Tell Me You Do Not Want to Try This!

As seen on Man vs. Food, the Gateway Grizzlies offer their patrons "Baseball's Best Burger!" It may just be pregnancy brain, but this Krispy Kreme doughnut bacon cheeseburger looks absolutely delicious! ...Delicious enough to just possibly try at home! That's right... Did I say Krispy Kreme doughnut?!

Ingredients:

• Thick hamburger patty (grilled)
• Smothered in sharp cheddar cheese (melted)
• And two pieces of crispy bacon
• Between the two sides of an Original Krispy Kreme doughnut!

Directions:

1. Put the sandwich back on the grill, so the doughnut and bacon flavor can melt together and extenuate all of the flavors!

YUMMY!

Third Trimester!

I'll be 28 Weeks this Sunday; finally made it to the Third Trimester! Only 1/3 of the way left to go, so we're in the home stretch!

Total weight gain: Not sure; I've officially hidden the scale, haha! I do know that I was 138 pounds at my last appointment (so like 13 pounds), and I'll be able to give a better number after our next appointment, this Thursday!

Maternity clothes? Definitely! I don't think I ever really got out of maternity clothes from last pregnancy, especially when it comes to jeans!

Stretch marks? No new ones, but I do have the one from the stray dog we found last pregnancy scratching me in the stomach (and the scratch stretching out) and the one from where my belly button ring was, both becoming more and more noticeable the bigger I get. 

Sleep: Haha! That's hilarious! Anna has been absolutely impossible to get to sleep and stay asleep as of lately, and on top of that, I feel so huge that I can never get comfortable! I toss, turn, and wake up all night, and I'm always in pain! On top of all that, I can't seem to turn my brain off at night, so I just end up lying there, even if everyone is asleep and I somehow find a comfortable position to lay in!

Best moment this week: ...When I get to get out and see my best friend, Lauren and have dinner out with the family for my birthday this coming Wednesday... It's been a rough week this week; Anna has been fussy most of it, and a little break would be nice!

Miss anything? My pre-pregnancy body and energy (and, not to be weird or anything, but some intimacy issues that come with those things). Oh yeah, and being able to sleep on my stomach all cuddled up to Joseph!

Movement: Holy crap, tons and tons! He kicks all day and all night! He is definitely a rambunctious one, this one!

Food cravings: Sweets, chocolate, and good, solid protein, i.e. steaks, chicken, pork, so on (definitely not a vegetarian here! Haha!).

Anything making you queasy or sick? Still lactose intolerant! And, random stuff gives me heartburn. Sometimes soda makes me feel terrible, yet I crave it all the time!

Gender: Still Team Blue (a bouncing - seriously bouncy - Baby Boy); I mean as far as I know, and I doubt that fact is going to change, as sure as our tech was!

Labor signs: Nope, but with the pressure I feel this time around, I don't think he's going to wait 'til his due date like Anna did, haha!

Symptoms: Feet hurt, joint pain and body aches, heartburn, and feeling HUGE (so bloaty, I guess)! I also believe I'm going bald because I swear any time someone touches me, they end up with my hair on them!

Belly Button in or out? In.

Happy or moody most of the time: Probably moody. I get aggravated at the smallest and most ridiculous things; which, having a cranky eight-month-old who won't sleep or eat, and dealing with a disrespectful seventeen-year-old who is failing homeschooling on purpose probably doesn't help...

Looking forward to: Shopping for little boy baby clothes and supplies, and GETTING THIS BABY OUT! Haha!

To learn more about pregnancy at 28 Weeks or your week of pregnancy, check out: Mommy's Corner!

10 Signs You're in Your Third Trimester!

Inspiration for the Day!

When you're having a bad day, everyone's cranky, and you just need a break, just remember that it's the little things... 

Anna wouldn't take a nap today for anything. She cried in her crib, as well as my lap, as well as on the floor, and I realized that the only way I was going to get her to go to sleep was to lay with her on the bed and put my arm around her. 

She laid there for a little bit, eyes wide open (which was awesome because lately she has not been up to cuddle time with Mommy), just stroking my arm with one hand and holding my hand with the other, like she sees me and Daddy do. 

And just looking at those little fingers holding mine, I realized that no matter how difficult some days are, I need to continue to appreciate every single moment because this is just a fleeting second in life, and those little fingers will be all grown up in the blink of an eye. 

Fall Activities!

