Peter's Musings

Is there another color of milk I am not aware of?

Resolve

Disclosure: This is potentially incredibly boring.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I decided that I need more structure in my life. I am free to do whatever I want each day which usually ends up with me wondering what exactly happened with all of the time. I do one or two scheduled tasks and then suddenly it's time to make dinner. It doesn't take all day every day to do one or two things--really. So...

The things that usually hold me up? 

Blogs

and

Planning 

I read a few blogs, ok, maybe a lot. Some are about crafts, a lot are about families, food, and meal planning.

I'm constantly searching for ways to get food on the table each night and save money on groceries.These experienced mamas say that one of the first steps to meal planning  is creating a list of the top 15 or 20 recipes your family likes to eat.  So therein lies my problem. I've been married for almost 3 years and don't have 15 reliable recipes to draw from. 

Peter and I are no longer students--well, Peter still is, but that's a totally different story!

Because we were busy students and only 2 people, Peter and I tended to eat like college students. I cooked once, sometimes twice a week, and then we had leftovers, cereal, and sandwiches until I cooked again. While in school, I assured myself that as soon as school was over, I'd be the perfect housewife: we would always have dinner, our house would be sparkling, and I'd make cookies for neighbors and friends pretty much every week. Obviously, this isn't so. There's not really a good reason as to why this little dream of mine can't be a reality.

My problem with meal planning is that I usually end up with rotting meat or produce in my fridge that was used once and then forgotten--but not really forgotten, I probably just didn't have any other ideas as to how to use the stuff. Because we are only two people, I can't really cook every night without expecting some things to go bad.

But no more excuses.

This is my public proclamation of resolve. I've read enough recipes and tips that I should be capable of actually accomplishing something worthwhile in the kitchen. Now it's time to put those things into action and start developing my own list of delicious and easy meals. One day, hopefully in the not so distant future, I will be able to plan my meals so that they coordinate with each other and actually use those random ingredients.

Goodbye blogs; you will be missed.

Plan of action:
Don't go online
Make meals

Haha, that's all I've got so far. I figure that if I stay away from the blogs, I won't get lost in them as I usually do. And hopefully that will leave me more time to actually work on making meals--not thinking about or planning them, but actually doing them.

We'll see how it turns out.

My Handy Man

So a couple of weeks ago I had an incident with my oven that made it clear that our pans needed a permanent home, FAST!

Upon moving into this apartment, I quickly realized that our cabinets are pretty much useless.

I cannot fit my 12" pan inside of any of the drawers or cabinets--except under the sink--in any way or form. (The smaller pans didn't fit too well either and I really like keeping similar things together.) So the temporary solution was to keep them inside of the oven. Bad choice, I know. I realized the risks in doing this, but I hated having all the pans on the counter, and there really was no where to put them.

We ordered a hanging pot rack. This one to be exact. It was nice, but there's a firewall in the ceiling above our kitchen. Also, the studs are un-cooperatively placed and, therefore, the hanging pot rack was a no-go.

I was generally pretty good about remembering to take the pans out of the oven before I started preheating it, but it only takes once to make a catastrophe. 

One night Peter called and asked me to start pre-heating the oven in 20 minutes for the Costco pizza he was bringing home. He reminded me to take the pans out before I turned the oven on. So I had 20 minutes to go and get the mail, read through it, and generally tidy up before turning on the oven.

I turned on the oven and went back to reading the mail.

Just so you know, Peter and I are fine, and Nothing was damaged.

Also, as a means of protecting the teflon, we lined our pans--which were nestled--with drawer/cabinet/shelf liner when we weren't using them. Genius, unless you keep the pans in the oven where it potentially could get hot: like say if you started pre-heating the oven with them in there!

Anyway, to sum up this rather long story (sorry) I noticed after probably 10 minutes that something smelled funny, realized that it was the pans, turned off the oven, took out the pans, and proceeded to wave baking sheets at the smoke alarm to keep it from beeping until Peter arrived home at which time he started doing the same thing.

We now have a pot rack that hangs on the wall, thanks to my handy husband, Peter!

We used peg board which has to stick out from the wall in order to get the pegs in. So we glued on some wood.

Peter, figuring out all the specifics of how it goes together

We screwed the back board into the wall--thankfully there was a stud close to where we wanted to hang it!

It's hard manually pushing a screw into a stud, so I helped!

Then the cover board was screwed into the wood pieces on the sides.

We added some molding and hooks and now have a place for our pans!!!

Peter thinks that one day I'll laugh about this whole experience.

That day hasn't arrived quite yet.

It's a BABY!

So, the appointment was really fast!

Having the first appointment of the day equals no waiting time!

The ultrasound was fun.

Apparently the babies can feel/sense the sound waves coming through and it makes them wiggle.

Most of the time we were trying to get a good picture of the lips which was difficult because the baby was sucking on its thumb. 

The little smudge in front of its nose is a hand. :D

But after finding all necessary parts to be in working order, we found that... 

It's a GIRL!!!

It's kind of difficult to tell, but the sonographer was 85% sure that it's a girl.

I'd call that pretty good odds.

Peter was elated!

Apparently he had secretly wanted a little girl, but didn't want to admit it.

That makes me happy.

And of course I'm super excited too!

I love baby girls!

Peter said it best, "I wouldn't have known what to do with a boy!"

So now it's time to buy things and start sorting through names... what fun!!!

Place Your Bets!!!

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY!!!

It's the day we've waited four months for!

Tomorrow morning Peter and I will look at our baby and hopefully

find out if it's a boy or a girl!!!

Here are the pictures from our first ultrasound at 14 weeks:

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

BABY!!!!

We think the profile is better in this one:

And there's its little arm:

So now that we are between 19 and 20 weeks, we should be able to determine the baby's gender.

So, what do you think folks?

Will our first child be a little 

Boy or Girl?

Peter refuses to guess because he doesn't want to hurt the child's feelings before it's born. He doesn't care either way and doesn't want our baby to feel like a disappointment from the get-go!

I generally tend to think of the baby as a girl, unless I'm in pain. I figure that a sweet little baby girl wouldn't hurt her mama!

So now I'm interested to know what you think.

Do you have any method or reasoning to determining a baby's gender before birth?