To my sweet and faithful readers:
After a fairly short stint on the WordPress server, the Domesticated Physicist will be moving. I’ve put on some big girl pants and decided to host my own blog (not without some serious encouragement from the Beard, of course). I will still be the Domesticated Physicist, and it will be the same content, just I’m hosting myself! Exciting, isn’t it?
I will be continuing my blog adventures at http://domesticated-physicist.com. Please join me for some shenanigans. 🙂
So now you have it, folks. Your one and only Domesticated Physicist has a bun in her oven; she’s in the family way; she’s going to have a baby. Again.
And do you know what that means? Pregnancy brings with it a whole host of fun and exciting peripheral symptoms, but the one that plagues me by far the most is, uhh, lack of movement. So far in two pregnancies I haven’t been super nauseous, haven’t really vomited much, nor have I had a lot of the nasty sounding first trimester symptoms some women get. But oh boy do I see a significant decrease in my digestive action.
Now, I fancy myself an amateur nutritionist, so I’ve looked up and studied some of the guidelines for all the stages of a woman’s life. One of those fun things that always pops up is fiber. (For more on fiber, please see my nutrition series.)
During pregnancy, a woman needs an extra few grams of fiber. And while she is nursing, she’ll need still a few more. Well, what if you are in both stages? Bitsy girl wouldn’t give up breastfeeding if she had to trade her left leg, so I have no intention of forcing her to stop just yet.
(For the record, she is not yet 12 months old, and her and I had a deal that she’d breastfeed for a year; I can’t go back on a deal with my firstborn, now can I?)
From what I’ve read and learned, it seems that in order to maintain any sort of digestive regularity I’m going to have to consume a lot of fiber. And by a lot, I mean a lot.
So these have become my new best friends:
On the left is a generic brand Metamucil, orange flavor. Yum! And the baggy is filled with golden flax seeds. I’ve been putting these suckers in nearly everything, much to my husband’s dismay. He hates picking them out of his teeth. But he tolerates it because he’d be much worse off if he had a cranky wife!
Just thought I’d share some fun tidbits from the life of the DP household. Thanks for stopping by!
Most people like to sleep in on a Saturday morning to catch up on some precious zzz’s. I don’t. Well, for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I naturally wake up before 7am every morning. No matter what time I went to bed. It’s a wonderful trait to have; I assure you.
Anyway, since I’m not sleeping on Saturday mornings, I have other things I’d like to be doing.
Like going to garage sales.
Or yard sales, as my husband insists I call them. “They aren’t held in people’s garages, usually,” he says.
I don’t care. Where I grew up we called them garage sales no matter where they were.
This past Saturday I had to drive Beard into the city to go to work; so I thought it would be a great opportunity to scope out some of the garage sales there. The city is much larger than the town we live in, so by sheer volume, there are more garage sales, and therefore much cooler things to find.
I had nothing in particular in mind, just hoping to find something that caught my eye. I picked up a few things that would be useful to us for less than $1: a white outlet cover we needed for the newly painted kitchen and a refilling water dish for the outdoor kitties.
The best find, though, was something so surprising to me I could hardly believe it:
The high chair on the right was bought by my mother more than 25 years ago in a garage sale in New Jersey. She knew she was having another little one, and the only way to find a good quality wooden high chair was to find a used one. I believe she made the cushion herself. My little heinie sat in that high chair.
I found the high chair on the left at a garage sale not 15 miles from my home in Central VA. For $15. More than 25 years after my mother bought the original.
Let me show you how awesome this match is:
Yes, folks, that is the same woodworking. These are pretty much the same high chair.
I felt pretty good about this purchase, needless to say.
For those of you regular readers on this site, you may be thinking, “You only have one Bitsy Girl; why do you need two high chairs?”
The answer to that, my friends is simple:
Our little Bits is going to be a big sis. The newest member of the DP family should be arriving around Christmas 2012.
Yesterday was a very big day for the DP family.
Beard graduated college.
Yes, you read that correctly. My husband is officially a degree-holding college graduate.
If feels like this day has been a long time coming; in some ways it has, but in other ways it hasn’t.
When we started dating my sweet Beard was working hard and had taken a wide and random assortment of classes at a few colleges. He hadn’t found anything he loved. Well, except me, of course.
Just over six months later we were engaged, and Beard had found a program worth trying at a local vocational college: Information Systems Engineering. Yes, that does sound like a hard degree. And that’s because it is. You see, my husband is a very smart man, and knows his way around computer. So he’s pretty much my super hero.
He took it one semester at a time. Sometimes he worked part time, sometimes he worked full time, but he always worked hard in his classes. He took night classes after we had Bitsy Girl so he could play Mr. Mom while I went to work during the day.
He made it through public speaking and English composition, even though he thought he couldn’t. He made Dean’s List every semester.
And yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, I watched my husband shake hands with the president of his college and receive his “diploma” (read placeholder). At the end of it all we met in the parking lot of the graduation venue, he with his shiny new diploma in his hand and beaming, and me with my grand pile of bags and a camera, excited to hug my graduate hubster.
