ellie belly update : 23.5 weeks

hey everyone!

i don't know about you, but summer already seems to be flying by. i know summer didn't officially start until a few days ago, but to me it's summer when memorial day comes and goes. i always start panicking by this time of the year that i'm not doing enough to take advantage of these long summer days!

while this is not a pregnancy blog and i don't intend it to be one, i do read a lot of blogs that do weekly updates with questions that they ask themselves to keep track of how they feel and what's going on each week. i haven't done this before and i may not do it again, but i thought it might be fun to keep track of the somewhat-midpoint of this pregnancy with a little dedicated blog post.

let's give this a go!

baby ellie is 57.5% baked :)

michael and i have been taking weekly pictures like the one above since the 9-week mark. this one was taken last saturday. it is so funny to flip them through them all and see how i've changed! i don't typically share them (other than with my mom and bff), so this may be the only one you get! enjoy :)

how far along?: 23 weeks and 4 days

maternity clothes: oh yeah. the dress i'm wearing in this picture isn't maternity, but it's really loose and forgiving so it's perfect right now! if i wear jeans, i'm wearing maternity jeans. i've tried a couple of days lately with my regular jeans and bella band, but there's just no comparison in the comfort level, especially for a full day at work. i can still wear a lot of my regular shirts that were loose-fitting originally, but i'm working in a good amount of maternity shirts too. i also bought my first maternity bathing suit! talk about a weird experience...

stretch marks: nope! i've been using palmer's belly butter every morning and coconut oil every night to try to keep those away. thankfully i hear they're mostly genetic, and my mom was able to avoid them during both of her pregnancies, so let's hope i do the same!

sleep: still good! i've been waking up more often for bathroom breaks, but i fall right back to sleep. i have been waking up about 20 minutes before my alarm goes off in the past week or 2, but that's not really unusual for me. i do use an extra pillow, but that's the only thing i've changed.

best moment this week: michael put the crib together and hung curtains in the nursery last friday, which was so exciting! my parents visited us on saturday and bought us what we needed to finish up the crib: mattress, mattress pad, sheets, blanket, crib skirt, bumpers, etc. it was so fun! the crib is so precious and i love it.

miss anything?: i miss sleeping on my stomach every once in awhile, and getting out of a low car without thinking twice. i didn't realize how much my balance was already affected until this past week when i almost fell out of our altima onto the sidewalk in front of our house. and yes, a neighbor was watching. :)

movement: all the time! she's most active in the morning, around 4-5pm, and when i get in bed at night. we're having so much fun feeling (and sometimes watching) her move!

food cravings: i haven't really had any cravings to speak of. i've wanted a lot of things, but i've been able to live without them, so i don't think that really qualifies. :) in the first trimester i wanted a lot of carb-y stuff like sandwiches and crackers, as well as my intense need for laffy taffy. i've always liked laffy taffy though, so i don't know if it was necessarily a craving or something i just really wanted! i'm still not craving anything, but cold things sound so good all the time (ice cream, italian ice, cold water, cantaloupe that's been in the fridge, cucumbers...i could go on). last night i couldn't stop thinking about ice cream so we went to dairy queen and i had a confetti cake blizzard...you outdid yourself with that one, dq.

anything making you queasy/sick: nope! i've been really lucky on that front too. i was pretty nauseous when i got hungry during the first trimester, but since about 12 weeks i've been feeling normal. 

exercise: still steady! i've been doing the tracy anderson pregnancy project video at least 3-4 times a week, and michael and i take the dogs for walks at night pretty often. feeling good about my exercise so far!

gender: girly girl :)

symptoms: my back will hurt randomly after a long day, and i have had a few days of swollen feet after especially active days at work, but that's about it. 

wedding rings on or off: thankfully on! i imagine this might become an issue later on, especially in the heat of july and august, but as of right now i can't tell any difference in how they fit.

looking forward to: our next major nursery purchase, the glider! we already picked out the one we want, so it will be exciting when we order it and add it to the growing furniture collection. also looking forward to my next doctor's appointment in july, even though it will include the glucose test that i've heard so many stories about!

crockpot chicken & stuffing

happy the-week-is-halfway-over wednesday! as soon as summer rolls around and i know it's warm and sunny outside, my work week countdown goes into serious mode.

today i'm sharing a not-so-summery meal, but it's SO good. i mean, i could probably eat an entire crockpot full of it.

crockpot meals don't scream "summer", but they're really convenient all year round. they don't make your house hotter like an oven tends to do sometimes, and i enjoy the smell of food cooking all day regardless of the time of year. this meal in particular is especially fall-ish due to the stuffing, but i personally think stuffing is under-used and should be eaten way more often than just at thanksgiving!

as usual, i found this recipe on pinterest. it's originally from i save a 2 z. 

crockpot chicken & stuffing

• 4 chicken breasts (recipe calls for defrosted but you can really use frozen chicken too. we did, and we just accounted for the water that would come from the frozen chicken when the recipe calls for extra water in step 6)
• 2 small cans cream of chicken soup (lite if you can find it!)
• 2 boxes of stuffing mix
• 1 cup sour cream (again, lite if possible)
• 1 small package frozen green beans

1. spray your crockpot with cooking spray.

