Advice for new Mommas to be

I'm linking up again with Mama G over at  Growing up Geeky to offer some advice to new mommas. I'm really excited to read others posts as well, because even though Ive done this 2 times already, I seem to forgotten a lot!! Amazing how that happens. This won't be long, but these are just a few things that come to mind.

• If you plan of bottle feeding, do not go out and buy a lot of one type of bottle, take apart and wash so they are none returnable. Frankie probably tried 5 different bottles before we found one that he liked.
• Same goes for pacifiers. Kid would only take these MAM ones!

• Try not to get a lot of snap up pajamas for at night. Zipper sleepers work better. When you are changing a diaper at 3:30 am, and half awake, you don't want to go fussing around with snaps. These were a favorite in our house :Gerber Sleep and Plays

• It can be very easy to forget how often your little one eats, pees and poops and you really want to keep track of that in the beginning. At first I used a little notebook for this, but then my husband made me a book at work (simple enough to make on your own computer) it had the day of the week up top, I just filled in the date and then times in 15 minute increments. I would simply fill it how much the baby drank and such and it really helped keep track. This book was a life saver when I had Ava because I saw exactly how much Frankie was eating at the age and when I introduced cereal and new foods or what not. It also helped me keep track of when they were sleeping in longer stretches.
• Do not wash every single item of clothing you have for the little one because you may be in that small percentage that Ultra Sound was wrong. Frankie was a girl my whole pregnancy and had a full closet of freshly washed pink clothes and a pink nursery, but was VERY much a boy at birth!! I had cut off all tags, there was NO returning =( BOO

Ok, that's all I can think of at the moment. Just writing this is making me get even more excited!! Do any of you have any advice to share?

Meal Planning Monday {3}

Time to post my meal plan again, doing this gives me more motivation to actually make a plan.
Monday- sausage and peppers with pasta
Tuesday-  Hungarian Goulash in the crock pot (Recipe to come)
Wednesday- Baked Ziti and meat balls (never had last week )
Thursday- Steak, potato and Salad
Friday- Order Out
Saturday- ?
Sunday- Super Bowl Sunday- Hero and party food


I'm pretty turned off to chicken these days so I omitted any type of chicken from our meals this week. I hope Frankie forgives me!! lol  So whats on your meal post this week?

Escarole Bean Soup

Anyone who knows me know that I LOVE soup. It is probably my most favorite type of food out there. When Frank and I started dating he wasn't really into it, but after forcing him to try he now loves too. His favorite being Pasta Fagioli (yum!!). Actually as I'm writing this I'm getting a huge craving for a big bowl of Minestrone Soup from my favorite Italian Restaurant but I guess the chicken soup of the stove will have to do! Ok anyway back on track here, I recently made a recipe for Escarole and Bean soup and it was yummy so I thought Id share it with all of you.

Ingredients-

• 1/2 large onion diced
• 3 carrots, diced
• 2 sliced cloves of garlic
• a pinch of red pepper flakes
• 1 head of escarole
• 48 ounce chicken broth
• 1 can cannellini beans (drained)
• 3 sweet Italian Sausage links (casings removed)

Heat a big pot over medium heat and crumble in sausage. Cook until it is browned and breaking apart. Use a spoon to help do this. Remove to a plate. Then reduce the heat and add the carrots and onions. Cook for 5 minutes and then stir in garlic, red pepper and escarole (should be cleaned and chopped). Cook and stir for about 2 minutes. Next pour in the chicken broth and bring to a simmer over high heat. Reduce heat and cook 20 minutes. Then add the sausage back to the pot along with the beans. Let soup heat up. Then serve! So yummy!!

I found this recipe in my current Family Circle Magazine

10 weeks

I am so excited that I am going to be able to document this pregnancy on here. I wish I had this for my other two but oh well!