If I say nothing else about it, this alone must be said.
I am so proud of him.
I’m sure I haven’t mentioned this before, but my darling Beard is a man from Wisconsin. Yes, folks, the land of cows, cheese, brats, and beer. Despite his hatred for beer, he is typical in his love for CHEESE and MEAT and MANLY THINGS. So in honor of Vegetarian Week in the United Kingdom, I made my meat and cheese loving Wisconsin man of a husband a vegetarian meal (without cheese).
(For clarification I am neither a vegetarian, nor am I British. I used to be a vegetarian in high school, and I have lived in the United Kingdom before. Currently, though, I’m a meat-eating American.)
So for the main course I chose a black bean burger. Why? Because I had a ton of pre-cooked black beans from a recipe last week. I found a recipe on a blog called Guilty Kitchen, and how could I not use it. You can find the recipe here.
For buns I used Sister Schuber’s Dinner Yeast Rolls because they are awesome. Don’t believe me? Try them. They may not be the healthiest things out there, but they really are tasty tasty. And since our meal was full of fiber and vitamins, I figured the least I could do was let Beard have his black bean burger on a super tasty bun.
For sides we had sweet potatoes fries and corn on the cob roasted in the oven. Why? Because the black bean burger recipe required me to turn on the oven, and while I’ve got it on I’m sure as heck going to throw in a bunch of stuff while I’m at it.
My sweet potato fries are different each time I make them. This particular recipe had a few tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon or so of salt, a teaspoon or so of black pepper, a few teaspoons of chili powder, cumin, coriander, and curry powder. I baked these at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.
For the corn on the cob, I left them in the husks and soaked them in cold water for about 10 minutes. Then they went in the oven, right on the rack, for 30 minutes.
This was the result of all of my hard work:
But most importantly were the taste-test results:
I loved the black beans burgers, and I thought they’d go great with some cheese (I didn’t have any in the fridge, dear me!).
Beard thought they were okay. He thanked me for warning him what they were, otherwise he would have “taken a bite and thought ‘What is in my mouth??'” (in his own words). The sweet potato fries were a hit for all three of us; the Bits will pretty much eat any form of sweet potato she gets. And well, the corn was corn. It was definitely very juicy since it came out of the oven, but flavor wise, it’s always the same. 🙂
Beard has been working for a local university since January, and our family has enjoyed so many benefits from his employment there. The pay is pretty good, the benefits aren’t bad at all, and he works three and four day weeks. We feel like we’ve been blessed beyond belief with our situation. The only thing that can be a struggle with Beard’s job is the long work days. He works 12 hour days (day shift, thankfully), and that can be not only stressful and tiring for him but for all of us. As a tiny person, our Bitsy Girl usually doesn’t wake up before her daddy leaves at 6:30 in the morning, and often she is in bed before he gets home around 7:40 in the evening.
(Before you realize what I’ve just typed, know that I do acknowledge how ridiculously lucky we are that our baby girl will sleep a solid 12 hours at night; don’t be too jealous, but she gives us two solid naps lasting longer than an hour each day, as well.)
It may not seem like a big deal, but to Beard, who used to play Mr. Mom while I was working, not seeing our Bitsy Girl awake for three or four days at a time is rough. In order to remedy this situation, we’ve come up with a fun solution: lunch with Daddy. Since Saturdays are usually the slowest days at Beard’s job, he is able to take a little bit of a longer lunch. The Bits and I will either meet him in his office or somewhere out and about in town to just hang out, have fun, and spend time as a family. I know Beard appreciates it, and I know Bitsy loves seeing her DaddyBeard. I love watching them together; there really is nothing sexier than a man who is a confident and loving father. 😉
This past weekend we ran off to a park to enjoy some beautiful weather, and I just wanted to share a few pictures from our lunch.
Yes, they scream together. It is pretty amusing.
Sometimes I have to remind myself that daddies play with babies differently than mommies do.
My daughter is a bit of a thrill seeker. She’s about 6 3/4 feet in the air here (5 1/2 feet for Beard, plus another foot or so for the length of arm above his head).
Examining the park bench for creatures.
“Hey, Momma, what are you looking at??”
Thanks for letting me share. Our little Bits always puts a smile on our faces, and we hope she puts a smile on yours!
As new-ish homeowners, Beard and I still have quite a bit to learn about how to take care of a house and make it our own. We’ve been fairly slow in most of these processes, most likely because we moved in here when I was 8 months pregnant with the Bitsy Girl. There really is only so much a giant waddling woman can help with, and with a tiny baby around, there isn’t much you can start on without fearing it will wake her up. Now that we’ve realized Bitsy Girl could sleep through a circus dancing through her bedroom during nap time, we’re a bit more adventurous.
Yesterday we finally decided to tackle what is probably one of the biggest, but most dramatic improvements we want to make in this house: painting the kitchen. That may not sound like much; painting is a fairly easy job. But when you have over 40 square feet of ridiculous cheap back splash to rip off, the job because a little bit more complicated.
