2 Days In a Row!

Holy cow, could it really be that I am posting two days in a row??? Yes, it is true. This is what happens when a new computer is at hand and I can geek out with it for days on end!

So, here is a belly shot - me and Tiny Dancer at 22 weeks:

Notice the uber-geeky effect on the photo?- aw yeah, that's the magic of iPhoto, baby.
The power I have at my fingertips! Bwah ha ha!

And, for more of your viewing pleasure, here is a clip of Mike working on the master bathroom. The walls were painted pink to match the pink & gray in the marble - but the color was a bit outdated. In addition, the texture on the walls was lacking a bit, so Mike decided to sand down the texture for a nice fresh surface to work on. He is a bit hard to hear due to the mask he is wearing, but hey, you get the picture. :)

Black Bean Pie

I made this last weekend, when Hosanna was visiting. I always forget how much I enjoy this recipe, and then when I make it I wonder why I don't make it more often!

This recipe originally came from "Buen Provecho" which is a recipe book put together by Peace Corps Ecuador volunteers. Some of the recipes are Ecuadorian (this one is not, sorry!), others are just yummy ones that folks were making in the campo - getting creative with ingredients and the sometimes limited supplies we had on hand.

Black Bean Pie

Ingredients

Pie crust - enough for top & bottom! (homemade or store bought will do - I am a huge fan of the Trader Joe's pre-made pie crust)

Filling

The filling is really just a hodge podge of ingredients that you would use for vegetarian enchiladas. I don't really measure, either (the quantities I've include are estimates!). I am sure you could add meat to this recipe - I usually make it without.

• Black beans, drained & rinsed (1-2 cans, depending on if you use a "deep dish" pie tin a regular one)
• zucchini, chopped (about 1/2 cup each for the veggies)
• mushrooms
• corn
• onion
• bell peppers
• garlic (1 clove)
• tomato (one, chopped)
• chili powder (1 -2 tsp)
• cumin (1 tsp)
• salt
• pepper
• oregano 1/2 tsp (does this seem a little weird? I just added it because it was in my cupboard, and it tasted yummy!)
• cheese
• sour cream
• hot sauce (such as Tapa Tio)
• enchilada sauce (you can always just make your own - which is what I usually do)
• chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped (you could also use jalapenos - and you can use as much or as little as you like, depending on your spiciness preference.

If I make my own sauce, here is what I put in it:

• tomato sauce (1/2 cup)
• water (maybe an 1/8 to a 1/4 cup)
• adobo sauce from the chipotle (a tablespoon or two)
• 1/2 & 1/2 or cream (just a splash, maybe two tablespoons)
• chili powder
• cumin
• salt
• pepper

You want your sauce to a bit thicker or similar consistency to enchilada sauce, so if you added too much water, add tomato sauce to thicken.

Cooking Instructions

• Preheat your oven to about 375 - 400.
• Prepare your pie crust and put the bottom layer into the pie pan. Set aside.
• Saute the onions and garlic until the onions are starting to become translucent. Add the rest of your veggies and all the seasonings (including the chopped chipotle!). Continue sauteing until everything is nice and hot.

Now, at this point you can either be done with the filling, or you can add your beans to the saute of veggies. It is up to you if you want to have it all mixed together, or if you want to layer your beans in the pie, apart from the veggies. Either way it is uber tastey. For this recipe and sake of ease, I will add the beans to the saute mix and mix it all together, cooking for a few minutes until hot. If your mixture has a lot of liquid, either drain it off or use a slatted spoon when scooping out the filling. You don't want your pie to get soggy!

Okay, now it is time to fill the pie!

• Spoon a small amount of your sauce mixture onto the pie crust that is in your pie tin.
• On top of that, spoon a layer of your black bean/veggie mixture. Cover that layer in sauce, and then follow with a generous layer of cheese.
• Continue with another layer of the veggie mix, followed by sauce & cheese until you've filled the pie tin, maybe even heaping a little bit, and then top with your other pie crust. (If you end up with excess filling once the pie is full, just save it for tacos or burritos later in the week, yum!)
  
• Once you close up your pie crust, remember to cut some vents on the top of the pie, so that the filling doesn't leak from the seams!

Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the pie crust is golden brown and a knife, when inserted, pulls out and is hot all the way through! Allow to cool for about 10-15 minutes.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and your favorite hot sauce, if you care to spice it up a bit!

