Spaghetti and Meatballs

I will be the first to admit: I'm not even a little bit Italian. I have some awesome Italian friends, and I've been to fun Italian weddings, but I make no claims to authentic Italian food coming out of my kitchen. That being said, we love these meatballs. In fact, we love them so much that every time I make them, we eat them too quickly to photograph them! I made them again last week and managed to snap an unattractive picture of reheated leftovers. I promise they taste 1,000 times better than they look!

Ingredients:

Dry
1 tsp dried basil or parsley
2 Tbs parmesan cheese or nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 piece of gluten-free bread, toasted (or 1/4 cup ground flaxseed)

Wet 
1 Tbs water
1 tsp olive oil 
1 lb ground meat
1 large egg
approximately 20 oz of your favorite tomato sauce

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375. 

Blend the dry ingredients into a fine powder in the food processor. Then pour them into a bowl and add the wet ingredients (except for the tomato sauce). Pulse until the wet ingredients are all incorporated.

Then add the dry ingredients and blend briefly until the mixture looks mostly uniform. Form the mixture into golf ball-sized balls or slightly smaller and place in a greased pie pan. 

Pour the tomato sauce on top, place foil over the pan, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for another 10-20 minutes uncovered. We've had varying bake times with these for some reason, so after 30 minutes, check for done-ness every 10 minutes or so by cutting into one of the meatballs in the middle.

Enjoy!

9 Weeks: Being Real

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be full of whining. I'm completely fascinated by the process of pregnancy and, in particular, the first trimester in which a lot of what happens is behind closed doors, so to speak.

Everyone wants to be one of those cute pregnant ladies who's all belly and nothing else. One of those women who can wear their normal jeans right into the second trimester?

I'm only 9 weeks in, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to be me. In fact, I think my skinny jeans are officially retired for now. Not because my belly is too big, but because my legs are. With that, goes the last bit of the illusion that your body is your own once you decide to have kids, right?

Look, this baby is already teaching me humility.

I thought I was prepared for the disappearing waistline and the rising number on the scale. In nursing school, I remember learning that a woman should gain a pound a month during the first trimester and then about 1 pound a week each week thereafter. Tell you what, I've already exceeded that first trimester cumulative goal, and I still have 3-4 weeks left!

The emotional part for me is that there's no apparent rhyme or reason for my general and abrupt inability to pull my jeans all the way up my legs. I'm so accustomed to gaining weight when I eat poorly and mindlessly, and losing weight when I eat more veggies and work out more. This weight gain does not compute. And why should pregnancy make my arms and legs bigger?!

Thankfully, minus the aversion to green veggies, my eating has been mostly the same, if not slightly improved since getting pregnant. I've tried to focus more on protein and, if veggies don't sound good, getting vitamins and fiber from fresh fruit. I've always been snacky and had a sweet tooth, but both of those actually disappear when general malaise sets in during the afternoons and evenings around here. I'm eating smaller meals, only eating to the point of comfort when I'm hungry (which is actually often, though), working out 3 times a week, and gaining weight! It's a big slice of humble pie, for sure.

Part of it may be paranoia when I'm around family and friends who don't know I'm pregnant yet: "They're just going to think I'm gaining weight for no reason!" (Why this is so tragic to me, I do not know. It all sounds silly when I type it out.)

In summary: I was prepared for a belly, not for all the things that expand before your belly does. I'm grateful that Ross is able to listen to my emotional paranoia, and I think I'll start to feel better when more people know I'm pregnant, and when the belly finally makes its debut! When I think back to the tiny little heartbeat we saw last week, I know this is only a small window of time and its all worth it.

(I also think I've had a little hormone surge this week between the emotional lability, acne, and weight fluctuations.)

On a positive note, my favorite pregnancy symptom remains my funny taste buds. I don't even mind being averse to tons of things, because when something tastes good, it's OMG THE BEST THING EVER.

P.S. This online tool is a handy way to check in on your weight gain after each doctor's appointment. I think checking it every day would be overwhelming. I don't have a scale at home, and I'm still undecided if I want to buy one just for pregnancy.

