Sunday calls for simplicity, so I want to present you with this super simple recipe for 5-Minute Chocolate Cake. I admit that there are better chocolate cakes out there, but this one is chocolately, sweet, and a pretty darned decent dessert to whip up when a sudden chocolate craving strikes. I traced the recipe back to Dizzy Dee’s blog, and she has photos of the process, unlike greedy me, who tried it out last week without any thought of documentation for my bloggy peeps. Sorry, folks, I was too busy craving that chocolate.
Five-Minute Chocolate Cake
Here’s what you need:
4 tablespoons cake flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
1 mug
Instructions:
Mix flour, sugar and cocoa. Spoon in one egg. Pour in milk and oil and mix well. Put in microwave for 3 minutes on maximum power. Wait until it stops rising and sets in the mug. Tip contents out of mug and into saucer and enjoy!
It was a total fluke that we have cake and pastry flour at our house because I never use it and can’t remember at all why we have any in the first place. (Note that there are differences in flours between Canada and the U.S., even in flours that are identically labelled. So this might work with all-purpose flour in Canada, I just haven’t tried.) I think I could safely cut out a tablespoon of sugar without missing the sweetness. I want to try this again sometime with pecans. I don’t know if they’d just all sink to the bottom, but chocolate and pecans in a five-minute cake? Now that could be mere inches away from Heaven.
I really never thought I’d see the day that someone would decide to give me a blog award! But wheeee! Jyl at MommyGossip decided to give me one: the “I ♥ Your Blog” award. Thanks so much, Jyl! Now I’ve got a wee bit o’ bling to display in my sidebar. (Isn’t it pretty?)
The award comes with a few rules and provisos:
Winners: feel free to put the logo on your blog.
Link the person you received your award from.
Nominate seven other blogs.
Put links of those blogs on yours.
Leave a message on the nominees’ blogs.
I’m going to change the rules a bit. (See where I edited them?) I have subscriptions to over 60 blogs, so you’d think it would be easy to pick seven of them, but I prefer to choose a few of my very, very favourites to share with you. These are bloggers who blog regularly and frequently, and who make me laugh, cry, or think twice. Also, who aren’t already flippin’ celebrities like Dooce and Finslippy, for goodness sakes.
Here’s my list of blogs that I really, really ♥.
First up, my hubby’s blog, Michael’s Meanderings, because his is the one I read most faithfully. It’s amazing what I can learn about him by reading what he writes, despite the fact that we live together and, yes, actually talk to each other, too. Plus he’s funny. Not to mention hot.
Next, another Yukon blog belonging to Stacie of Yukon Yahoos!, also known as “Life with Dogs in the Yukon”. We originally met through blogging and I love hearing all about the (10? 12? 14? I can’t keep track these days.) dogs she keeps and runs in the winter.
Mommy’s Martini, written by the incomparable MommyTime, is another must-read blog. Her “thinky” posts really make me think and she’s always full of great ideas for activities with kids. Plus, her kids are stinkin’ adorable! And she leaves the most thoughtful comments.
Whiskey in My Sippy Cup drew me in from my first sip glimpse. Mr. Lady is witty, frank, and self-deprecating. She has lived through some pretty incredible and nasty crap (I can’t bring myself to swear like her) and is such an amazingly caring person. I admire her greatly.
Finally, Looky, Daddy! written by Brian is one of the few Daddy blogs I’ve hooked into. Someone originally pointed me to it because he has a daughter with epilepsy, too. He’s also got twin daughters (toddlers), which I think qualifies him for an award of bravery. But it’s his biting sense of humour that keeps me going back for more.
Whew! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go lie down after all this excitement. (The fact that I got together with a girlfriend today and had an epic all-afternoon Vietnamese spring-roll making marathon might be a contributing factor, too. Oh, and the fact that I’m over-full from eating FOUR of the spring-rolls, along with various other Asian snacks…)
P.S. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to comment on the delurking post before next Wednesday!
I know that there are “official” delurking days, but I don’t think I have the patience to wait for one. (Besides, it seems like exactly the kind of thing that I would miss when it happens.) So I’ve decided to hold one of my own — today is “official delurking day” at Fawnahareo’s Place!