A cross-section snapshot!
This was the next day - after being refrigerated, it really holds its shape!
Does this picture even look appetizing? :)

19 Week Check-in

As promised, this post will be dedicated to the little life growing in my belly.

I hit the 19-week mark yesterday, which means that we have one week to go until the big ultrasound. This is where the tech will do a scan of the developing baby to make sure that growth and development are on track. This is also the scan where many people these days end up finding out the sex of their little one. Mike and I decided that we are going to wait until the birth to find out what we are having.

When people ask if I know what I am having and I tell them our plan, many respond with encouragement. Others wonder how we could wait so long - for planning purposes, connecting with the baby, etc. I guess that for me, and for this pregnancy, I don't connect planning and bonding with finding out the gender. I feel very connected to this little one, especially when I feel the little taps, bumps, and turns that are becoming more of a daily occurrence as the weeks pass by. My favorite time of the day is early morning, before the house is awake. I had one day earlier this week when I went into work unusually early, and there was something so special about the day being so still and it being just my and this little life that I foster in this belly of mine.

As for planning, I consider myself a planner. From my perspective, I can do all the planning without knowing if we are having a boy or a girl. We have our little girl name picked out, the baby furniture should be available for pick up within the next few weeks, and the bedding and all sorts of other stuff sit in our spare bedroom, waiting for the time when we get our act together to set up the nursery. We have a car seat and even a coming home outfit! Here are a few pics of the furniture and the bedding:

Who knows how I will feel if we end up deciding to have another child in a few years. At that point, we may end up deciding to find out, just to see what that is like, and how it impacts the process. That is, if we decide to have another one! We have a while before we need to tackle that decision. In the meantime, we are just hoping that this one is healthy and doing just fine.

I still have many fears around losing this pregnancy, and as I near the scan date, my anxiety increases. My fears are around growth and development. I try to tell myself that my belly is getting bigger, and the fact that I am feeling the baby move more here and there tells me that everything in on track. After experiencing pregnancy loss, however, that fear is never really gone. It dissipates as each week passes, but still quietly lurks in the background.

Here is proof that my belly is getting bigger by the week, by the way:

19 weeks, 1 day

The End of and Era (well, four years, at least)

I have the final diagnosis for my Mac, and let me tell you that there is no good news to report. I contemplated wearing a black armband for the first week, but thought better of it, thinking that I may be risking a bit of melodrama with such action.

I will spare you the gory details of the diagnostics - although I know you are so dying to know. After receiving dismal news from the initial service provider I decided to take the computer to the Apple store for diagnostics with an Apple Genius. I must say that these guys lived up to their name (thanks Tony, thanks Drew!). They worked for nearly three hours to troubleshoot the problem. There were moments of joy and light only to be overshadowed by clouds of darkness and despair. Ultimately, the logic board ended up being fried. I will now proceed to completely geek out and include a picture of the gory details. Viewer discretion is advised.

See how the tops of some caps are silver, and some are silver and kind of a coppery color? Well, all the caps are supposed to be silver, and the copper ones are the caps that are fried. The silver lining to all of this is that I was able to get all of my data. Now I just need to get a computer to put it on . . .

More pregnancy updates in the next post - I promise. Although, I know that this is so enthralling and many of you are secretly thinking, "I wish Tracy would post only about her computer and other areas of geek love in her life."

Happy Wednesday - only two days left in the work week!

Missing You . . .

I am going through serious computer withdrawls. I have been without my Mac for 4 days. I go into our home office, and where my lovely computer once sat is now a pile of unplugged cables, a keyboard, and a mouse that is without purpose. As if I need another cruel reminder of how silly it was for me to try mess with my Mac's operating system without doing some research, the Panther installation guide sits on top of the keyboard. Each time I walk into the office I remember back to a little over a week ago when I smugly thought I could just pop the upgrade disk in and all would be merry. Little did I know.

My Mac is at a local repair shop, which got a mix of excellent and absolutely dismal reviews on Yelp, so I fear the phone call I get from them - will all my data be lost? Will it cost an arm and a leg to fix the computer? Will they hold it ransom for months on end? Oh, woe is me and my computerless self.

I've been using Mike's computer a bit, and here I am at work sneaking in a minute of blogging to update y'all. So, I am not without my fix - no dts happening here, no sirree.

