Thursday, April 26, 2012

Week 37 and counting

I'm pretty sure my belly dropped in this past week, specifically this past weekend. I've noticed it looking a bit lower and I can fit nearly 4 fingers between the base of my chest and top of my belly.

Not getting a lot of sleep but enough to feel pretty good most of the day. And, gratefully, Carolina is still a good napper. The past week I've been giving her melatonin and I know it has not stopped the headbanging but I think she's able to rest a little more. She seems less agitated and fights me less about laying down for naps. Her bad dreams persist. I wrote the director a letter explaining that after May, I'm not enrolling Carolina in school. I explained about the poor sleeping and other regression, and said that if it gets worse, I'll take her out earlier. It's hard since I don't really know what happens every day or even on a weekly basis. They don't do that kind of thing here. And I realize in a class of about 15, my one child is not their first priority. But she's mine and the head banging really lets me know this isn't good. God, I hope she stops again this summer. It was such a relief when it ended.

Since we're aiming to move in June or July, I believe that will leave (unfairly) the bulk of packing to my husband. I would like to start packing up non-essential things now but there's not any good place to put a pile of boxes and I think I'd get a right bollocking from just about everyone at this stage in my pregnancy if I did.

It's too bad that paying a moving company to pack up your things is so exorbitantly expensive, otherwise I would.

I've had such a craving for cakes. Cake, brownies, cupcakes. Cookies, not too much. Cake. I want cake. I tried to make a red velvet cake with icing from a recipe in a recent Saveur issue. It was a total and complete failure of both time and money. It took me an hour and a half to get to the point where the cakes were cooked and icing should have been done but the cake was tasteless and icing wouldn't firm up. I actually threw it all away. It is the first baking failure I've made so badly that it went in the garbage before anyone could do more than taste it. VERY VERY gratefully my lovely husband brought home a piece of cake from Magnolia Bakery, which made everything better, and a cupcake for the very disappointed Miss Carolina. She had been running into the kitchen every 20 minutes with this big smile asking, "Cake ready yet, Mommy?"

Plus there's no Dutch chocolate baking powder in the stores here. And asking the store staff if they have any is difficult as I don't know how to say it in Spanish, and when I do explain what I'm looking for invariably the men understand I want Baking Powder, and then say something along the lines of "If it's not here (pointing) we don't have it." So I got unsweetened chocolate bars and melted them, and put it in during the mixing, seems to work mostly as an alternative.

There are shelves and shelves of box cake mixes, but little to get you really baking. And I hate store-bought icing. I guess no one bakes much anymore. I heard that catering children's school parties can be done by McDonald's now, so why make your own food? Bah. I'm with Julia on this one. Make your own damn food!

Actually, it's because I have the time and cooking with Carolina is a lot of fun. Once this baby comes, at least the first year or so, I know I'll go back to wishing all our food was instantly made by someone else. Speaking of which, if the store wasn't so far from our apartment, I'd waddle over to the supermarket on Greenpoint Ave to get some pierogis. I'm going to miss good, inexpensive pierogi at the local supermarket when we're in New Jersey. I know where to get really good pierogi in NJ, but it's not at the local supermarket.

And, the supermarket here isn't actually far, it's about 6 blocks away. But I'm still on the no-walking-more-than-necessary promise this week to my husband. Poor guy is understaffed this week so I can't encourage the baby to arrive early. Come Saturday, however, let's go for a walk!

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