Current cravings- Chocolate Milk!!!!

I am so crazy about chocolate milk right now. I’ve never been a big fan of chocolate milk. Last weekend, we went to our usual breakfast joint Eggs N Things, for the first time I ordered chocolate milk because I was craving for it. Waffles with fresh strawberries and whipped cream is also one of my favorite breakfast menu items now.

Since then, I am constantly thinking about chocolate milk. I like to make my own chocolate milk by mixing milk with chocolate syrup. That way, I can control the amount of chocolate in my milk!

YUMMY!!!

Labor of Love Class

Last week during class, our instructor took about 15 minutes to have us practice how to swaddle a baby and change a diaper. Since neither one of us have changed a single diaper in our lives before, I found it pretty funny to see John put a diaper on our fake baby.

30 weeks update

I decided to update my pregnancy bump a little more frequent now that I am a little closer to my due date. Instead of every 4 weeks, I will try updating every 2 weeks.

So, I am officially in my third trimester now at 30 weeks pregnant. Now I totally feel pregnant. I mean, I was pregnant before, but once I hit week 30, all of a sudden I feel SO PREGNANT. My belly feels like it grows overnight. I feel huge! And very uncomfortable. It is harder for me to get up from bed, couch, chairs.. etc. I need support pulling myself up. And I can no longer plop myself down on a chair.. I have to go slllloooow. I have also become very clumsy. I constantly drop stuff, break things and sometimes feel like tipping over when I bend over. I bump my belly over things ALOT. Like I forgot I have a big ol' belly in my way. At times, I feel like this:

Grumpy, annoyed and BIG! 

I got especially depressed when I went through my old pictures and know that I will never be able to go back to my pre pregnancy size.Here’s an old picture I found when we were in Hawaii…. it’s hard to believe that this picture was just taken June of last year. I really miss my belly button.  :`(

Anyway, so here I am, at week 30. You can see, my maternity shirt is stretching almost to its max now.

John and I have been attending a 7 week childbirth class offered by our local hospital here. I had been contemplating whether to join the childbirth class because it cost $225 for the whole course. I am so not willing to depart with my hard earned money!!! After talking to some friends, I finally caved in and signed up for the course. I know that I can probably learn the same thing by reading pregnancy books and I know that there are plenty of sources available on the internet. The most important reason that I signed up is to calm my “nervousness” down a little. You see, this whole pregnancy thing came a little too fast for me. I am scared to death of the pain and agony of labor. I am hoping by meeting with some new moms and talking to some “real” people will help me go through the pregnancy a little easier. At week 6, we will learn about Infant/ Child Safety and CPR, which can be very helpful. We are 3 weeks into it now, and are really enjoying it.

At week 30, according to thebump.com, the baby is a size of a squash!

Amazing…! Now I can’t wait to feel the love like most mothers will feel when they first lay eyes on their babies. All mothers claim it’s the most wonderful thing in the world! I guess I should just sit back and enjoy this amazing journey of pregnancy while I can! Baby M will be here before I know it!

More lights please

After setting up the office with all the bookcases and a desk attachment, we realized that the space is too dark to work with just one recessed light. Since the office is the first thing you see when you enter through the front door, I wanted a nice chandelier that will act as a focal point for the room. I really like the idea of having a big oversized pendant light over the desk. Something that look like this:

source from here.

I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find anything within my price range. I didn’t want to spend more than $50 for this light. I even got myself a few lamp shades attempting to DIY my own, but nothing seems quite right. So I returned all 50 lamp shades that I got from Home Goods. Just kidding…. I only got 3 which I returned to the store almost immediately after realizing that none of the shade looks right. John didn’t like the idea of the pendant light since it blocks out most of the light, kind of defeats the purpose of making the room brighter.

So at our recent trip to Ikea, we finally found the one. Even then, I wasn’t so sure how great it would look but we went for it anyway. I must say, I am glad with the result. And for $39.99, we can’t complain. We also grabbed some cabinet lighting which were on sale for our expedit bookcases.

Again, we had to buy the recessed light converter from Lowes, the same one we got when we installed the capiz chandelier in our dining room.

We all know that furniture from Ikea requires some assembling. I can’t believe even light fixture require some assembling!

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a close up of our Fillsta!

Me likey! :)

 

 

 

 

After getting the pendant light on, John moved on to install the cabinet lights.