Maybe you don’t know what a lurker is. A lurker is someone who waltzes in, reads the news, and runs off again without saying so much as a peep. (Yeah you! The one behind the potted plant! That’s right, I’m talkin’ ’bout you.) I’m happy to have you visit, of course. I love it that you stop by, and you are under no obligation to comment when you do. But I LOVE comments! And besides, I’m curious about you.
This wee blog here gets an average of 150 visits a day, but the average number of comments per post is more like three or four; I don’t even have to break a sweat doing that math. I can tell that there must be some of you out there who aren’t saying hello. (Aha! I just spotted another one back there behind the couch.)
I understand the no commenting, I do! In the craziness of the last few months, I have had to curtail my commenting because I really need to sleep more than an hour every night. But, just ’cause I feel like it, today’s the day to take a minute and leave me some comment love, dear readers. If you have a blog, I promise I will come visit and do the same for you! (It might take me a few days, but I’ll be there!)
Just to make things more fun, I’ve decided this is a good time to have my first ever giveaway! All you have to do is leave a comment, and you’ll be entered to win a prize. What’s the prize? Well, some time ago, I came into possession of a comedy that was already in our movie collection. Everyone enjoys a good comedy right? So if you win, the movie is yours, plus I’ll throw in a little extra “made in Yukon” surprise.
And to make things even easier, I’ll even give you something to comment about. Here’s what I wanna know:
How did you first find my blog?
What kinds of posts do you like to read? (Family updates, Yukon lifestyle, music, pregnancy progress…)
Are you a blogger? (And if you are, leave me a link, of course!)
Be sure to leave a valid e-mail address so that I can contact you if you win. Anyone who comments by next Wednesday, September the 3rd is in the game. Regular commenters are welcome to participate, too, of course!
So, what are you waiting for? Let me hear from you!
1. Who did you first inform about your pregnancy and how?
The first person to know I was pregnant with Jade was Michael. I hadn’t been able to sleep all night for thinking about doing a pregnancy test in the morning and I ended up getting up around 6 in the morning to do it. I woke Michael up to show him the positive test, but he was too sleepy to get the message for several moments.
With Nugget, Michael was also first to know but I had to tell him over the phone because he was out of town. Actually, there was no number where I could reach him, so I e-mailed him and told him to phone me first thing in the morning.
2. Maximum weight? I hit 185 lbs when I was 39 weeks pregnant with Jade and she was born a few days later. Although I feel absolutely enormous this time, it seems I’m on the same track. I went and checked my old blog and found out that right around now I was weighing 172.5 lbs with Jade; when I weighed myself yesterday morning, I was 170 lbs.
3. Cravings?
Nothing too different from the cravings I get when I’m not pregnant. Just more often. I almost always eat a bedtime snack now.
4. Aversions?
Perfume. Don’t wear it to work, please, and definitely don’t wear it to dinner or to a theatre. You will give me a headache, nausea, and a really bad temper.
5. Morning Sickness?
With Jade, I felt nauseated only when I was hungry. Oh, and on the winding roads around Muncho Lake. But that might have been hunger. With Nugget, I was pretty queasy for most of the first trimester.
D-Day Facts:
1. Number of Kids/Deliveries?
One actual outside-of-the-womb child, one delivery. Nugget is next on the list!
2. NSD or CS?
Jade’s delivery was natural in that I didn’t have any pain management medications, although I was hooked up to an IV for antibiotics and later the oxytocin drip.
3. Girl or Boy?
One girl and one unknown!
4. AOG (age of gestation) on Birth?
Jade was born around 39 weeks. I’m hoping Nugget will also be early or at least on time. If s/he waits until the 19th or later, I won’t be able to say I had two kids by the age of 30.
5. How long in labour?
This is a tricky question. My water broke on Sunday morning and 24 hours later I was 4cm dilated, so technically I was in labour all that time. But during that time I never felt anything worse than very mild cramping, so it seems silly to count it. Once they started the oxytocin, I ripped through the rest of labour. The nurses told me it would take an hour of labour per centimetre after regular contractions had been established, so I expected a minimum of six hours. Jade was born an hour and a half after they started the drip.