2. put chicken breasts in the bottom of the crockpot.

3. pour the dry stuffing mix over the chicken.

4. in a separate bowl, mix together the soup and sour cream. put this mixture over the dry stuffing.

5. add the frozen green beans as the last layer. (my smart hubby, who is the one who actually made this meal, waited until everything was about halfway cooked to add the green beans. that way they didn't get soggy.)

6. add about 1 cup of water to the top of the mixture. (this is where we accounted for a little extra water that might come from our frozen chicken. we only added about 3/4 cup)

7. cook on high for 4 hours or low for 7-8 hours.

here's a picture of the finished product courtesy of i save a 2 z:

this meal smells amazing, tastes even better, is super easy, and is pretty cost-conscious. win-win-win-win.

enjoy!

highlights (and a few lowlights) from our euro trip

we made it back! our trip to europe was wonderful...so much fun, full of adventures, and lots of quality time with my man. as always though, it's so nice to be home and back with our puppies.

here are my favorite (and a few least favorite) things from our trip:

paris

paris was cool! i really think i set myself up for disappointment in paris because i had such high expectations. i just thought it would be a romantic wonderland of beautiful sparkly things (i know...i know). needless to say, it wasn't, but we did have a really good time there!

our hotel in paris was the smallest of the trip, but it was in a good, walkable location in a safe neighborhood. 

we decided to use subways as much as possible during the trip to save on cab fares, and i'm so glad we did! we ended up using the subways in paris, london, and rome, and they were all good experiences. SO much cheaper than taking cabs everywhere, and it's so fun to ride along with locals and listen to them talk.

one of my least favorite things about paris was the amount of homeless people (and dogs). there were homeless people everyyyywhere, and 80% of them had dogs with them. while i'm glad they take care of the dogs and all the dogs we saw had food and beds, it still made me so sad!

we took a hop-on, hop-off bus tour in paris and i recommend it! we used l'open tour, and it took us to all of the major sights (the louvre, notre dame, the champs-elysees, arc de triomphe, eiffel tower, etc.). we did the tour the first day we were in town, because we landed at 7 am and couldn't check into our hotel room until about 3. we dropped off our luggage then went on the tour in an attempt to stay awake. we almost made it all day before finally succumbing to naptime.

my single favorite moment in paris was having dinner in the eiffel tower. there's a restaurant on the first floor of the tower that serves 3-course meals and is so romantic and beautiful! our dinner reservation was at 9, so we were inside the tower when it started lighting up and twinkling. the food was good, and it was such a memorable moment for us that i'm glad we were able to do.

notre dame..so beautiful, inside and out

laduree for macarons...such a beautiful store,
and amazing sweet treats

celebrated both 20 and 21 weeks while gone...you
have no idea how long it took us to find a 20 that i liked!

favorite moment in paris...dinner in the eiffel tower

london

london used to be my favorite city in the world (so far), and after our trip, it's still my favorite city in the world (so far). i realize i may visit somewhere in the future that trumps it, but as of now it's at the top of my list! it's just so clean (for a major city), i love british accents, and i'm a sucker for the monarchy. i love seeing crowns, royal parks, etc. everywhere..just so different and fun.

we did another bus tour in london since there's SO much to see and it's fairly spread out. we used the original london sightseeing tour and loved it! we made a huge loop of the city and saw all of the sights we wanted to. the bus tour also included free tickets for a thames river boat tour, so we took advantage of that halfway through our main sightseeing day. it was nice to sit and cruise down the river while still seeing some cool sights.

our hotel in london was fabulous! we stayed at the kensington hotel, and, while the room was a little smaller than we're used to, it was beautiful. the staff was awesome, and it was in a great location. we were only about a 5 minute walk from the nearest subway station, which took us everywhere we wanted to go in less than 15 minutes.

we also can say we (sort of) saw the queen! when we visited buckingham palace, we were out front by the queen victoria memorial statue and saw some commotion over by the road. the queen was leaving in her motorcade! we didn't really see her (or much of anything really), but it's fun to say we were there!

