farmstand dinner

so... now my mom is here, and baby t still isn't. we are patiently waiting (maybe not totally patiently, i was bouncing on the exercise ball last night trying to bounce the baby out!) i had another doctor's appointment today and there has been no change since last week. not what i was hoping to hear. he offered to induce me the end of the week but i opted to wait. there is a full moon tonight and i'm hoping it might help move things along. also, i figured if the baby is ok, and i'm not dying, then i might as well wait as long as i can. i will be having another sonogram on thursday though, and he had me schedule 2 for next week also. my doctor will be on vacation next week, but if i haven't had the baby by the time he gets back he will induce me on sunday night, august 8th. that sounds soooo far away! surely baby t will find the way out before then!

on another note, what do you do while waiting for a baby to arrive? EAT! on sundays in our neighborhood there is a really nice farmers market. we don't buy things there too often, but we always want to. we took my mom there this weekend and decided to have a farmstand dinner. we got fresh green beans, baby potatoes, green tomatoes, red tomatoes, and corn. i was so excited!

i decided to share my recipe for fried green tomatoes, since it's really different than most people's. we call it italian style fried green tomatoes, or tallerico fried green tomatoes, but it was inspired by some we had at our dear friend's cass and maggie's rehearsal dinner. it's pretty easy.

ingredients:
•green tomatoes (however many you think you can eat) sliced vertically (so the core is the center)
•salt and pepper
•1 egg
•italian bread crumbs (i don't have an exact measurement for this, i just pour some and add more as needed)
•olive oil
•bruschetta (recipe below)

to make:
•slice the tomatoes and lay out on a cookie sheet.

•season with salt and pepper on both sides (you can then refrigerate if you aren't quite ready to make)


•heat olive oil in a large frying pan


•whisk egg in a bowl
•add bread crumbs to another bowl (you are setting up an assembly line)

•once the oil is hot (try flicking some water in it to see if it sizzles) take one tomato and dip it in the egg (coat it well), then in the bread crumbs (give it a nice coating), then add it to the frying pan. keep going until your pan is full, then keep an eye on it looking for crispy edges. when you see these, flip the tomatoes. it doesn't take very long, a few minutes on each side.

•after both sides are fried remove tomatoes from the pan and set them on a paper towel lined plate. keep going until all tomatoes are fried!

bruschetta:
you can either buy bruschetta or make it. we make it and here's how:
•chop up 1 red tomato, 2 cloves of garlic, and about a 1/4 of red onion.
•mix all these ingredients up in a small bowl. add salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil to taste.
•lastly add fresh chopped basil. it's best if you make this a little ahead of time because the longer it sits, the better it tastes!


then just top each green tomato with a little bruschetta, eat and enjoy!

maternity pictures

things have been kind of crazy here since the weekend. if you remember, jamie was sick the week of the 4th, well, i got what he had this past week. everyday it got worse! by saturday i had a fever and was achy and miserable. we were supposed to have maternity pictures taken saturday afternoon by one of our good friends. thankfully we were able to reschedule for sunday and i got some antibiotics. i did nothing all day. it was really boring but needed to happen. by sunday i felt sooo much better! still congested, but not achy or feverish. and we were able to do our photo shoot! it went really well and was a lot of fun. steve is awesome! here are a few of my favorites:

we started out at his apartment with this super professional back drop (don't we look like we are in a jcrew catalog???)
















then we went to a little park in dumbo. it was beautiful. unfortunately the lighting wasn't cooperating enough for you to see the amazing background.










we had so much fun and after the pictures we went to eat at lombardi's, which i supposedly the first pizzeria in america! it was delicious! thanks so much steve!!!

and here's a quick baby update: i had a doctor's appointment today and am 1cm dilated! but i guess that doesn't really mean much in terms of time. it's still up in there air when baby t will join us. i have another appointment on monday if nothing happens before then. oh! and some of you may not know my mom is coming today!!! i'm really excited. it feels less stressful having her here than trying to hold off the baby's arrival until she gets here. it's also jamie and my 5th anniversary today! what a busy wednesday!

baby t's new shoes!

i ordered baby t some shoes a while ago and have been wanting to do a photo shoot with them. however, i think i mentioned before that darling jamie got rid of my tripod. so... it didn't go as smoothly as i had hoped, but i got a few good shots i think.


aren't they cute? we love vans. i used to have some just like this, now i need to order some more so we can match!

jamie's work baby shower

yesterday, jamie's coworkers were sweet enough to throw him a surprise baby shower! it happened during the day, at work, so i wasn't there (and of course, don't have many details because boys don't give details), but one of his coworkers emailed a couple of pictures. it looks like it was really nice and very unexpected and thoughtful. also, that evening they had planned a dinner (which i was invited to) and that was fun also! we ate at a semi fancy restaurant, there were probably 20 or so of us, and in the middle of this restaurant they had us play the diaper game! you know the one? where there are melted candy bars in diapers and they pass them around and you guess what kind of candy bar it was? well, it didn't go over so well, and one of jamie's friends was particularly disgusted! it was fun though.