This is what I was doing last night when I should have been doing something productive like cleaning out the cupboards in the upstairs bathroom or filing important documents in the home office:
It’s a homemade felt board. This is what comes of all that browsing time I had at Wal-Mart and the Dollar Store while Michael and Jade were in Vancouver. I’ve been thinking for a while now that I’d like a felt board toy for Jade; she’s tried one before at a friend’s house and it’s such a practical travelling game. Plus I’m sure it can be used for many years. I remember cutting out paper dolls with my sister when I was a kid and how excited I was when we got a “kit” for a paper doll including a whole wardrobe. Fortunately, felt doesn’t tear like paper does.
I know that you can buy felt board kits with characters and backgrounds all pre-printed for you, but I’d heard they were expensive. (Admittedly, I didn’t actually research this.) So when I saw all the felt sheets on display at Wal-Mart and The Dollar Store at 30¢ apiece, I couldn’t resist. I bought a couple of cheap paint canvases ($2 each) for mounting the felt and I joined them together using white duct tape. I cleverly left a 2 or 3mm gap between the two boards so that there’d be enough “wiggle room” to fold the two boards together after they were joined. Unfortunately, there wasn’t quite enough wiggle room after I spray-glued the blue and green felt on, but the whole thing still folds flat enough to fit nicely into a bag.
Jade helped me to put the board together by smooshing down the duct tape. Then I cut out a few flowers while she watched. I made the bee with her, too (which was actually a failed first attempt to cut out a flower) and then made the sun and clouds before she started to get bored and it was time to have lunch. I spent a couple of happily distracted hours before bed last night making the rest of the shapes in the picture and I’ve got lots of ideas for more. I love how the faces on my little characters turned out; I haven’t played with googly eyes in years! I was initially going to use markers to draw the mouths but after discovering that the felt got all fuzzed up when I was putting stripes on the bee, I decided it was easier to use bits of felt.
I plan to spray glue more felt on the other side of these canvases for a night scene or ocean scene. Even if Jade doesn’t really appreciate this toy now, at less than $15, it’s a toy that’s already provided its money’s worth of entertainment.
“Take my poncho,” he says. And so I do. In the green poncho and green rubber boots I must look like a giant insect, but nobody else wants to be out in the rain, so there is no one around to see me.
The rain is gentle, not a bad time to be outside. With 6 months of belly, I am much slower now. I take a plodding pace and thus have all the more time to look around me.
The light filtered through rainclouds somehow makes everything seem brighter, vivid. There is yarrow shining white as the moon. Scarlet fireweed burns to be noticed in its autumnal glory. Poplar leaves, whose youthful spring green first turned silver with summer leaf-miners, now change again to the yellow of fall. Rosehips glow like Christmas lights. I pluck one and eat the bland yet pleasing flesh.
Drops of rain hang heavy at the ends of long pine needles. It is only since moving north that I have learned to remember which is a spruce tree and which is pine. Now even my toddler can tell a spruce cone from a pinecone.
I take hold of a spruce branch and create a rainstorm of my own. I put my thumb out to touch a droplet suspended from a pine needle and of course it finds me irresistable. The droplet rests there on the pad of my thumb, a bright bead. When I put my finger down to it, I can hold it up, stretch it, see the forest in miniature in the tiny crystal ball. I laugh at my fanciful thoughts.
My heavy boots slide down the trails, trails turned to wet clay in the rain. The dog runs in and out of the tall grasses, smiling at me with his tongue lolling out. He looks like a fuzzy pup with this rain in his hair.
After a while, there is home again. I splash through one more puddle, listen to a few more rain drops, then I head inside. Truly it is autumn in the Yukon.
Michael and Jade got home from Vancouver early yesterday afternoon, both very tired but happy to be back. Even though Jade had a soother in her mouth, was reclining in her stroller, and was drooping with sleep, her eyes lit up when she saw me. She pointed at me, smiled around her soother, and exclaimed, “Mama!” That does a mother’s heart good.
