A visit to the park

We went an explored a new park in the Beaverdale area today. Witmer Park is a really cute little area with lovely pond surrounded by a trail. Up on the hill next to the pond is a playground area and a grass field. There isn’t a whole lot of Imy-sized play equipment, but we still managed to have fun and Imogen made friends with a little girl who was sharing gummy bears. :p
Imogen really enjoyed herself, she’s a swing fiend. :p
And a few pictures from my cousin’s graduation/birthday party this past weekend. It was a lot of fun to visit with everybody there, AND Imogen (and maybe mom too) had a blast in the bounce-house they had!
My cousin (congrats again Carly!) is rocking it and thinking of going into law so it will be fun to hear of her college adventures in the coming years.

Today has been a nice and lazy kind of day.

 

Warm Days

Spring is finally here to stay it seems. Of course now we’re in the 90s in Iowa. Snow one weeks and sweltering heat the next, welcome to the Midwest  Regardless of the temperature today we had a lovely past couple of days with some cool breezes and sunny weather. My friend came to visit from Tennessee so we went out and enjoyed a bit of Des Moines. Imogen had a blast at the downtown sculpture park even if she was only interested in running up and down the hills. We also enjoyed tasty iced coffee at Ritual Cafe, yummy dinner at Outback Steakhouse and some froyo at Lemon Tree.

Thanks to all the rain and sunshine our garden is showing signs of life. A lot of signs. I snapped a few pictures with my phone before a bumblebee started buzzing around.

Sugar Snap Peas

Strawberries

Kale, mmmmm.

 

Mixed salad greens (and reds).
We may also have some signs of life from carrots, a few herbs, beets, and broccoli but some of these are pretty hard to distinguish from the plethora of mini weeds that have sprouted as well so I’ll wait a few days before snapping some more pictures. Tomatoes are doing wonderfully and our corn is just starting to come up. Our blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry plants all survived the snowy weather and seem to be thriving now. The only thing not doing so hot is our grapes but it seems like they’re slowly starting to put out new vines after the cold weather damaged the old ones. Our backyard has more or less turned into our future grocery store.

Still alive with natural remedies.

After the hospital I was busy, busy, busy. No, they never really gave me a reason as to why I ended up in the emergency room. Possibly pancreatitis, but since it resolved so quickly maybe it was just gastritis? Here, here are some drugs you shouldn’t take while breastfeeding to treat symptoms and not solve problems. Awesome.

Needless to say, I took it upon myself to research about both conditions and also learn about various treatment options, leaning toward the natural-based remedies. I appreciate modern medicine and all for the wonderful and amazing things they can do but sometimes it just seems like a better idea to use a more traditional approach. Seeing as I wasn’t in any severe pain anymore and my condition was improving I began taking DGL, vitamin C and manuka honey.

I left the hospital still in a good deal of discomfort anytime I ate. As soon as I got home I grabbed a spoonful of raw honey, and it was instant relief. Seriously.  My doctor laughed at me during my follow-up appointment when I told him my plans and showed him what I was taking, but said that as long as it was helping I could continue to take the supplements instead.

I was also told to eat a low-fat diet. The diet plan handed to me insisted avocados were the enemy and bread, pasta and carbs were surely my savior. It was my turn to laugh. This makes no sense to me at all. If I indeed had pancreatitis how is eating tons of carbs going to help me heal, the pancreas secretes insulin after all. Since I was pregnant with Imogen I have stuck to a semi-Paleo diet. So I threw that low-fat ridiculousness in the recycling as soon as I got home. I have continued my diet of lots of veggies and fruit, mostly lean proteins and for the most part no dairy or processed carbs (like bread and pasta). I’m not going to lie, I eat some processed stuff occasionally, like a slice of cake (or two), and the occasional PB&J on bread. I definitely eat rice, quinoa, peanuts and peanut butter and sometimes white potatoes; hence the semi-Paleo. But the low-fat plan made me giggle.