• How far along- 10 weeks
• Total weight gain- 4 lbs
• How big is baby- The size of a prune
• Maternity clothes- Jeans yes, sweat pants and yoga pants I'm still good. Some shirts because my non maternity are turning into belly shirts.
• Stretch Marks- None yet =)
• Sleep- Uggg I'm exhausted all day and wish I could nap (like I did with my 1st) but at night I toss and turn!
• Best moment this week- Seeing my lil gummy bear on the ultra sound and the heart beat of 172 bpm
• Movement- not yet
• Food cravings?- Chocolate milk every night before bed, cool ranch Doritos's and strawberries with whipped creme!
• Food Aversions?- Orange juice, but nothing really except ground meat, eww
• Labor signs?- No No NO
• Belly Button?- Still in but getting shallow
• What I miss?- Feeling energetic everyday, being able to stay up past 8:30
• What I'm looking forward to-  The second trimester and some energy
• Milestone- Baby is now a fetus!!!

Sorry for this terrible cell phone picture! Hopefully next week I will be better prepared =)

Operation: Drink Milk from a Sippy Cup

I have been very open and honest with the fact that I broke the rule of "no more bottle" at age one with Ava. I had my reasons though. She was having multiple surgeries and the bottle was soothing for her. The time has come now to say bye bye to her beloved friend, and I need HELP!!! You see when Frankie stopped the bottle, bye bye went the milk as well. I just refuse to let this happen again. I want my girl to drink her milk. Today is the first day of no more bottle and it started off good, but now its getting rough.
I picked her up these Tommee Tippee sippy cups at Target yesterday.

When she had her breakfast this morning she drank her milk out of them, SCORE!!! She never drank milk out of any other sippy I had offered so I was amazed. I told her it was her big girl cup and she loved it. But now big girl is getting tired and its almost nap time and she wants her bottle. I didn't give in, I offered her milk in this cup again, except now I'm getting it thrown at me and its 2:41 and my sleepy little toddler is still crying and not napping. So I turn to you guys!! Help!! Please!! Did your child continue to drink milk when the bottle was taken away? What cup do you use? Any words of wisdom for a tired pregnant momma??

My current Must Have Item

I am linking up with Mama G at Growing up Geeky! Right now my "must have" item for any time we leave the house is a snack cup filled with either "fishys" or "Cheerios's", but not just any old snack cup or plastic baggy. It has to be this little guy right here.

The Munchkin Snack Catcher

These little guys are awesome because when the kids drop them I don't have a mess to clean up, everything stays nicely inside the cup!  When the little angels start to act up in the car or the mall all I have to do is pull these bad boys out and I get at least 15minutes of pure quiet!!

So there you go, my current Must Have =)

Party of 5!!

I am so excited to share with all of you guys that starting this August we are going to be a family of 5!!
Frank and I are over the moon happy. We were so happy that it happened so fast. Frankie took us 9 cycles (Ave was our BIG surprise) and this time just 1 cycle!!

There is nothing better then those 2 pink lines or a plus sign that lets you know in just 9 short months, your whole is going to change so much for the better.

The best part is I am due on my birthday August 22, talk about a great present =)

I'm feeling good so far, just extremely tired (I'm sure chasing around 2 toddlers doesn't help) and some m/s nausea, but thankfully it seems to be slowing down.

I'm really looking forward to documenting this pregnancy and weekly updates starting on Thursdays!

I hope now you can all forgive me for my absence lately.

Meal Planning Monday {2}

Wow I cant believe it's been a whole week since I posted. I fully intended on posting more last week, but then this little thing called life got in my way, sorry guys!!
I'm pretty proud of myself I stuck to my meal plan last week and hoping I can do it again this week.

Monday- Fried Chicken cutlets ( I make these at least once a week, because Frankie LOVES them and usually eats for lunch as well), roasted potatoes and corn.
Tuesday - Gravy meat in the crockpot with pasta and Italian Bread
Wednesday- Chicken soup and crusty bread for dipping
Thursday- Bakes ziti and a salad
Friday- Pizza night hopefully with a visit from my cousins =)
Saturday- Eat out
Sunday- Sunday dinner at my parents house.