The trip went pretty smoothly, from what I understand. The EEG on Thursday went well; because it took place during her nap time, she fell asleep much faster than she did for her first EEG. Friday was a “reduced activity day” at the hospital for some reason, and Michael said it made for a much more relaxing visit when they met with Dr. Demos, since the appointment wasn’t as rushed.
Dr. Demos tested some of Jade’s reflexes, did some exercises with her to test her comprehension, and asked questions about her development. Even though Jade has now started make three, four, and five word sentences, the doctor thinks it would be a good idea for us to look into some developmental testing, since we were concerned about it for a little while.
The doctor also said that they want to treat Jade’s epilepsy aggressively because of the sudden onset; apparently it doesn’t always start so violently. We have a schedule for increasing the dose of Jade’s medications; if that doesn’t help, we’ll be referred to a neurologist at the Children’s Hospital who specializes exclusively in epilepsy and will start looking at the ketogenic diet. I rather like this approach because I do think Jade’s condition has improved, so we’re seeing progress and it makes sense to me to stay on this path to see where it leads, but we also won’t be expected to try ten different drugs before considering an alternative method of treatment.
Dr. Demos was concerned about Jade’s weight. Funnily enough, we were quite worried about her gaining too much weight on the Valproic Acid, since that’s one possible side effect. Instead, we haven’t seen much of a change at all and in fact, from the hospital’s records, it appeared that Jade had lost weight. Michael and I both think they got a bad reading when we were there the first time because every other time we’ve weighed her, it’s been pretty consistent. Apparently, not gaining any weight at all in three months didn’t seem right to the doctor, either. I don’t know. I think toddlers tend to grow in spurts and Jade hasn’t been eating much lately, but she doesn’t seem hungry. I’m not sure it’s something I should be too worried about right now.
I’m sure the best part of the trip to Vancouver by far was all the visiting Michael and Jade got to do with my sister and her husband “Pedro”. They moved to Vancouver just a month ago, and I’m so excited that they’re so much closer to Whitehorse now. The four of them had supper together every night and they had breakfast together before heading off to the airport yesterday morning. I understand Jade and my sister get along swimmingly. Nem also gave Jade a monkey wearing nurses scrubs, which Jade has been dragging around everywhere since she got home.
Let’s see, in other Jade development news, Jade has finally decided to start counting from one once in awhile; just a few weeks ago, she insisted on always started at three. She’s also getting very good at identifying colours and can tell us that things are yellow (her favourite, apparently), red, green, blue, or pink with deadly accuracy. Orange is “yellow” in her world, but we’re working on it.
She can partially dress herself now; she puts on her own socks and pants, although pulling up the back of the pants is challenging. She needs help getting her shirt over her head, but does the arms herself. We have to do buttons and start zippers for her, but she’s a champ at taking everything off!
Jade’s also still very much into music and has taken to asking Michael to play her Elmo’s Song (from Sesame Street) every time he gets out his laptop. She can be quite insistent and emotional when we tell her it’s not time for Elmo’s Song. I must admit, it’s quite catchy. Listening to it once will have it in my head for days…
I had an appointment with my midwife Heather this morning. Now that I’m in my third trimester, we’ll be seeing each other every two weeks, and I really look forward to it. It was such a nice relaxing visit.
I slept in this morning and was still eating my breakfast when Heather arrived at my door at 9:30. Crook and Nanuq both snuggled with her as we chatted about my week; I told her what I learned from the physiotherapist and chiropractor and about my visit to the ER on Thursday.
Last time we’d met, Heather had asked me to keep a food diary for a few days, so I gave that to her and we had a great discussion about nutritional needs during pregnancy. For example, I should have protein regularly and she’s happy to see that I tend to have a bit of it spaced throughout the day because, hey, babies are mostly made of protein and fat. Also, the need for iron picks up in the third trimester because babies start storing it to use in their first 6 to 9 months of life. Besides meats, dark leafy greens are a good source of iron; vitamin C helps our bodies to absorb it, but calcium inhibits iron absorption. Some of this stuff was new and some wasn’t, but it’s great to have an idea of what to focus on when I make food choices.