So far so good. I have added several different supplements to my prior routine (turmeric, grape seed extract, and a few others), but otherwise life is back to normal.

in the hospital

That above is my third IV in 48 hours. My veins are the worst. On the bright side my hands and arms are nice a bruised up so it looks like I’ve been in a wicked fight or a mosh pit, so surely nobody would dare mess with such a tough lady right? :p

So I’m in the hospital almost exactly a year after having my gallbladder out. My body said ‘Happy Cholecystectomy Anniversary, remember this pain?!’ I starting feeling sick on Saturday and assumed I was just catching what Imy had come down with earlier in the week as I had very similar beginning symptoms. Come Sunday night however, I had the worst pain in my stomach since my gallbladder attacks. All out of the blue and totally unexpected. I assumed something was very wrong and off to the hospital E.R. we went.

It turned out to be pancreatitis. So far no real reason for it to have happened, just a random flare up. It could be due to recent stress with finances and Imogen being sick that caused it, a retained stone that may have passed on its own, I actually was sick with what Imy had and that caused it, or it could be a myriad of any other reasons. I have been on a clear liquids diet for about 24 hours now and I can tell you that I have never been so excited to eat food (except after my last hospital visit for the gallbladder), but I’m also a little terrified of it setting my pancreas off again. Tomorrow I’ll get official news from my doctor and I’m hoping they will let me eat one meal here before sending me home just to make sure nothing crazy happens. Otherwise I’m really beginning to feel a lot better, still a little uncomfortable and tender in the tummy but nothing like I was on Sunday night.

I’ve had the most amazing nurses and hospital staff tending to me and I’m super thankful they’ve all been so sweet. Imogen has helped by charming everybody while she wanders the halls with Dan.

Dan has been super amazing the whole time and has luckily been able to stay by my side with Imogen nearly the entire time, he’s only really stepped away for a few hours at a time to go take care of our pets at home and get Imogen fed something other than juice and granola bars (which the nurse’s have been treating her to, hehe!) I’ve also had lots of amazing friends and family sending me flowers, get-well-soon cards and prayers and I’m super thankful to everybody! Here’s to hoping I get to head home tomorrow and start feeling more normal!

lately

The poor baby has been throwing up since last night and cannot seem to keep anything down but a few sips of water at a time. Waking up in the middle of the night to a screaming baby and finding yourself covered in baby vomit? Not so awesome. The hot shower and baby snuggles made up for it though. Thankfully she’s sleeping soundly for the time being and hopefully she’ll be feeling much better when she wakes up, poor kiddo.

I have been busy a lot the last few weeks with studying and working around the house. Here are a few things that have happened:

New Kindle, because my old one died unexpectedly when somebody crawled over the top of it (either the dog, the baby or myself) when it was buried in the blankets on the bed. I was out of warranty but Amazon customer service was kind enough to give me a decent discount on a new one AND gave me a $20 credit for a new case because I’d just purchased my nice leather one for my old Kindle Keyboard. I was really apprehensive at first about a new Kindle (I was kind of attached to my old one) but I actually really like both the Kindle and the new case more than my last one. 

New tattoo. Crummy picture. My sister and I got matching Doctor Who tattoos. 

Imy enjoyed her first Easter basket. She went wild over the freeze dried fruit so it has become a regular snack for us now.

Lots of time playing outside in the lovely spring weather (which is m.i.a. this week, erg!) and soaking up some sun while working on our garden.

And garden progress. Our strawberries began coming up a few weeks ago. We moved a potato outside also and planted some flowers Imy picked out in her little mini-bed. Everything is tented today to protect the plants from the supposed snow we’re supposed to be getting tomorrow. Can’t wait for that system to pass so we can get to planting everything else!

“Kitty!” Imogen’s first official word is in fact ‘kitty’ and at first just the kitties were kitties, but now all things are kitties. Natural process in speech development, but so stinking cute! She also signs ‘kitty’, ‘dog’, ,’milk’, ‘more’, ‘all done’, ‘drink’, and very rarely something else will pop in there but no others have really stuck yet. We’re working on ‘bird’, ‘eat/food’, and now ‘flower’ since we’re out in the yard so much. Baby signs are the cutest.

Spring is…here?

Spring is giving us a few little teases every now and again here in Iowa. Its a little funny, last year when I was pregnant all I wanted was some snow. We only had a super-mild, mostly snowless winter. This year, I enjoyed the snow but I am ready to be done with it and get outside! The weather has just been back and forth so much lately, I want to open up the house and keep it that way!

Happenings since my last post, it snowed and we went outside for a bit (aka a few minutes because we got all wet and snowy):


Imogen loved it, I was not so keen on the whole snow-in-my-shoes thing.