 

We started with 2, one on each end. It looked kind of odd, so we added another one in the middle. When we decided 3 is what we will go with, John went behind the bookcases to hide all the messy wires.

  

Then we decide the location for the on off switch for the cabinet lights.

 

Ta-da…. it is hidden under one of the cubes, right next to a chair. We can easily reach for the switch to turn the lights on and off. :)))) 

Now we just need to organize the area. If only we are motivated to organize the office :-| Both John and I are very messy people. Up to today, the desk is still a mess with who-knows-what laying all over. I can’t wait to find some deals on baskets/ inserts, so I can just throw everything in there out of sight!

Glucose Screening Test & Citizenship Interview

I did my glucose screening test last week. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The drink I mean. Everywhere I read said that the glucose water taste nasty. It didn’t taste that bad for me. I fasted since 12 am and went for this drink at around 8:30am. Waited an hour, then they drew my blood. The purpose of the test is to check for gestational diabetes, a high blood sugar condition, which women are prone to get during pregnancy. They said if they find something is wrong they will contact me immediately. I haven’t got a call from them, which I take it as a sign that I am safe. :)

After a quick breakfast, we drove down to downtown LA for my citizenship interview appt at 12pm. Waited for almost 2 hours before they called me in. The interviewer asked me 6 questions in regards to American history and I got them all right! After some general questioning and making sure that John and I are still legally married, he congratulated me for becoming a US citizen! Woo hoo….! Finally! After years of visa applications and money invested, I am now officially a US citizen! No more worrying about expiring visas and no more money needed for visa applications! What a relief! I told John his job is done and he is now free to go. :-D

Expedit hunt over!

For the past few months, I’ve been watching craigslist like a hawk in hopes of finding the expedit bookcase for our office and nursery. I am too cheap to pay full price at Ikea so I opted to find used from craigslist. Every time I see the the size and color I want, I contacted the seller and arranged a time to pick it up. A lot of times, they were all sold by the time I contacted the seller. That’s why it took me months to finally able to get all the bookcases I wanted. We had to go as far as Long Beach to pick up one of the 5X5 bookcases. 2 of the bookcases we picked up from Burbank, which is not bad of a drive, and the last one we had to pick up from Culver City. Yes, we went all over town to pick up these used bookcases to save us money buying them new from Ikea. We are fortunate that we have a truck that we can borrow from John’s dad whenever we need it. I honestly think it is worth buying used. All these bookcases probably saved us 2-300 bucks from purchasing new. Plus, it saved us time from assembling them especially the big 5x5 bookcase, which could easily take 2-3 hours. Of course there is a risk of getting damaged item if you don’t check the item thoroughly when picking up. In fact one of the bookcase we got has a hole on the side which we didn’t notice when we picked it up. Since, it was at the lower side of the bookcase, it wasn’t that noticeable. We also arranged it so the hole is facing the corner, where it’s not easily seen. Other than that, we had pretty good experience with all our expedit bookcases. We have 4 altogether, 3 in the office and 1 in the nursery (shown briefly in my previous post).

 

Here’s a picture of all 3 bookcases in the office. Can you spot them? Don’t judge, I didn’t bother tidying it up and making it pretty before taking this pic. Everything is still a mess and we still need to find baskets and inserts to organize our junk. It is an ongoing project to get this office put together. The desk attachment is the only thing we bought new from Ikea. I ran out of patience waiting for one to show up on craigslist. The white chairs I got from Target at 75% clearance! Around $18/ ea. What a steal!

 

The one bookcase that is placed horizontally under the window was sitting a little too low for our preference. So we made a trip to Ikea and got him some legs. We pulled him out and drilled 4 inch high legs on him.

Now, we just need to find us some baskets for these cubes, so we can start hiding our clutter away. Hopefully we’ll find something on sale soon! Can’t wait to get this office complete.