yummy food and drinks!




they surprised me with this desert, which happens to be one of my all time favorites: warm cookies and ice cream. yummmm it was sooo good!



the biggest news though is that today we had our final ultra sound! my last one was at 20 weeks, so it's been a while. and i had forgotten, but after the last one when my doctor got the info, he was like "did they change your due date?" i said "not that i know of." "well, it says on here july 21, but it was july 31, right?" me, "yeah." so he said that the measurements looked fine and we would leave it as the 31st. well, today when i went for the ultra sound they technician said "your due date is the 21st?" i said "no, the 31st." she was very confused and said they had no record of that and that the measurements from the previous scan were exactly where they should be if my due date was the 21st. so.... she measured again today and said it definitely should be the 21st. which is next week, did you realize that??? (on a side note, it's kind of cool that the due date is july 21st b/c that is jamie and i's 5 year anniversary!) also, she estimated the baby's weight at 7.14!!! that's a lot bigger than i expected. hopefully baby t comes soon so he/she doesn't get too much bigger! but i also want baby t to wait a bit b/c my mom doesn't get here until the 27th! dilemmas dilemmas.

baby t's first blog photo!

we aren't lucky enough to get one of the fancy 4d scans, but this one is pretty good.

nada

this week has been especially uneventful. sorry i haven't been posting. tomorrow i have a doctor's appointment (maybe he'll give us some kind of idea of when we'll be meeting baby t!) and then on thursday we have an ultra sound to check on the size. cross your fingers we get a good picture (since we haven't ever!) but that we don't accidentally see something we don't want to!

here is a collage of baby bump photos to remind you how far we've come!

hope you have a good wednesday! xoxoxo

the nursery

sorry i haven't been posting very much. the pregnancy has finally gotton to me, and it's won the past couple of weeks. tomorrow is the first day of our 38th week, so really baby t could come at any moment. i have been having a really difficult time sleeping (and most of you know i'm not a great sleeper under normal circumstances) and during the day i just feel so run down and achy. this is infuriating to me because there is still a lot i need/want to do, not to mention our house is a disaster! but i've decided to listen to my body and just take it easy (as often as i can).
a lot of you have asked me to post pictures of the nursery, so today i took a few. i need to do a video probably to give you a feel for the layout, but this will work for now. it's not finished, but it's in working order. plus, we plan to have the baby sleep in the pack-n-play for the first few months in our room anyway. when you look at these keep in mind i still want to make curtains, pillows, and hang pictures on the walls. we have the pictures, i'm just waiting for my mom to get here for some guidance. oh! i also plan to get a rug or 2.


here is the window seat, which you've seen before.


changing table/dresser and diaper station


this is a print that jamie did for our friends' letter press company, sycamore street press. i love it. the other things we have to hang up are other prints. i can't wait to get them on the walls!


okay, i had this vision in my head when we first saw this place to make this nook a closet of sorts. we finally got some "racks" to hang up. so far we don't really have many clothes, so no need to hang any, but hopefully it will look cute with little baby clothes there. if not i may create a curtain to hang in front.


and the crib. sorry i couldn't get a good angle of it, but it's got a bunch of stuff in it right now, so maybe that's a good thing you can't see it : )


the mobile, which you've also seen before. and that adorable little elephant back there is a music box of sorts. you pull down on it's tail and it plays.

so in addition to being run down, i've been craving fruit. lots and lots of fruit. this weekend i somehow managed to buy just about every kind of fruit there was. i didn't even do it with the thought of a fruit salad, but when i got home that was all i could think about! so i made a great big one (and ate it all) and made another one (and have almost ate it all too). at least i actually ate all the fruit instead of some of it going bad like usual! and isn't it so pretty?

4th of july

so, the weekend of the 4th jamie was sick. which was especially disappointing since he had friday AND monday off! needless to say we didn't do much. however, on the 4th he did some research and we decided to go to a beach in long island. he found a place called "crab meadow" and saw that they were going to be setting off fireworks nearby so we would probably be able to see them from the beach. we didn't get this plan until fairly late in the day and there was some traffic, so we didn't get to the beach until 5pm. it was still really hot and sunny out though. this beach is in the sound, and it wasn't very crowded, so that was nice. but it was more like a lake than the ocean. it was completely flat and the beach and the ground in the water were COVERED with pebbles! that doesn't sound bad, but they HURT!!! it was the first time in my life i actually wished i had water shoes! as it started getting dark, more and more people came, so we figured we must be in a good spot. and sure enough, it was a great spot! we could see about 5 different firework displays! some were pretty far away, but you could still see them. it turned out to be a really nice 4th. the only bad thing was that we couldn't bring sophia with us, so she was left alone for a LONG time (with the traffic we got home pretty late). poor girl.