I turned 26 earlier this month and was super spoiled with video games, a new camera, lots of tasty foods, a new moveable island for the kitchen/dining room, and lots of friends and family. 26, I guess I’m really an adult now right? Riiiiight.
We ordered from Wallace Farms for the first time, our first pick-up is tomorrow, I’ll write more about it at a later date.

This weekend was supposed to be nice, and indeed Friday was lovely. Saturday? Nope, we were back to the 30s and a bitter breeze. We still ventured outside to de-poop the yard (ugh, dogs) and put together the last of Imogen’s birthday presents:
Phooka and Cinder got in on the action too:

And Imogen very quickly figured out how to use the slide by scooting down it backwards on her tummy:

Despite the fact it was chilly out Imy seemed to enjoy herself:

I am eager for warmer weather. I long for days when I don’t have to worry about sand, salt, and snow being tracked into the house (bleh!) and days where two dogs, 2 cats, a baby and a mama aren’t cooped up indoors for days. And summer clothes! Oh, summer clothes and not having to get all bundled up just to go to the store. And I absolutely cannot wait to open the house up for some all-day fresh air, there is just something about a breeze through the windows that feels absolutely amazing. And running, I am so excited to get back to it.

Until the weather decides to make up its mind I’ll be snuggled up indoors with the baby, working on putting the house back together (yeah, its still in quite a state after the kitchen renovation), working on my medical transcription studies, and crocheting to my heart’s content.

Hurry up spring!

Super Flavrrrrr Paleo Meatloaf

Mmmmmm, I love meatloaf. I haven’t made any in quite some time because I was too lazy to consider any other possibilities outside of bread crumbs for mixing in. After whipping up some pineapple dipping sauce for fish last night using coconut flour I stumbled into a half a bag of almond flour that had been hiding out and thought BOOM, problem solved. Another typical problem is the ketchup, look at your ketchup bottle. Is there high fructose corn syrup in there? Ugh! It is in everything, it is maddening and terrible! But there IS no-sugar ketchup out there, there is hope! So anyway, here is a tasty, super flavorful and super simple meatloaf recipe! This will be the #1 go-to meatloaf recipe in our house from now on. And its baby approved!

Ingredients:
-2lbs. meat, I used deer we had in the freezer
-1 cup almond meal flour
-2 eggs
-4-5 cloves garlic, minced
-1 leek, prepped, cleaned and minced (you could also use 1 onion)
-2 tbsp. Creole seasoning (a mix of sea salt, black pepper, chili powder, cayenne pepper, paprika, onion powder is what ours consists of!)
-4-5 tbsp. no-sugar ketchup
-salt and pepper to taste
-a little more ketchup for spreading on top

*As a side note, you can really use any ketchup you have on hand, you don’t need to go out and buy no-sugar stuff unless you are really into Paleo. We didn’t have no-sugar this time around but we had a ketchup with a very small amount of organic sugar.

And we’re off!
Preheat oven to 350.

While its heating prepare your leek by splitting it down the middle (but not all the way!) and rinsing all the dirt from between the leaves. I removed most of the dark green leaves from the outside too. Proceed to chop, chop, chop until you have turned that leek into a lovely pile of leek bits.

Mince the garlic cloves! Why is garlic so sticky? Ugh!

Combine all the ingredients into a large bowl (including your 4-5 tbsp. of ketchup) and proceed to get all gross and mix it all up. Mmmm, meat. My picture above is prior to eggs, ketchup and deer. Don’t get super crazy though, if you over-handle the meat things just get actually gross as opposed to just having raw meat all over your hands gross. Your  meatloaf will be a sad, weird lump of mush. Don’t do it.
When everything is mixed up and lovely place it into a loaf baking dish. I like to put a little bit of coconut oil all over to keep anything from sticking. Drizzle some ketchup on top and smooth it out. Pop into the oven for about 45 minutes. Check it, if its done pull it out and let sit for 15 minutes and then throw on top of a bed of your choice of greens and enjoy. Our oven is slow + I used a glass baking dish, so I cooked it another 15 minutes.
I am always way too excited to eat to ever remember to take a picture of the finished product. So here you go, a mostly devoured meatloaf, om nom nom!