 

Cranberry Pound Cake

We made cranberry pound cake last night from the recipe here. As you can see, our cake doesn’t look anything close to the cake in the picture. Nonetheless, it still tasted good. I am not a big fan of cranberries so this is not my favorite kind of cake. I was reading the O magazine and found the recipe pretty simple to make and it looks so delicious in the picture. So I decided to give it a try and if I like it, I may make this for our Thanksgiving family dinner. It seems like the perfect holiday dessert for Thanksgiving. Looks like I will have to find something else to make that doesn’t involve cranberries. ;)

I was in the mood of baking last night because I couldn’t wait to whip out my brand spanking new kitchenaid stand mixer that I snatched up from TJ Maxx at an awesome deal! $149 to be exact. I have always wanted to own one of this kitchenaid stand mixers, but wasn’t really willing to spend the money. I bought one from costco a year ago and returned it a week later because I felt so guilty spending $250 on a cake mixer. I was only going to get the 5 quart version. So I’ve always been using the handheld mixer when comes to baking. When I saw this at TJ Maxx, I knew I had to get it instantly. There is no way I am passing up a bargain like that. This baby cost about $336 at amazon.com. Yes, this is even better that the one I initially wanted!

After 2 years of admiring this baby, I finally was able to own one!

Halloween …

This year Halloween was really low key for us. We spent the night at home passing out candies to the kids that came trick or treating. We even missed our friends annual Halloween party the night before. No party, no dressing up for us this year.

Since this is the first year we moved into this neighborhood, we weren’t sure how many kids would turn up. For the past few years, we have been living in apartments and condos, so there were really no kids that came trick or treating. Plus, we were usually not home to pass out candies. So, this is considered our first year staying home passing out candies to kids.

Thankfully, we were prepared. We bought a few extra bags just in case, thinking that we can return them if we didn’t use them. I kept having to fill this bowl up throughout the night using every single bag of candies we bought and at the end of the night, that’s all we have left.

Most of the kids that showed up really went all out with their costume and make up stuff. So darn cute!

A frog makeover

I bought a frog from Lowes awhile ago at clearance for around $4. It’s a water spitter frog for pond water fountain garden decor. I don’t have a water fountain but I thought he would look good at my front porch.

Every morning as I drive to work, I can’t help but notice that he looks pretty mean and serious. Kind of scary. Not a happy cute frog at all. So we gave him a make over. We bought a white gloss spray paint and started spraying him all over. After 2 coats, he turned into this:

Not sure if it makes him look kinder. He just went from a dark green color to super white. He still has the mean nature in him. I think I can’t change that, it probably has something to do with his bulging eyes. I forgot to take a picture of him before he got sprayed but here’s a picture I googled to give you an idea of how he looked before.

picture source here.

Oh well, maybe he can help me chase away evil spirits. :P

Current crave- King Crab Legs

This post is stupid but a month ago, we had King Crab Legs. We bought some from Whole Foods after being tipped off by Jocelyn that they were going on sale. As I was going through my pics, I saw these pics and *drool*.

Oh King Crab Legs… please go on sale again! I can’t afford to eat you at normal price.

28 weeks update

Ok, here’s another one of my pregnancy updates and a belly shot of my big ol’belly. :)

Here’s the side by side picture to compare:

Definitely a lot bigger than a month ago huh?! Notice how big my arms and fingers got? I definitely gained weight all over my body :( Very sad. In the morning, I can’t put my wedding rings on. I can still wear my engagement ring (tight) but definitely not my wedding band since my wedding band is 1/2 size smaller than my engagement ring.

I pray that I am able to loose all these fat once the baby is born. I have gained a little extra than what a normal pregnancy should. :( Scary.. scary…

Anyway, here’s a little rundown of my pregnancy status:

WEEK: 28

MONTH: 6

TRIMESTER: 3

GENDER: boy

WEIGHT GAIN: a whopping 26 lbs!!!

SYMPTOMS: Still serious heartburn, acid reflux and constipation :(

BELLY BUTTON STATUS: Flat going on an outie.

CURRENT FAVOURITE FOOD OR CRAVING: Same cravings - any noodle soup, french fries, spicy food and fruits.

********

According to thebump.com

BABY’S SIZE:

Baby's now the size of an eggplant!
Baby's lungs are mature enough that, if born right now, he has a pretty good chance of surviving (with help from medical technology). His skin is still pretty wrinkly (one byproduct of living in amniotic fluid) but will smoothen as fat continues to deposit.

Your Baby: Month 5

Watch what you say -- baby is now able to hear outside noise from down in the womb. Studies show that baby finds gentle music and your own voice most soothing. Nipples are starting to sprout, and that little face is fully formed. And, baby's starting to settle into sleep cycles, snoozing about 12 to 14 hours a day. It shouldn't be hard to figure out when -- just pay attention to those kicks as they start and stop.