This was our kitchen the day we moved in:
It wasn’t terrible, but definitely not our style. The whole house was painted with flat, beige paint, which, to be perfectly honestly, has never really done it for me. I’m more of a color kind of girl. The most impressive thing in the photo, though, is the back splash. It is a single sheet of what we discovered was dry erase board behind the counters, oven, and nearly floor to ceiling next to the back door. This, my friends, was our challenge.
Some of you may be thinking “oh, how neat! Dry erase board as your back splash. Clever!”. But those of you are sadly mistaken. Not only did this junk cover way more square footage of wall than a normal back splash should, it was also not very cute at all. Despite what it looks like in the photo, it was white with a faux gray marbling. Which, of course did not match the black speckled counter tops that were put in by the same owner. ::sigh:: That kitchen mismatched itself in so many ways it drove me nuts.
So more than one year after moving into this house, we finally decided to tackle the kitchen. This decision was made based, of course, on the fact that I discovered that a good friend of mine loves to paint. My husband hates to paint, but loves hanging out with my friend’s husband.
(I did not let Beard get away without helping with the back splash, of course. I’m not sure my friend an-d I could have torn it down with as much efficiency as Beard can. He can be truly Beardly sometimes.)
This is the lovely wood paneling we found underneath the back splash. Our whole house has this stuff, and it has been oh so lovely to paint. We were surprised to find it unpainted underneath the back splash. The flat, beige paint caper mystery had finally been solved. It was one owner to single-handedly painted the whole house one bland color and mismatched the kitchen to itself; way to go, Dude.
It was once the final pieces of back splash had been ripped off that Beard took a break.
He then promptly showered and ran quickly from the house with the Bitsy Girl so my friend and I could get painting. It was a fairly uneventful job after this, but the results were oh so dramatic.
Pay no attention to the junk on our counter and stove. We’re just slow at putting things away. But seriously. The difference is ridiculous. The best part: it only took one can of paint. I haven’t quite decided what to do with the other can yet, but I’m not returning it. Maybe I’ll paint the dog green. 🙂
My last day as a federal employee was March 30, 2012, and everyday since then I’ve been trying to find normal. I went from working 40 hours a week and commuting 5 hours a week to being a stay at home mom. Bitsy Girl was born in July, and I had to return to work when she was 8 weeks old. I said that it wasn’t so hard to leave her because she didn’t look at pathetic and helpless as some other 8 week old babies I have seen. Regardless, it was still difficult to leave my daughter, even though she was staying home with my husband. There really is not way to describe having to take care of every single need for a very needy little human being for 8 weeks, then have to jump back into inspecting government widgets. It was not only heartbreaking but confusing, as well.
Months later I find myself in the same situation, only reversed. I have left my job inspecting government widgets to care for my daughter, and yet, I don’t find my switch to being home as natural as I had hoped. Yes, I feel better about my choice to be home, and yes, I know the basics of caring for my daughter. It is my time management that could use some work. I had always thought of myself as a very ambitious go-getter, and yet, I find myself barely getting laundry done some weeks. Bitsy Girl is 10 months old now, and not only naps 3-4 hours a day, but can play by herself for almost 20 minutes at a time. I, of course, devote time in my day to play with, cuddle, and care for her, but I find myself easily frustrated with my lack of productivity on home tasks. My dishes get neglected, I make super easy meals to avoid having to cook for too long. I forget to wipe down my bathroom sink some weeks. It seems ridiculous. I had thought being at home would give me so much time to do what it was I wanted to get down. I thought I would have time to paint and declutter and bake and cook and garden. But sometimes I don’t.
I’m continuing to work on these skills, but I wouldn’t mind any suggestions. Anyone else have suggestions for a poor time manager?
Do you ever find yourself wondering whether or not your refrigerator handles used to be white? That happened to me this morning. They appeared to be a lovely cream shade, and I thought to myself, “Self, weren’t these a different color a few weeks ago?”. That, my friends, is how I know it’s time to bring out my secret weapon.
Let’s just admit it: no matter how much of a neat freak you are and no matter how clean you think you are in your kitchen, your counters, large appliances, and cabinets get just plain gross in a short period of time. I think it’s all the cooking and eating that goes on in there.
Anyway, a few months back when my mom was visiting, she showed me a great, cheap cleaner to use on my whole kitchen. It doesn’t require any fancy-pants blending or measuring or anything, just a big ol’ bucket or your very own kitchen sink.
Kitchen Cleaner
About 1/4 – 1/2 cup Borax
About 1/4 – 1/2 cup distilled vinegar
About 1 -2 quarts of warm water
Mix the three ingredients in your bucket or sink.
Yes, that is it. I use a washcloth, but you could also use a sponge with this cleaner. You can literally wipe everything in your kitchen down with this cleaner; it isn’t too abrasive for kitchen surfaces. I even use it to clean Bitsy Girl’s wooden high chair.
This cleaner makes sense to me when I break it down: vinegar disinfects and dissolves most food goo, and Borax, well that’s just plain awesome. It even says on the box that it has 20 mule team power. Who can beat that?
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