Currently...

Watching: The sunset. It's beautiful, but thanks to daylight savings time, it still feels a bit early in the day for the sun to be setting.

Eating: Some no-bake granola bars: 1/2 cup nuts of choice, 1/2 cup almond meal, 10 medjool dates, 1/4 cup chocolate chips, 1 Tbs honey, 1 tsp vanilla, pinch of sea salt. Blend in food processor and then press into a thin layer and freeze for 1 hour. Cut and enjoy. We'll see how long these last...

Drinking: So. Much. Water.

Wanting: Warm weather and sunshine. It's been a cloudy week and today was officially COLD all day. Reclusive winter Therese is ready to go into hibernation now. Or plan a vacation.

Needing: A good night's sleep. And energy/motivation. Two sides of the same coin?

Loving: Fall colors in Kansas City! Forget frigid December. THIS is the most wonderful time of the year!

Creating: Dinner. We're having grilled salmon.

Thinking: About the last three years of life and marriage. It's been a true season of reflection and catching my breath over here. I feel like we're OFF the roller coaster and on solid ground now, and it's amazing!

Feeling: A little stressed about work tomorrow. So many babies have been born this week! It's going to be a really busy day.

Wondering: If I'll have the courage to go out in the cold for my workout class tonight!

 

8 Weeks: You're really there!

We had a big week this week, baby. Both sets of your grandparents know about you now and their  reactions were priceless! You're the first grandbaby on both sides, and to say you will be well-loved is probably an understatement.

As fun as those reactions were, though, nothing beats seeing you via ultrasound for the first time. I didn't think I was too nervous about Tuesday's appointment, but I was getting kind of anxious and short-tempered on Monday, so subconsciously I must've been a little worried.

Thankfully, we couldn't have asked for a better visit. You're really there! (Just you. No twins, which I grew irrationally fearful about since they run in my family.) You have a perfect little heartbeat! You're measuring right on schedule!

You're just the size of a blueberry and you look like a little seahorse, but I'm amazed how much we love you already. Your picture is on the fridge now and every time we walk by it, we just grin at each other. It's so bizarre that people are allowed to just make more people! (Profound, right?)

Your dad and I celebrated a successful ultrasound with a DELICIOUS lunch of street tacos at our favorite hole-in-the wall restaurant. He's so excited that you already seem to love spicy food. He keeps saying proudly that you really ARE half Texan! I think this will be our post-ultrasound tradition for the rest of this pregnancy.

Seeing you on ultrasound was a huge milestone and a sigh of relief that things are going the way they're supposed to. However, even though I was obviously present in real-time for the ultrasound, I still find it hard to believe you're there! That YOU are THERE. Maybe it'll seem more real when I start to feel you move in a few months?

Keep chugging away in there. We're so proud of you, and we're so excited to meet you!

Love,
Your Parents

P.S. Fall is in its element in Kansas City this week. I can hardly believe that, God willing, next fall you'll be here to enjoy the colorful leaves with us!

7 Weeks: Cravings

Thankfully, it seems that so far my 'morning sickness' is limited to feeling generally carsick in the morning and evenings, although I do get pretty nauseated and lightheaded if I get too hungry.  (And I get hungry much more quickly and more frequently than I used to, even notably at 4am a few times this week). Eating cold grapes or pineapple when I'm nauseated helps a lot. Strangely, I don't mind the nausea. It's gives me reassurance that things are still chugging along in there. The wait for the first ultrasound has felt forever long. Just a few more days now!

I will admit that I'm still undecided how I feel about the concept of pregnancy "cravings." I will be the first to tell you, I had plenty of cravings even when I wasn't pregnant. I don't know if pregnancy makes you more inclined to listen to your body? To follow through if your craving is reasonable? Permission to 'let go' if your craving isn't reasonable?

