Lesson Learned: Pancakes Do Not Reheat Well in the Toaster. I learned this the hard way, of course. I had two leftover pancakes and I thought, “great, I can use those for dipping the yolk from my fried eggs. I’ll just throw them in the toaster like I would with bread!”

Not one of my best ideas.

Those little metal prongs that are designed to hold up toast? Also designed for stabbing the hell out of pancakes when they slip down in between the prongs and the heating coils. I did all the wrong things to salvage these two pancakes, like sticking a metal knife (and fork, there was a lot of utensil work) into the toaster while it was still plugged in, but darn it, I saved every last crumb of those pancakes and lived to tell about it!

Work has been crazy and it’s about to get crazier. I have never been so excited about the weekend. Not because I hate my job, but because I really need the break. I actually love my job, but by Friday I am mentally exhausted.

Luke is cutting teeth. No, seriously, he’s really teething this time. I can actually see one tooth on the top poking through and I think I can feel another one right next to it. He has two on the bottom (came through at 13 months) so pretty soon he’ll be able to really chew stuff! Of course he hasn’t let his delayed teething hold him back much. He can eat most foods, but there are few foods he has more difficulty with, like chicken and corn.

*Okay, short break to mention that I. Love. Brownies. I’m watching Paula Deen while blogging. It’s making it hard to focus. Oh, I love you Paula. She was supposed to take a bite of the display brownies, the ones that had already cooled, but instead she took a spoon and scooped a bite out of the warm brownies that were fresh out of the oven. It’s HER show after all!

Okay, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Luke is teething. His mood is fine throughout the day but he’s really hating going to bed at night. We’re pumping him full of Tylenol (which I hate) but I don’t know what else to do for him. He is feeling so much discomfort. The plus side of it (for me, anyway) is that when he’s feeling cruddy all he wants to do is wrap his arms around me and lay his head down on my shoulder. I’m LOVING it. I, in turn, rub his back while he’s cuddling and I’m sure he’s loving that too. He loves back rubs just like his daddy.

Other than that, Luke is doing really well. He’s doing all the cute things toddlers do. I have numerous videos and pictures and one of these days I’ll post some of them. Because I know everyone is dying to see them. You all agree my kid is the cutest, right?

Last night I finished off a pint of my all time favorite comfort food, chocolate Haagen-Dazs. It was sad. But then I came home this afternoon I opened the freezer to find a new pint of chocolate Haagen-Dazs had magically appeared! It’s the thing I dream of, for the ice cream shelf in my freezer to just keep miraculously restocking itself.

Thank you for making a dream come true, Sarah. You’re the best.

Oh, and I should probably mention that the first pint came from my darling husband. And I didn’t even have to ask.

Mike has been raving about these banana flavored popsicles. They sound so gross but he keeps insisting I try one. He is obnoxiously persistent. He’s like some kind of popsicle pusher. Number one, I don’t really like popsicles. Number two, I don’t like stuff that’s banana flavored. I love bananas, but when you start trying to make candies and other things taste like bananas, it just ruins it for me.

What’s funny is that we have no idea where these popsicles came from. They just appeared in our freezer out of nowhere. He thought I bought them, which is preposterous because we still have 3000 freeze pops from two summers ago. And again, I don’t like popsicles that much. I think Mike would like to solve this mystery so that he can find out where to buy more, because he’s really mad crazy about those stupid banana popsicles. So if you know the origin of the mystery popsicles in our freezer please let me know!

I am not one of those people that saves every empty margarine or yogurt container to reuse again and again. We have plenty of GladWare and Tupperware in our cupboards for our food storage needs. Mike, on the other hand, is one of those people. He sees no need to throw away a perfectly good plastic container. It irks me a bit. He knows this.

Monday night I asked him to package up the leftovers from dinner so I could take it to work with me and eat it for lunch the next day. Now keep in mind that Mike is a stay-at-home-dad now and he is in charge of the kitchen. So I was not surprised to open the fridge Tuesday morning and find my lunch packed lovingly into an old sherbet container. I really didn’t think much of it but I think Mike was chuckling to himself about it all day, because he asked me that night how I liked the container he chose for the leftovers. I think he pictured me sulking as I walked into the office, sheepishly carrying my ghettoware under my arm and hiding it in the back corner of the community refrigerator. At least he didn’t write my name on it with a permanent marker in big bold letters. “MINDY’S LUNCH.” Now, that would be ghetto.