We discussed how birth practices in North America are changing. Heather attended a vaginal breech birth a few weeks ago, which was fascinating. I’ve been interested in this topic for a few years because a friend of mine in Ottawa has been very involved in advocating for informed choice of vaginal birth vs. c-sections for breech babies. Heather told me that the Whitehorse Hospital recently changed its policy on vaginal breech births and doctors will now allow a trial of labour for breech births at the hospital.
We talked about things I could do while I’m still pregnant to try to strengthen my abdominal muscles so that I can avoid further separation and, I hope, ward off those nasty muscle spasms. I was surprised to learn that Kegel exercises can help. I know I should do these but I hate them, so I always end up conveniently forgetting. Besides, when Heather explained how to do a “full” Kegel, I realized that there’s more to doing them right than I ever gleaned from the literature. (She told me to lean back on a wall with knees slightly bent and picture a string behind my belly button being pulled up through the back of my neck.) Kegels actually engage a lot more muscles (like the abs) than I thought.
One nurse at the hospital on Thursday noted a trace of leukocytes in my urine sample and was concerned that this was a symptom of a UTI, which could irritate the uterus, which could lead to pre-term labour. (I thought the nurse was over-reacting a wee bit, don’t you?) Heather had mentioned at an earlier visit that there are herbal therapies for UTIs, so even though neither of us think I have this infection (since the urine stick showed neither blood nor protein) we talked about herbs that are good for urinary tract health. Apparently the Yukon is a great place to live if you have bladder issues. Cranberries (the “regular” kind, as well as high- and low-bush cranberries) and kinnikinnick both work really well as natural remedies, and both are plentiful around here. Kinnikinnick grows right outside our back yard, and both types of bush cranberries are easy to find close by. Heather said that high-bush cranberries are also good for back pain and knee pain, so I may go looking for them as an additional boost for my sacral health “program”.
We did a physical exam (blood pressure, fundal height measurement, gentle palpating to see where Nugget was lying today) and then Heather broke out the fetoscope. It was much easier to find Nugget’s heartbeat today and once Heather was finished listening, she passed the earpieces to me. It was the first time I got to try out the device and it’s so different from using a Doppler, which has a definite mechanical/electronic sound to it. With a fetoscope, it’s more like listening to something that’s happening underwater — which I suppose is exactly what’s going on!
We wrapped up our visit with a discussion about post-partum depression and set up our next appointment, to which I will bring Jade because I’d really like to have her involved so that she feels she is a part of the whole process. By this time, it was after 11:00, making our appoinment almost 2 hours long.
I know that in my initial musings I wondered about how much pre-natal care I really need and what a midwife would have to offer beyond the exams one gets in a doctor’s office. After learning so much from Heather today and having such a nice time on a social level as well, I’m feeling better than ever about my decision to choose a midwife.
This is it! Today I start my third trimester. Despite the sacral pain and yesterday’s fiasco, which I guess was my body’s way of ending the second trimester with a bang, the second trimester was relatively good to me. No more morning sickness, much less frequent heartburn, better energy levels… Still, I am looking at the next three months with some trepidation. Everything was so easy when I was pregnant with Jade (and I knew it!) that this time I feel, for lack of a better word, old. I wonder at my Oma, who had five children, and my Nai Nai, who had four — how did they withstand the ravages of that many pregnancies? What about those good ol’ Catholic pioneer women who had 10, 12, or 15 kids? Of course, they were all probably in better shape than I was to begin with.
Anyway, in the week since I got my maternity support belt and started sleeping with more pillows to keep my body properly aligned, the sacral pain has gotten much better. I can almost leap out of bed in the mornings now. Okay, well, I can sit up and get out without crying out in pain. That, my friends, is like a miracle in my books.
This week I also saw a physiotherapist and a chiropractor. The physiotherapist confirmed that the left side of my sacrum is much looser than the right and gave my some easy exercises to help strengthen my glutes and abs, which help “sandwich” the sacrum and stabilize it.