Even though I've listed these things, I can't decide if I'm really CRAVING something, or if it just sounds appetizing when not much else does. But I do know that when food does taste good right now, it tastes about a THOUSAND times better than normal, which I love! The down side, of course, is that when food is only so-so, I have to force it down. But for the love of all things crisp and cold, and all things spicy and savory, I shall press forward!


Aversions: 

chocolate

coffee

green veggies, sadly

lots of little things that just don't sound good in the moment


Cravings:

cold, fresh pineapple chunks

bagels and cream cheese (Even GF bagels would be okay with real cream cheese. Debating how badly I actually want this. Worth the dairy trouble for a taste of the real thing again? I've heard some people can tolerate dairy better when they're pregnant. Is this an urban legend? We'll see what I decide.)

baked potatoes with lots of butter, bacon, and green onions

Lulu's spicy beef and basil fried rice

pepperoni pizza (again, GF crust is totally fine, but fake cheese is bearable at best, totally disgusting at worst. I almost always order my pizza without cheese, but I was practically drooling over a friend's cheesy pepperoni pizza last week.)

pickles (so cliche)

the Porto Pure burger (on a GF bun) from Unforked

(vegetable) sushi with (GF) soy sauce and wasabi (although I wouldn't say no to my favorite shrimp and mango roll from Piranha in Ft. Worth-- mmmm. aaaand now that's all I can think about.)

cucumber, onion, and vinegar salad

street tacos from Cancun Fiesta Fresh

all spicy and salty food, really

(from this website)

I'm not sure what this post accomplished, except for making my mouth water at the thought of lots of delicious food that I can't make quite the same at home!



[Edited to add: I had been fairly nervous about my lack of vomiting since I'd heard so many horror stories about morning sickness in the first trimester. However, once we saw that heart beating away on ultrasound the week after I wrote this post, I felt a lot better. Now I'm simply THANKFUL that my nausea hasn't gotten out of hand and that it's fairly easy to manage!]

Winds of Change

Sometimes I just have to laugh at the absurdity of the past year in regards to my job. I mean, really. It's been one long, stressful journey in the painful lesson on, the grass isn't always greener. Don't get me wrong, I am really happy with where my job situation is right now, but I'm still learning that really, the grass is greener where you water it.

Was it really just a year ago that I was teaching clinicals, helping in nursing skills lab, taking graduate classes, and working full time in the NICU? And I was so hard on myself! No wonder I was burnt out and ready for a change! From this distance, I heap grace upon grace upon that poor ragged girl.

This time last year I took a job at a clinic thinking it'd be a nice change of pace. That was a good lesson in learning that expectations are simply premeditated disappointments, as Ross' mentor Frank likes to say. It's a long story and one that includes as many external disappointments as internal ones, but I resigned in June. Has it really only been 4 months since my last week there? It. feels. like. a. lifetime. I learned so much there from an academic standpoint, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity, but I'm also thankful I've moved on.

I'm currently cobbling together a living with two different jobs: I'm a NICU nurse part-time and a home visit/postpartum/newborn nurse part-time. I'm loving the variety and honestly, I also like that I'm not fully vested in any one place right now. It helps me stay emotionally disconnected from my work, which God knows I need. In the past year I let the line between work and life become far too blurry and my life affected my work and my work affected my life and it was all a mess. I like being able to be a nurse. I love that! And I love going home and being Therese.

The downside, of course, is that I'm not accruing seniority or PTO or retirement benefits anywhere, which is unnerving. I'm constantly having to surrender control in that regard. God has me where he wants me right now and I'm so grateful that I listened and took the risk.

Which I guess brings me to the actual point of what I came here to talk about today. At my last clinic job, I became a person I really really disliked. I let my circumstances bring out the absolute worst in me. Cranky, self-righteous, selfish, demanding, entitled... the list goes on and on. The worst part about it is that I lost my filter and said more things out loud than I probably ever should have!

To my co-workers, I probably just looked like every other burnt-out nurse. But to me, I was appalled. My heart really is that dark. I would think, "This isn't me! I don't recognize this person!" But really, it was me at my truest and weakest and most human, I think. I'd been tired and worn and exasperated, but never that. Never bitchy. Never rude. Never so thoughtless. That's what I regret most about that job: the way I handled it. I blew it.