Joseph and I have made a pact that we are going to do things with our children, spend time with them, and make our time with them and our holidays together special and memorable. We want to build traditions with them that they want to pass on to their little ones. When they grow up, we want them to say, "Our parents made our childhood special and our time together with them is something we will never forget."

Here's a good list of fall activities to do with your little ones to make this autumn and every autumn truly memorable:

1. Go apple picking at a local orchard.
2. Bake an apple pie, apple sauce, apple crisp, or any other yummy recipe with the apples you just picked (Recipes for great fall recipes coming later this fall, but for now, get some inspiration).
3. Visit an outdoor flea market for boiled peanuts and fall knick-knacks. 
4. Rake leaves, make a huge pile, and jump right in!
5. Have a photo shoot in the leaf pile. 
6. Take annual fall family photos.
7. Host a clambake. Make a fresh Low-Country Boil.
8. Watch a fall night sky. Go out and see the harvest moon. 
9. Go on a fall picnic. 
10. Go on a hay ride.
11. Roast marshmallows and make yummy s'mores over a bonfire. Tell spooky campfire tales.
12. Play a game of touch football with family and/or friends (perfect for after Thanksgiving lunch/dinner).
13. Attend a local football game. 
14. Enjoy a mini tailgating party before the football game. 
15. Plant fall flower bulbs that will bloom next spring: tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, etc.
16. Attend a fall festival.
17. Make donuts with the family.
18. Organize a chili cook-off with friends and family. 
19. Make lots of chili as a family. Check out my delicious chili recipe!
20. Host a weenie roast over an open fire.
21. Go through a corn maze - and get lost!
22. Eat candy corn. Make trail mix with candy corn.
23. Iron colorful leaves between two sheets of waxed paper. Display on fridge.
24. Make a fall wreath. 
25. Start your holiday shopping. 
26. Donate to a local food bank. 
27. Volunteer at a local soup kitchen as a family. 
28. Clean out your closet. Donate the old clothes that you cleaned out from your closet. 
29. Create paper masks. Paper plates work great for this craft!
30. Take a brisk walk in the woods, fields, and/or City Park.
31. Stuff a scarecrow, give him a name, and set him on a lawn chair out front for Halloween (Get dad's old clothes, stuff them hay, then draw/paint a face on a pumpkin or burlap-covered ball for a head).
32. Discuss Halloween Trick-or-Treating safety tips with your children.
33. Go Trick-or-Treating!
34. Enjoy a cup of hot cocoa. 
35. Play a game of Frisbee. 
36. Make a list together of all the things you're thankful for just in time for Thanksgiving. 
37. Pick something you are thankful for each day during the month of November and celebrate it. Do an activity with your children involving it.
38. Create a "Thankful" journal. 
39. Hang a clothes line across a room in the house where you can pin "Thankful leaves" expressing what you are thankful for.
40. Take a nature walk with a bucket to collect leaves, seeds, and pine cones. Then, sort, make a leaf rainbow, scenes, leaf men, etc. 
41. Tour a scary local haunted house.
42. Visit a pumpkin patch. 
43. Carve the biggest pumpkin you bought at the patch (Paint pumpkins with the little kids.).
44. Bake a treat with the smallest pumpkin you bought at the patch [pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin pancakes, etc.].
45. Sew/make and/or buy your own Halloween costumes. 
46. Paint your faces.
47. Paint - anything!
48. Clear out the shed/garage and get rid of any summer supplies that went unused this year.
49. Drink hot apple cider. 
50. Harvest your garden.
51. Make leaf rubbings. And bark rubbings. 
52. Buy fall vegetables at a farm stand.
53. Make something delicious with the vegetables you bought, such as a carrot smoothie, squash ravioli, spinach ravioli, spinach salad, etc.
54. Write a fall-themed poem together. 
55. Make a scrapbook about all the fun things you did together over the summer. I love using Mixbook!
56. Make a pine cone bird feeder covered with peanut butter and birdseed. 
57. Read a fall-themed book.
58. Go to the library. See if there are any fall programs.
59. Go to the county fair. 
60. Head to a local museum. 
61. Enjoy an outing to your local petting zoo.
62. Enjoy a day trip to your local zoo.
63. Make a hearty soup. 
64. Skim rocks/sticks across a pond or stream. Feed the ducks while you are there, too!
65. Participate in a local charity walk.
66. Find a local mini-golf course.
67. Find a local hiking trail - and hike!
68. Visit a local candle shop and buy a fragrant, fall-scented one.
69. Take a nice scenic family drive to enjoy the fall foliage -and take pictures!
70. Go to the mountains to see the leaves change.
71. Have a game of catch in the backyard.
72. Visit a local arcade on a rainy day. 
73. Learn about the Pilgrims and Indians.
74. Bake a loaf of bread.
75. Turn your living room into a family fort with pillows, seat cushions, and sheets.
76. Organize and host a Halloween party for your friends/family/your children's friends.
77. Organize a yard sale to get rid of some old, out-of-season goodies.
78. Put together a puzzle as a family.
79. Make leaf art with finger paint. 
80. Make and eat caramel apples.
81. Make fall cookies. 
82. Go pumpkin bowling.
83. Do a mummy craft. 
84. Take horses for a trail ride.
85. Do a bat craft. 
86. Put up fall/Halloween decorations (go all out!).
87. Do a ghost craft. 
88. Watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Watch Halloween movies.
89. Get comfy socks for the family. 
90. Get rain boots!
91. Go bird-watching.
92. Go on a historic or scary walking tour.
93. Attend a nature program at your local nature park. 
94. Go camping in the backyard. 
95. Go Geocaching.
96. Go to the playground. 
97. Do a pumpkin craft.
98. Go outside and draw, color, and/or paint pictures of the trees.
99. Play "Thankful Ball:" Throw a ball back and forth and say what you're thankful for.
100. Build and navigate an outside obstacle course.
101. Complete a scavenger hunt. 
102. Tell scary ghost stories in the dark with a flashlight. Make shadow puppets.
103. Go fishing, canoeing, or zip-lining.
104. Go hunting with Daddy. 
105. Get a hammock and lay in it together. 
106. Visit a local working farm.
107. Do a turkey craft.
108. Have family and friends over for a huge Thanksgiving dinner. Go all out!