ellie's gift from the trip-the cutest onesie
covered in pink crowns!

my handsome husband in front of big ben

a police officer stopped us from walking down this one particular
sidewalk and when we asked, he said there was a parade coming!
trooping the colour was a few days away, and the parade was part of the
festivities kicking off the event. so fun!

venice

i'm so glad we went to venice on this trip! we didn't really know for sure what the 4th city we visited should be, and venice was sort of a random choice, but it was the perfect 3rd stop! 

i know it's sort of obvious that you have to take boats to get around in venice, but for some reason i was still so surprised when we got off the plane at the airport and had to book a boat instead of a taxi to our hotel. it was so fun though! pulling up to venice and starting to navigate the canals on the way to our hotel is one of my favorite memories from the trip.

our hotel in venice was awesome! we stayed at the aqua palace, which was in a great location, about a 5 minute walk from st. mark's basilica. it was right on a canal, and we had a first-floor room with windows opening out over the canal. it was so nice to sit in our room with the windows open and watch the gondolas go by.

we didn't do a gondola ride ourselves while in venice, for a few reasons. one, the whole gondola deal looked a lot cheaper and more touristy in person than i thought it would. i had grand ideas of secluded, romantic gondola rides with singing italian men in striped shirts, but really the only accurate thing about that dream was the italian man in the striped shirt. i only heard a couple sing, and there were so many gondola stands trying to get you to pay them for a ride. it was also pretty expensive for a ride at/after sunset, which is when we would've wanted to do it, so we opted out. i don't feel like i missed anything!

the pizza in venice was awesome, and we had a really good time just sitting at the outdoor cafes talking to people and watching crowds walk by. there's not a whole lot to see in venice like there is in the other places we visited, so it was nice to take some time to just sit, relax, and binge eat gelato. :)

pizza! 

boating

michael hates this picture of himself but i love it. this is a little
stoop at our hotel where they had stools and tables for you to just
sit and watch what was going on in the canal. so nice!

rome

rome was the most difficult city to navigate for me. first of all, it was about 95 degrees both days we were there, and more than half of the establishments in rome don't have air conditioning. secondly, all of the sights we wanted to see were fairly spread out, and not necessarily on a subway line, so it was harder to figure out whether to walk or take a cab to each. finally, being 21 weeks pregnant, i needed pretty frequent bathroom breaks. rome was the least convenient place to find a bathroom on the whole trip. not a huge deal normally, but to pregnant me trying to stay hydrated, it was annoying.

all that being said, the history nerd in me LOVED the sights in rome! it is amazing to see things that were built in 100 a.d. it's hard to even wrap my head around dates like that.

visiting the vatican and doing the guided tour of the vatican museums and st. peter's basilica was probably the highlight of the rome leg of the trip. we reserved the tour in advance through dark rome tours, and they were great! we had a group of about 15 people, and each of us had headsets so we could hear our tour guide talking. she was really knowledgeable about all of the art and history of the vatican museums, so we learned a lot from her.

since we had advance tickets, we were able to skip the mile-long line of hot, tired, and somewhat angry people that were already lined up at 9:30 am. if you go to the vatican, get your tickets in advance! it would be crazy to wait til the day of and waste time in that line.

st. peter's basilica was huge and beautiful, pretty similar to what i expected. we toured the underground grottos too, to see some tombs of past popes. we saw st. peter's tomb and the pieta, which was beautiful. 

i'm not a big fan of art in general, but the art i saw at the vatican was just overwhelming! to see paintings, sculptures, and architecture by raphael, da vinci, and michelangelo all in one place was pretty amazing. unfortunately you can't take pictures in the sistine chapel, but seeing the humongous last judgment painting by michelangelo in person was incredible.

inside the colosseum

outside of st. peter's

pieta

overall, we had a fabulous time and are so happy that we decided to do this trip! we saw a lot of people struggling with kids, strollers, etc., and we're really glad we did this trip before we have kids to either haul with us or leave behind. it was a perfect babymoon, and we are all adventured-out for quite awhile. i have a feeling our next few vacations will be of the all-inclusive beach variety. :) courtney-here's looking at you and harris for a joint vacay!

also, by way of baby ellie updates, she is now moving and kicking like crazy! my belly grew noticeably while we were gone, and i got several comments from strangers while on our trip. i also got offered a subway seat which was a fun, stereotypically pregnant experience :) it's so nice to be able to feel her move-it makes things seem so much more real!

now that the trip is over, we're in full-time nesting mode. nursery updates and a diy or 2 coming soon!