I'm so grateful for the cleansing wind that blew into my tired heart this summer. I've been able to watch with fascination, almost from the sidelines, as God begins to heal my heart. I'm learning to accept grace from God and from myself. The whirlwind of the last 3 years had finally ceased blowing and I got to stand there and watch the dust settle. As the air cleared, I started to catch glimpses of what God was revealing on the horizon. And it was good. All of his gifts are. This summer has been so beautiful, and filled with more second chances than I deserve.

Lest you think that this is where the story ends, yesterday I was reminded that the learning process is just that... a process. The more I grow, the more I see that in a sense, we never 'arrive' in this life. There's no point at which life is suddenly easy and every single thing makes sense. That's not to say there aren't seasons of rest and growth and happiness and sorrow and peace and angst, because there are! But they're always evolving. And I'm okay with that. In fact, I think I like that. I don't actually want to stay the same as I am today.

Yesterday at work I was flustered and busy and a little overwhelmed with new tasks fresh out of orientation, and what I had previously thought of as old-job-Therese popped up out of nowhere in an unnecessary snarky comment. Granted, not many people heard, and the people who did, didn't think much of it. It was a crazy busy day for everyone. But the heaps of shame that flooded my heart shocked me. I thought that kind of response was directly related to my old job. I thought I left that behind. But I did not.

Last night before bed, I read exactly what I needed to hear in Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon:

If you need to hear that, look up John 16:7-15, too. The Holy Spirit takes Jesus' inheritance and declares it ours as well! And like Spurgeon says, "your Father does not give you promises and then leave you to draw them up from the Word like buckets from a well. The promises He has written in the Word He will write afresh on your heart." I love that. Good news, indeed!

6 Weeks: Greatly Loved

This week started off on a much better note than last week since my sinus stuff FINALLY cleared up! I'm also noticing that staying busy helps the time go by faster. Realistically, it also gives my mind less time to wander toward the what-ifs.

This week, the baby's heart started beating and by the end of the week, the baby had completed a period of growth that involves the greatest size and physical changes of its lifetime! He or she has grown 10,000 times in size from where they started, even though the baby is only the size of a grain of rice now.

Physical symptoms-wise, this week has been pretty uneventful for me. Some of the same old early symptoms are still staying around to reassure me, but overall it's easy to forget that something is going on in there. (Then when I slow down from whatever I'm doing and remember our secret again, it makes my day 1,000 times better!) Here's a nice perk I'm already noticing, though: my nails are growing like crazy! When I went gluten-free, I noticed a huge improvement in my nails. They were no longer brittle and peeling. However, this week they've been above and beyond anything I've ever seen. I'm not used to having to trim my nails so often!

Monday and Tuesday, I noticed myself wanting to brush my teeth after eating anything because I didn't like the taste in my mouth afterwards. Tuesday night I went to bed nauseated and woke up nauseated Wednesday morning. More carsick than I'm-going-to-throw-up-right-now, though. The rest of the week I noticed it creeping up when my stomach was to empty or too full.

I also had my first overly emotional outbreak. Granted, I cry easier now than I used to in years past, but this was a bit irrational: the pizza Ross brought home one night... the pizza I'd been looking forward to all day at work... was the wrong pizza from the wrong restaurant AND it was a gooey, gummy, underbaked, gluten-free mess. So I cried.

Thankfully, my trusty pregnancy handbook assures me that between 5 and 6 weeks, "you may have noticed that you're experiencing moodiness, irritability, and tearfulness. While some of these feelings may have a psychological basis, most of the time they are just natural reactions to your body's changing levels of hormones and can be amplified by your immediate experience." Thank goodness!

((But if you want to bring me a gluten-free pizza from Minsky's with vegan Follow Your Heart mozzarella at some point? I would be okay with that.))

