently was to put her in undies and then a diaper, that way the diaper is clean and I just wash the undies
- let her go without a diaper

Using a diaper a day isn't too expensive, but it seems senseless to throw away a dry diaper. What do you think we should do?

Fluff stuff

I've ordered my first cloth diapers! I'm going with the cheaper route for the first couple of months, when he'll need his diaper changed so often. There are cloth diapers out there that are exactly like disposables as far as ease, but they are a bit more expensive. We'll be using prefolds/fitteds and covers, so two pieces instead of just the all-in-one diaper. But believe me, it looks sooo easy. And, they are so cute! All I have left is to buy some prefolds, at least for now. (I know a lot of people have no clue about the terminology I'm using, but I'm too excited not to share).

5 weeks to go

Happy Easter everyone! Ellie had a blast hunting down easter eggs, although it took her a good while to find the first egg and realize that she was supposed to pick it up. It was pretty funny watching her look everywhere but directly at the egg.

I've tried out a few new recipes lately. One that was super good was a recipe for chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal cookies. They were soooo yummy. The best cookies I've ever had are Autumn's mom's chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, but these come in a close second. Then I tried cheese fondue (I've been craving the cheese fondue from Barley Brothers in Havasu). This was not such a success. It tasted fine (actually Jason loved it) but it was more like melted cheese than fondue. This may be because I did not use a fondue pot, so it cooled off and hardened. Tonight I used a new recipe for chicken enchiladas, and they were very easy and good. Not the best, but pretty good. I think my time here has helped me become more confident in my cooking skills, since I need to be inventive in my substitutions and cooking methods. No more strictly following the recipe for me! (All the above recipes are available if you click on the name of the foods.)

I went to the doctor today. The baby is still a perfect size for his age and everything looks good. I, however, have a urinary tract infection and low iron. Both of these results were surprising, since I have had no symptoms of a UTI and I eat plenty of iron-rich foods. My best guess is that I am not getting enough vitamin C to help absorb the iron. So, we walked over to the pharmacy this afternoon to get all my medications. The antibiotic I have is really weird; it's little granules that I put in a cup of water. The granules fizz up and I have to drink it (three times a day). Hopefully this is the last of my weird pregnancy symptoms!

Video of Ellie

Here is a video of Ellie that I took today. She's pretending to open birthday presents; it's really cute!

New friends

Guess what Ellie and I did today?? We went to a toddler Mommy & Me class! The classes just started up at the bookstore we visit. It was sooo much fun! And Ellie was much more interactive than I thought she would be. She was fairly shy, but she never cried and she even ran off by herself sometimes. The class is for kids ages 1 1/2 - 4, but most kids were about 2. We sang songs, read a couple books, did a craft, ate a snack, and then had playtime. This is not a free service; it's actually pretty pricey, but it's worth the interaction that Ellie gets. We'll go once a week until we leave :)

I can't believe Ellie will be turning 2 in less than a month! We're tentatively planning on a birthday party in Lake Havasu after we get back, even though it will be a couple weeks past her birthday. We really want all our friends and family to come, especially since it may be the first time in almost a year that we have seen you! Jason probably won't be there :( but Ellie and I would love to see everyone. We don't have an exact day and time yet, but I'll be sure to post it here when we do.

We haven't gone to the Dead Sea yet, but hopefully soon. I'll be sure to post about it.

Potty-training

Ellie is fully potty-trained! She hasn't had an accident in quite a while (well, besides last week when she peed her pants downtown). She also wakes up dry after naps. This morning she was dancing around as I was getting her cereal (she's going through a phase where she eats the cereal dry and drinks milk out of a cup). Finally she said, "Have to go potty!" Boy oh boy did she pee for a long time! And...her diaper was completely dry! We're so excited! Our only problem now is using toilets when out and about, because for the most part, there aren't any! If there are bathrooms, it is usually a hole in the ground, and Ellie won't go in those. I don't blame her! So, if we go out for an extended period of time, then we'll still be using diapers. Oh, it will be so nice to not have two children in diapers!

Speaking of diapers, we have decided (well, I did and Jason is fine with it) to use cloth diapers with our new baby. We'll still use disposables we already have some, nothing against them, but we don't plan on buying any. There are several different reasons why we have chosen use this method, but a big one is simply cost.

We're thinking about going to the Dead Sea soon. It's so hit and miss with weather right now though. Some days it will get up to 70, now it's back to the 50's. I guess we'll just have to pick a weekend and go, hoping that it's warm enough!