As for updates on the pregnancy front, I have 2+ weeks until the big anatomy scan and my next prenatal appointment. I continue to feel pretty good, and I am able to feel the baby move more and more with each passing day. We have the furniture ordered, a car seat donated to us by our friends the Hannafords (thank you!), and some clothes that I have stored away in a bin.

We are not finding out the sex, so most of the clothes I have are hand-me-downs that we will either use or donate, depending on what we are surprised with when this little one comes into the world.

Mike is off work again, which has its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are obvious - no income, tighter budget, etc. The advantages do help balance that out, though. He gets a ton of stuff done around the house, including gardening, home repair, some minor remodel stuff, and other general upkeep that tends to fall to the wayside when we are both working.

So, that is a brief, uneventful update from me. Hopefully I will have my computer back by the end of the week, if the stars are in alignment for me! Please say prayers and bring an abundant offering to the gods of technology!

Technical Difficulties

My Mac is out of comission. Braniac over here tried to upgrade my operating system without taking all necessary steps, and now I have to take my Mac in for repair this week. Mike's computer is still limping along, so maybe I will be able to post from there. I am posting from work right now (on my lunch, thank you!).

I am also eating chocolate covered raisins.

15 weeks, 2 days (The Fourth Month)

Depending on the source, the second trimester of pregnancy either begins at 12 weeks or 14 weeks. There may be another way to figure it out, but either way you shake it, the chance of miscarriage decreases to about 1%. Some of the pregnancy books that I read tell a story of the second trimester (2t from now on) being the "honeymoon" period of pregnancy. I have found this to be true - to a certain extent.

There have been many things that have changed in the past month or so - starting with nausea. Many women begin to lose the early symptoms of pregnancy at about 12 weeks, when the placenta takes over hormone production. I noticed a decrease in my symptoms a bit earlier than that, when either a) the placenta first began ramping up, or b) my body adjusted to the onslaught of hormones that happens during pregnancy. I think it may have been a little of both. Whatever it was - the nausea started to go away - thank goodness!

When we went home at Christmas (10 weeks), I felt relieved that the constant gagging and the intense food/smell aversions had lessoned. My energy levels seemed a bit up, too. Over the past month, I have felt better and better. The most nagging and lingering symptom was heartburn, which sometimes would start at 10am and hang around all day. Not a pleasant feeling, let me tell you. The past few days, however, the heartburn has been almost gone! I don't know if it is because it has simply gone away, or because I started taking B6 again.

I consulted with the herbalist at Herblore and she recommended a couple of things for heartburn. One was take something to increase digestive enzymes, and the other was to take Slippery Elm. I have some B6 in the house, so I started to take that three days ago (it helps with digestive enzymes). What. A. Relief. I am going to head out to a vitamin shop to pick up the Slippery Elm, and I hope that with the combination of the two, my heartburn will be taken care of. At least until I am so huge that my stomach is squished up into my throat!

Speaking of big - I am at that funny stage where I haven't really "popped" yet, but I am definitely expanding and growing. In my mind's eye, I don't look pregnant - but I don't really feel all that fat, either. Granted, I have my moments of feeling huge, but I am not complaining, really (unless I happen to be really tired and grumpy). What bothers me, though, is that I just don't "feel" pregnant right now. I know that this is a common remark often muttered by a pregnant woman during the early 2t, but man - it is a head trip. It doesn't help the "PAL" brain, either. You see, I consider myself a PAL - someone who is Pregnant after Loss. What that means is that every little twinge, or lack thereof, has the potential to trigger the fear of another loss. So - here is a dangerous combo for a PAL:

no popping + no symptoms + no movement (too early) = something must be wrong

These past couple of weeks, my main fear is that my baby is not growing. Now, my wise mind - the rational side of me knows that for a woman in her first pregnancy, it is common that she will "pop" sometime around 18 weeks. My PAL mind is not having any of that nonsense. So, I pray - I talk to the soul of my unborn child and express deep gratitude for every passing day that I share with this baby. I thank the soul of my uterus for providing a rich, nourishing, and protective environment for this special cargo to grow and flourish. I look to the Universe - something greater than myself - and I ask for safety, strength, and protection. And I hope, with all my heart and soul, that next week, at my 16 week check-up, all will be well. Oh - and I also hope that I pop soon or feel the baby.*

In the meantime, here I am tonight - at 15 weeks, 2 days:




*I actually think I might be feeling some movement, but what with this being my first & all - I am not sure - it could just be gas. **blush**