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Really this week I'm mostly still been grappling with some of the early emotional/spiritual aspects of pregnancy, since the physical stuff isn't taking precedence at the moment. As the days march on, it continues to sink in that this is really happening. (It seems to have clicked for Ross this week, too, and he's ecstatic! It's cute). Surprisingly, there's some guilt in all that. I feel like I've been through the ringer in the last few years, and a healthy pregnancy seems so undeserved. Something going right (according to plan, dare I say) feels so foreign. But the very nature of pregnancy reminds me that it's really not in my hands, which is an interesting dichotomy, and good.

I also feel guilty that I'm happy because life is good! I'm in a much healthier job situation, our marriage is a complete 180 from what it was those first few years, and jeez it seems like by the time you add a healthy bun in the oven, we're living the dream! And it does feel like we're living in a dream.

I know as Christians we're taught to find joy in all circumstances. I REALLY struggled with that this past winter, in particular. And I feel guilty that yeah, I'm joyful NOW because things are GOOD! So I'm still working through what all of those thoughts and feelings mean. Honestly, the last few months have just been a breath of fresh air and this news is the icing on the cake to a great summer!

This week started with a great sermon about God's love that I recommend listening to. It was a sweet bookend to the summer for me. Back in June, I went to a conference about God's love and now this sermon in October? Things are so different inside and out. It's easy to feel like God loves me right now. It's much harder for me, in my limited, self-centered imagination, to see how God loves me when things are falling apart. Regardless, I'm unendingly thankful for this respite, no matter how long it lasts. It's allowed me to catch my breath and digest and recover from the last 2 years of chaos and hurt.

I hesitate to use the word "blessings" to describe any point of this journey, but I thought I'd address my feelings on it now and get that out of the way. It's not because I don't think this baby is a blessing. It is! It's life! It's huge! We are grateful for every single day we have with this little one.

However, the word "blessing" was painful to me last year, and I'm still sorting through that. In a time when I felt like I was seeking God's will, I was being obedient, and NOTHING WAS GOING WELL, I felt outside of his love. Like there were no blessings stored away for me. Like my life was going to be all trials and no triumphs. It would take many more words than I care to share in this already over-long post to really address where my heart was so messed up in that thinking, but it's how I felt. I felt like blessings were for other people and not for me.

So now I sit here with knowledge of a huge blessing, wanting to be careful about using that word around others. I don't want to sling more arrows at other aching hearts. I read something in Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional (can't recommend it enough) the other day, and it breathed some life and clarity into this are for me, and really changed my perspective on the past year:

Child of God, do you hesitate to appropriate this title? Has your unbelief made you forget you are also greatly loved [like Daniel 10:11]? Surely you must have been greatly loved, to have been bought with the precious blood of Christ...? When God crushed his only son for you, what was this but being greatly loved? You lived in sin and rioted in it; surely you were greatly loved for God to have been so patient with you. You were called by grace and led to a savior and made a child of God and an heir of heaven. Doesn't all this prove a very great and superabounding love? Since that time, whether your path has been rough with troubles or smooth with mercies, it has been full of proofs that you are greatly loved. If the Lord has chastened you, it was not in anger; if he has made you poor, still in grace you have been rich. The more unworthy you feel yourself to be, the more evidence you have that nothing but unspeakable love could have led the Lord Jesus to save a soul like yours. The more disapproval you feel, the clearer is the display of God's abounding love in choosing you and calling you and making you an heir of heaven... Come boldly, believer, for despite the whispers of Satan and the doubts of your own heart, you are greatly loved.

I just can't add to that. My heart needed those words this week.

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Just to make this post super-long, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day was this week, too. Without elaborating and making everyone (including myself) uncomfortable, now is as good a time as any to say that I'm G2P0, so this journey is bittersweet. I'm currently more pregnant than I've ever been, but that doesn't mean I think of that first one any less. I'm grateful that he or she is in God's arms and by the grace of a redeeming God, someday we'll get to meet that precious soul!

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And to my 'now' baby who is just starting to look like a baby and not a blob of cells? You're already greatly loved not just by your parents, but by your Ultimate Creator who already has great plans for you! We can't wait to meet you.