This week for lunch I'm going to try a new recipe my cousin gave me for Rice and Beans, so hopefully I will put the recipe and pictures up.  We will probably also have lots of leftovers (especially the soup) and tuna sandwiches, I'm really going to try to eat home everyday and save some money.


I decided to make a link up for this!! So come on and link up your meal post, Its a fun way to find new things to make =)

Meal Planning Monday

So before the holidays I was doing awesome with this. Every week when I made our grocery list I would look and see what we had in the freezer, pantry etc and figure out what we needed. I would then look at our schedule for the week and plan accordingly and it was working out great. Well the holidays have come and went and its really time to get into the swing of things again. This is only for dinner, I never really plan breakfast or lunch because we always have breakfast food and lunch is either left overs, cold cuts, grilled cheese, etc but a lot of days we eat lunch lunch out with my mom. So here is my plan for this week.

Monday -crock pot pot roast, potatoes and carrots
Tuesday- Pepper steak and rice with string beans
Wednesday- Fried breaded chicken cutlet, bakes potatoes, and corn
Thursday- Pasta (probably elbows) with meat sauce, Italian bread
Friday- Almost always pizza day in our house!
Saturday- Ether eat out or pasta
Sunday- Dinner at my parents


Do any of you meal plan? Care to share your plan for the week.
Also I'm really on the search for more crock pot meals, if you have any please do share!

Also, I still need to upload my pictures of my upstairs linen closet and the kids rooms, I didn't forget, I will be posting soon!
Happy Monday everyone =)

What I've been up too

OMG I feel like its been forever since I blogged but there has been so much going on since the holidays it kinda felt nice to take a nice relaxing break. Not that it's actually been relaxing, but the not stressing about what to blog about helped!! After Christmas it seriously looked like Toys R Us threw up in my house and I was starting to get the shakes. Something needed to be done, so I spent this past week de cluttering my house, still some more to do but I'm pretty happy with what Ive done so far. Today I'm going to show the down stairs. 

 This is our dining room, I took the pads and table cloth off the table and decided to show off the wood, I love the way it looks. I also took a ton of picture frames off our computer cabinet and love how much cleaner it looks.

 A view of the living room and my munchkins watching  The Fresh Beat Band

 Frankie wanted to do "cheese"! Also you see that basket of toys hidden in the corner there? Those are the only toys that are in the living room now =) Everything else is nicely organized up stairs and is brought down when they want to play with it. This works so much better for Frankie because I find he can get overwhelmed if there is too much going on

 Our hallway, all nice and open now. no more pack and play!! Just the lego table which is more the likely going up to Frankie's room, I really want to encourage more playing in their rooms and not the living room.

 Just because they are the cutest!

 We cleaned off the counters and de cluttered the side of the fridge, such a breathe of fresh air!

Cleaned off the junk that was starting to pile up on the kitchen table, just a bowl now=)

Well there you have it, that's the downstairs of home, I think it looks pretty darn good for 2 adults and 2 toddlers. Tomorrow I will post upstairs.

Have any of you been a cleaning frenzy since the new year? I'd love to see what you did? link it up in a comment!

Happy New Year!!

Yes I'm well aware that I haven't done my Christmas posts yet but they are coming, promise!!
Momma wasn't feeling well the past few days, but I managed to pull myself somewhat together to head out to an early dinner and then back home to ring in the new year in our pjs! We went to an awesome Italian restaurant and had a extremely yummy meal and the best part was that Ava fell asleep and slept in her stroller the entire time so the rest of us all enjoyed a peaceful meal, mean I know! but she can be a handful in a restaurant!
Here are some pics of our night

We brought the princess home some chicken fingers and french fries!

Yes, a terrible self shot of us! I really need a tripod! lol

 Frankie wanted nothing to do with us!

 Playing with new light savers that papa got them!

 As good as it gets for a family shot!

Happy New Years Everyone!!