What To Do?

What do you do when baby is this small? They can't read yet; they can't color or paint yet; heck, they can't even walk yet! But, there are a million things you can do with your little ones during this time to boost their cognitive and motor skills, and luckily, they are in the brilliant age where it doesn't have to cost a dime!

These are some of the activities we did with Anna this week:

1. Water Play
Anna absolutely loves splashing in the bathtub ...and Motley's water bowl, so this was perfect! I just laid out a towel on the kitchen floor, put her in her bathing suit, and set out a pot, a spoon, and a bowl with water in it (not full, of course, because if she dumped it, that would be a mess!). She felt it out, figured out what it was, and started to pat at it, then splash in it. She loved it!

If you don't want your little one to be completely soaked, just stick a dish towel in their laps to minimize mess, and even if baby isn't sitting on their own yet, you can sit them in your lap for them to play.

Don't expect this activity to last more than 10-15 minutes (you can't expect much more when it comes to an infant's attention span, haha!), but you can add a toy to the water bowl (all the better to practice their little pincer grasps with) to increase play time. Anna loves her rubber ducky and best bath time friend, Carl!



This activity is great for continuing development with hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills that are so important to reinforce at this age.

2. Homemade Megaphone
My brother, Sean is great at this creativity thing when it comes to babies, and he just took a used paper towel roll and gave it to Anna. He showed her how to talk through it, and though she drooled on it, she caught on super quick! She spent the whole time I was cooking dinner talking into it! She was so interested and excited by the way it changed and magnified her voice!



It's the little, easy things that keep them entertained, you guys!

What kind of activities do you guys do with your little ones?

Baking with Anna!

I'm not much of a baker, but I decided to make a cake this past week: I thought it would be a good activity for Anna and I to do together, and she had so much fun! 

I just mixed the ingredients in the bowl, cooked the cake, and when it was cool, we iced it together. She didn't seem to be a huge chocolate icing fan, but she ended up loving it and spent some time on the kitchen floor eating it off the cake knife.  

I ended up having to end the icing tasting when she decided that her and Motley should share, haha! She acts like the dog really is her sister!

I don't really know how old babies have to be to help Mommy in the kitchen, but I have tons of baby pictures of me sitting in my Bigmama's kitchen, eating the brownie batter out of the mixing bowl. It was a childhood memory I will never forget and one I plan to share very regularly with my little ones!

What about you? What kind of childhood memories do you have that you share or are planning on sharing with your babies?

Seven Months!

Seven months and moving into Month 8! This is our round up for Anna Bear for this past month! We're so excited for costumes and fall coming up! The weather is already starting to get nicer!

What's you and/or your little one's round up for August? Do anything exciting or something you've been trying to accomplish that you'd like to share?

Only 100 Days Left!