The chiropractor focussed mostly on the ligaments that pass through the area and gave me some easy stretches to do to help keep them limber. She also said that no part of your back gets loose without another part of it going the other way; she identified a spot a bit higher up on my back that she said was “hung up”. The adjustment was very gentle and although I heard some cracking when she did it (which is the part that always scared me) it was oddly satisfying.
I love that I have a whole team of women to help me through this pregnancy. My doctors, my midwife, my massage therapist, my physiotherapist, and my chiropractor are all women, all focussing on a different aspects of my well-being. Actually, when I list them like that, I feel like a bit of a hypochondriac. But I feel like a hypochondriac in control, dangit.
Here’s what BabyCenter.com has to say about Nugget this week:
By this week, your baby weighs two and a quarter pounds (like a Chinese cabbage) and measures 14.8 inches from the top of her head to her heels. She can blink her eyes, which now sport lashes. With her eyesight developing, she may be able to see the light that filters in through your womb. She’s also developing billions of neurons in her brain and adding more body fat in preparation for life in the outside world.
Belly pics will have to wait for another day, since my official photographer is in Vancouver until tomorrow.
Michael and Jade flew off to Vancouver yesterday morning. I was a bit sad when I saw them off, but Jade’s been doing so much better, I wasn’t as emotional this time as the last. I stayed late at work and then ran some errands to get dog food (which has to come from the vet because of his allergies) and some other items that have been on my list for a while. (One item ended up being a cigarette case! I was looking for a hard case in which to keep Jade’s emergency Valium and this turned out to be perfect. Never thought I’d see the day…) Although I was exhausted when I got home, I was also happy. I had dawdled and browsed to my heart’s content and I’d picked up a few crafty supplies for things I want to make for Jade. I can’t remember the last time I was able to just loiter and not worry about picking someone up or cooking someone supper or putting someone to bed.
I had plans to do some crafting this evening with the supplies I picked up yesterday, but I woke up this morning with a stomach ache. It was bearable most of the morning but by lunchtime I couldn’t stand it anymore and went home, hoping some rest and mint tea would help. I napped a bit and when I got up, the pain was pretty close to excruciating. Not quite excruciating. But close. Norris and Charmaine were heading to the hospital for a party (a grad ceremony for their friend who is hospital’s newest dietician) and so I figured I should get a ride with them if I was going to get myself checked out. Better than trying to drive myself with waves of pain. And there’s been so much about listeria on the radio lately that even though I didn’t have symptoms of listeria I figured there could be something else I wasn’t aware of and it would be safter to see a doctor.
The ER was pretty busy, so it was about two hours before I saw the doctor. I should have known it would happen: five minute before he came in, the pain stopped. Still, he took things seriously and asked lots of questions and ended up sending me for a “non-stress test” to monitor Nugget for a while. Up to maternity I went, a place I didn’t think I’d be seeing at all during this pregnancy. Nugget looked great on the test, but I had to wait for the maternity doctor (who happened to be one of the docs I see at my prenatal clinic) to finish delivering a baby.
The conclusion was that I have a mild “sort of” hernia from my abdominal muscles separating in front. This is actually something that both midwife Heather and the prenatal doc have observed before and wasn’t a cause for concern. Now that I’m growng more, Dr. Gillis figures the muscles were unhappy and had been spasming all day. It could come back, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t.
I got home around 9:45 p.m., hungry but not completely ravenous because Norris had brought me a bit of food from the party and one of the great nurses gave me some toast with PB and J. I’m exhausted again, though, and it’s not for nearly as fun a reason. Oh well, I still have one day to be lazy before Michael and Jade get home…
Hi, I'm Fawn from Whitehorse, Yukon, and this is my online home. I'm a Mama and a housewife by day and a jazz singer by night. This blog is all about mommyhood, childhood epilepsy, special diets, and just surviving the dishes and laundry... but you can check out my music site at fawnfritzen.com.
Michael and Jade got home from Vancouver early yesterday afternoon, both very tired but happy to be back. Even though Jade had a soother in her mouth, was reclining in her stroller, and was drooping with sleep, her eyes lit up when she saw me. She pointed at me, smiled around her soother, and exclaimed, “Mama!” That does a mother’s heart good.
