I didn't sleep at all last night

Last night was probably the first of many sleepless nights caused by Mini McEvoy. This is what the baby was doing all night long:



In other news, I got my H1N1 vaccine today. Yay! Now I don't have to worry about pigs sneezing on me.

Baby's First Plane Trip (in utero)

I suspect our upcoming trip to New York will be the first of many trips for Mini McEvoy. I'm a little nervous about swelling to the size of, well, the plane but I'm looking forward to the trip nonetheless. I will be drinking gallons of water and will insist that Adam let me put my legs up on his. (I also may insist on a foot rub or three.)

This week, baby is the size of an eggplant. Mmm..eggplant parmesan.

Nursery Decor

Maybe it is a little misleading to call a corner of our bedroom the "nursery." We live in a 1-bedroom apartment (until the summer, at least) and so Mini McEvoy will get a corner, albeit the best corner, in the room.

That little fact is not going to stop me from decorating but I am trying to keep the decorations cheap, easy to move and to a minimum. A focus of my decorating has been on the mobile. I don't like any of the mobiles available in stores (they seem to be more for the adults in the room rather than the baby lying in the crib) so I decided to make a mobile instead.

I first saw this and thought I'd give something similar a try. I liked the fact that this would look interesting from the baby's perspective.

But then I saw this and fell in love with the branch part. (Not so much the star part.)

I think I'll be able to cobble something together. We'll see what happens. Mini McEvoy may end up with just a branch hanging above his/her crib.

I have to say I've already felt a little Mama guilt because my baby will not have his/her own nursery. Despite the fact that this situation will remedy itself when the baby is 6-7 months old, the guilt remained until I saw Oprah's tour of a typical Danish house.

It reminded me that I really don't need a big house to be happy and neither do my kids.

Catching Up

I'm such a good mother already - I stopped writing about my child at week 10. During those first 10 weeks of pregnancy, Adam and I were the only ones who knew so the only way I could express what I was thinking (and feeling) was by talking to Adam and writing about it on the blog.

And then, of course, not posting it.

But once all of our family and friends knew, I didn't feel the need to write about it any more. Plus, my entire 1st and 2nd trimester were so (please don't hate me) uneventful. I never once had morning sickness or any of the other usual symptoms of pregnancy. I felt totally normal during that time and there honestly just wasn't much to write about.

Now, however, I feel the baby move and I am (finally) showing so I guess I should get on the ball. I have finally posted those 10 posts so you can read them here. If you don't want to read all of them, you can just read the one when I describe the day we found out we were going to be parents.

New Blog Name!

Our new blog name: Ramble Bramble. Adam came up with this name and we both really liked it.

There are a few definitions of the word "Ramble" but this one is my favorite:

Ramble (v) to take a course with many turns or windings, as a stream or path.

This seems to describe Adam and I because we have taken many different turns in our life thus far and we will probably take many more. We kind of like it that way.

A bramble, Adam tells me, is a blackberry bush which really has no significance in our life. But it rhymes with ramble and I giggle whenever Adam says "Ramble Bramble" so it works.

This blog will include all the adventures of our small family including: pregnancy, babies, gardening, trips, cooking, family, friends, jobs, etc.

Hope you enjoy!

I've imported all of our 25x50 blog posts and incorporated them into the new blog but we will no longer be writing there and the comments section has been turned off.

Sweet Potato Harvest

Adam and I harvested roughly 25 sweet potatoes from our garden today. I have plans for these potatoes: ranging from a savory sweet potato bread to sweet potato soup. For tonight, we made a two potato gratin that I got from a Moosewood Restaurant cookbook.

First, let me just say that I love the Moosewood and all of their cookbooks. If I could take Ithaca and subtract the 100 ft of snow they get every year, add in some southern accents and food and shake it until it ended up closer to my parents in Arkansas I would totally live there.

This gratin was the perfect recipe for Adam and I because it combined one of his favorite foods (potatoes) with one of mine (sweet potatoes) and topped it with a mutual favorite (cheese). I have to say, though, I think I'd add less cheese than what the recipe required. What you see here is 4 oz of grated Havarti but it kind of overwhelmed the sweet potato flavor. All in all, however, the gratin was spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that I forgot to take a picture before we dug in.

Relish Your Garden

In the height of the summer, Adam and I ventured out to the garden in the early morning hours to pick all of our green tomatoes, peppers and onions. We then spent the next two days in my parents' kitchen making my Gram's relish.

This particular relish is a family recipe and, therefore, a big secret. I can tell you there is a lot of chopping involved and several cups of vinegar and sugar but a better accompaniment to black-eyed peas I've never found. Luckily, we had some red peppers in the mix so the relish looks Christmas-y and will make great gifts when that time rolls around.

The huge benefit to making this relish is that we put so many tomatoes to good use. Not being much of a fresh tomato eater myself, Adam and I were often lost as to what to do with the vast amounts of tomatoes we had on hand. Luckily, this relish pretty much wiped us out.

The best part of making this relish is that Adam and I got the very first quart all to ourselves.