Little Baby Boyd (aka Little Bear) is the size of a cauliflower this week! And in two days, I will be 26 Weeks pregnant! We hit the 100 day stretch today, and we're almost in the third trimester! We're SO excited! 

Again, this pregnancy has been a breeze, and with chasing Anna around, I barely notice the belly that's getting bigger and BIGGER every day! Just the lactose intolerance and the want for what I want to eat changing every couple days ...and I'm starting to get a little achy. Sleep has definitely been difficult as of late, but we also have an eight month old! Haha. Also, I can tell I'm carrying Little Man really low because there is a lot of pressure on my lower extremities that I did not have with Anna (At least he's not on my sciatic nerve all the time like she was though!).

I can't believe Anna is getting so darn big! Within a week and a half, she started pulling herself up into a sitting position, crawling, and pulling herself up into a standing position. At this point, she's a speed demon with the crawling (being able to make it from the bedroom to the kitchen in the time it takes me to make her a bottle), and all she wants to do is stand and walk. She's pulling herself up on everything and trying to do some kind of "Mogley" walk.

We're already in the three month stretch for Little Bear, and sadly in a little over three months, Anna will be a year old! It's crazy how fast time flies! Make sure to enjoy every minute of it, you guys, because it's gone in a flash!

To find out more on Week 25 or your week of pregnancy, check out: Mommy's Corner!

Happy Fall!

Ahhh... Fall is my favorite season and definitely my favorite time of year: my birthday, my favorite holiday (Halloween), and oh so much more! I'm so glad summer's pretty much over, and I can't wait for the cool weather to get here! Happy Fall, everyone!

I can't wait to do all of these things with our little Anna Bear! And we'll be picking up her very first Halloween costume next week! 

We typically go to the Columbia County Fair every year, and this year, we're planning to take little Anna, so she can ride the kiddie rides and pet the fluffy animals at the petting zoo. It will be starting on Halloween this year and going through Saturday, November, 9th! I don't know about any of the events or specials going on as of yet, but they typically keep everyone updated here: Columbia County Fair

We're also looking to do a corn maze this year, and I know of a pretty good one located at Steed's Dairy in Grovetown. They also have a pumpkin patch, hay rides, a petting zoo, and tons more! Check it out here: Steed's Dairy

Also, there is a great list of the fall activities going on around here and all over Georgia listed here: Pumpkin Patches & More

What do you have planned for this fall season? Ideas are definitely welcome!

Schedules!

I've seen a lot of parents having trouble with getting their little ones to sleep through the night and/or to have regular schedules. Anna has been sleeping through the night since about two months of age. She definitely isn't a morning person, and the schedule we have worked out really works for all of us:

5-7AM: Wakes up with Joseph's alarm, has a 4 oz. bottle, typically goes back to sleep

10-11AM: Up for the day, clothes change; eats 2 tablespoons of cereal and 4 tablespoons of fruit, has a 2-4 oz. bottle

11AM-1PM: Playtime

1PM: Eats 4 tablespoons of vegetables (sometimes with meat), has a 4 oz. bottle

1-3PM: Usually goes down for a nap, 1-2 hours

3PM: Eats 4 tablespoons of fruit, has a 4 oz. bottle

3-5PM: Playtime while Mommy gets housework done

5PM: Eats 2 tablespoons of cereal and 4 tablespoons of vegetables (sometimes with meat), has a 2-4 oz. bottle

5-7PM: Usually goes down for a nap, 1-2 hours

7-8PM: Playtime with the family since everyone is home, pots and pans while Mommy cooks; finger foods (puffs, yogurt bites, etc.) and juice while the family eats dinner

8-9PM: Wind down with clothes change, cuddling, books, and bath time (if bath night, every other night)

9PM: Nighttime feeding, has a 4 oz. bottle

9-11PM: We usually get her down for the night

What's your little one's schedule? How does it work for you?

It's A...

Sorry that it has taken oh so long to get back on here, but we have had a lot going on!

Anyways, I'm SO excited to announce that we are having a little baby...

BOY!

We had our 20 Week Ultrasound on August 8th, and this time (we're apparently really bad at this), we just knew we were having another little girl, but literally as soon as the technician turned on the ultrasound, she said, "You see that between his legs? It's definitely a boy!"

Joseph just kept talking about he was going to get payback because a boy would be just like him. Our doctor knew how Joseph felt, came in laughing, and said, "So, Joe, it's definitely a penis, and it's definitely not falling off." We're SO excited to be able to give Anna a little baby brother!