Mmm...Peanut Butter

At the start of my pregnancy, I received a long list from my doctor of all the foods I was now banned from enjoying. The expected items were on there - sushi, caffeine, alcohol - but some unexpected items were also on there, including a major shocker: deli meat. Supposedly, deli meat can easily be contaminated with listeria, which can 'cross the placenta' to Baby Labutta and do a whole lot of damage.

I've spoken to a lot of other pregnant and formerly-pregnant women and not all of them have been banned from enjoying deli meat. Initially, I ignored the ban and continued to make turkey and swiss sandwiches for lunch . However, two things happened that officially ended my turkey days. First, I mentioned to my doctor that I was still eating deli meat, and she gave me a look as if I had just said I was eating razor blades for lunch. Not good. Second, during my vacation in Canada, the country just happened to have a massive outbreak of listeriosis, and a widespread recall of a major label's brand of deli meat was conducted. Really not good.

Not to worry; I found a great alternative in peanut butter and jelly. I would estimate that I have a PB&J sandwich for lunch at least 4 times a week. Jif and Smuckers...yum. Unfortunately, I'm now reading about a massive recall of peanut butter products in the U.S. due to salmonella contamination. I've heard that salmonella is also bad for an unborn child, so I've been frantically reading every article on the topic to make sure my Jif is safe. So far, it appears so and I hope it continues to be so. I've already lost my turkey, and I don't know what I'll do if I lose my peanut butter, too.

The Baby's Nursery - A Video Tour

In our previous post we gave you a slideshow of the new baby's nursery as it all came together. Well, for Christmas I received a new camcorder and so we thought we'd take you on a video tour of the new nursery.

I apologize for the quality of the embedded video. Click this link here, YouTube High Quality) to go to YouTube and watch a better, yet still far from perfect version of the video. The camcorder shoots video in full HD (1920x1080) but not even the software that came with the camera does a good job of converting the video into a format that is easily uploaded to YouTube and one that looks good once it is uploaded. Once I invest in some better software the videos should start looking much better. In the meantime, enjoy!

Our Baby's Nursery

It wasn't a quick process by any stretch. But, we're having a baby and the baby needs a place to sleep and grow. So we needed a baby room. A nursery. Originally, we thought we would use the spare bedroom since we have three bedrooms in our house and the other two were already our bedroom and my office. However, after being woken up by our white trash neighbors one too many times at 3AM we decided that putting the baby in the room right next to their house was not a good idea.

The decision was made to move my office into the spare bedroom and convert my office into the nursery. That meant that I got to paint my new office, move all of the furniture and electronics from one room to the other, and then build and arrange all of the new furniture in the nursery.

The old office...ready to become the nursery

It took a few weeks to get everything done, but it is finally complete! I've been enjoying my new office, especially some of the choice conversations held from time-to-time over at the neighbor's residence and the nursery looks great! We still need to add pictures, new curtains, and accessories like that, but I think it will work out perfectly for us and our new son.

The finished product

I've posted a slideshow below so you can view the progress as the work was being completed. Click on the individual photo or the link to "View Album" if you want to go to our Picasa Web Album and see some larger photos.

View Album

What Women Do During Baby Showers

Interesting. I note the presence of a few glasses of alcohol in this photo, too. Who knew? My apologies to all men for my previous post.

This photo is from the second baby shower I attended in as many weeks. My good friend Severine (not shown; the photo is of Kristen, Jen and me) is expecting her very own baby boy in February. It's practically raining babies around me - everywhere I turn, another pregnant woman appears!

What Men Do During Baby Showers

In case you were wondering...

Bryan and I spent last weekend in Pittsburgh, showering his sister Kristyn with love and gifts for her little one, who is due just after Christmas day. I have my fingers crossed that she actually delivers a few days early so that we can meet her little one when we're visting again at Christmastime. Otherwise, it may be months before we get to meet him/her. How sad is that?!

Bridget's Choice

I had a brownie and a banana on my desk. Is it wrong that I went for the brownie?

In my first trimester, I ate just like normal, but I could barely look at any sugary food - I made an entire pan of brownies and didn't eat a single one! In my second trimester, my appetite has remained somewhat normal: no unusual cravings or indulgences, I'm simply much less likely to skip my afternoon snack. Very recently, however, my love of sugary food has returned...and doubled. It might be due, in part, to Halloween and the recent availability of Milky Ways in my fridge, but I like to think it also has something to do with my new theory that baby boys like chocolate as much as women do!

RSS Feed Subscription Links Now Available

Yes, I know. I should have had this setup when we first created the blog, but I didn't think about it until last Friday. You'll see that there are now links in the top left of our blog page that will allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed using your RSS aggregator of choice.

Right now, I have provided links for the standard RSS feed as well as ones targeted to Google Reader, My Yahoo!, and My AOL.

If you aren't sure what I am talking about when I say "RSS" here's a brief description. RSS is a standard way for types of content, like blogs, to communicate their content around the internet. RSS is great because regardless of whether I write a blog on Blogger or someone else writes a blog on WordPress the RSS feed still looks the same. People, like you and me, use what are called "RSS Aggregators" or "RSS Readers" to get updates about the blogs we are interested in without having to go out to each blog we like to read and find out if any updates have been made recently. I'm a big fan of Google Reader but most blog readers have the same basic set of features.

Of course, this blog post is not nearly as interesting as the previous one.