Nothing exciting going on with this pregnancy yet. I’m finding it hard to not compare the 2nd pregnancy to the 1st. Against my better judgment I decided to read my old journal to find out when the morning sickness started last time. It started at six weeks, and I’m currently at 5 1/2 so I’m just sitting around waiting for the puke fest to begin. I guess it’s possible it won’t ever come, but I’m not counting on it. I’m just enjoying every day I have as a normal eater, knowing it could be my last for awhile. One thing I was surprised to read in that journal was the whole morning sickness phase only lasted 4 weeks. Four weeks! It felt like eternity at the time.

So I haven’t had any real symptoms yet, but of course it’s pretty early for that. I did have a familiar episode today - out of the blue I started to feel lightheaded and it was difficult to breathe. I remembered that feeling from my second trimester with Luke. It turned out to be tachycardia (rapid heart rate) and I spent four days in the hospital while the maternity and cardiology departments fought over who was responsible for making a diagnosis. Thankfully they put me on a simple medication that even at a low dose solved the problem. Today I took my pulse to see if it was the same thing going on and my heart rate was at 128. A normal rate should be below 100, so that’s a bit high. I’ll be keeping an eye on it and if it becomes a problem I’m sure they can just put me on the metoprolol again.

This evening as I sat watching Mike’s softball game I felt like I needed to vomit but I think it was just my tummy telling me it didn’t appreciate the greasy pizza I had for dinner. Speaking of pizza (my favorite food ever), I’m watching a show on the Food Network that’s all about pizza. It’s bringing back all those great memories of working at Pizza Hut when I was in high school. Awesome.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if half & half was the same thing as whole milk? I mean, two halves make a whole. What is half & half anyway? What are the two halves? I put it in my coffee but I really have no idea what it is.

I’ve been terrible about packing my lunch lately. We have a full kitchen here at work so what I decided to do is buy groceries and prepare my lunches here. I get an hour long break for lunch so I have plenty of time for it.

I go wild over a well made deli sandwich, and that is something you must eat fresh. You can’t fix the sandwich in the morning and expect it to hold it’s integrity until lunchtime. Now I’m not a total snob when it comes to the ingredients, but I like my meat and cheese to come straight from the deli. (Did you know that cheese sliced fresh from the deli counter is generally cheaper than the pre-sliced fancy packaged stuff?)

Can I tell you about the delicious sandwich I made? Wheat bread (sweetened with molasses only, no high fructose corn syrup), green leaf lettuce, sliced tomatoes, ham, and provolone, mayo (not Miracle Whip), and horseradish mustard. Two years ago you couldn’t have paid me to eat anything with horseradish and four years ago I wouldn’t go near any sort of mustard. But I have since seen the error of my ways. The horseradish mustard totally makes the sandwich!

I think I’m going to go make myself another one…

Luke will eat just about anything, but I learned last weekend that there is one thing he will not eat. Play-Doh. Oh, he gave it the old college try but it did not end well. Here’s how it went down:

Luke and Josiah were playing happily in the living room. I was heavily immersed in a conversation with friends about personal finance so obviously I was not paying attention to the kiddos. Until I heard the gagging noise. I looked over and saw Luke’s face - panic in his eyes and incandescent yellow drool oozing from his mouth. I swooped him up to assess the situation. He was breathing but obviously feeling some discomfort from the gooey mass lodged in his esophagus. I held him up a little to see if any of it was reachable, but it was all too far down his throat.

They call it a gag reflex because it’s an automatic response and doesn’t need to be taught. It’s a good thing because we hadn’t covered that lesson with Luke, yet he did a beautiful job of puking up that Play-Doh all over himself and Mommy’s hand. He makes me feel so proud!

My grandpa told me a few things about the origin of some sayings you hear but always wonder where they came from. For example…

“Bringing home the bacon” came from England way back in the day (around the year 1104 but I found that by googling). He said the custom was for a married couple to return to the church one year after their wedding day. If they could show they had gone the entire year without feeling regret for getting married, they were given a flitch (another google gem) of bacon. Apparently you were free to feel all the regret you want after the first year. As it turns out, some people have been keeping the tradition going. “The Dunmow Flitch Trials exist to award a flitch (a side) of bacon to married couples from anywhere in the world, if they can satisfy the Judge and Jury of 6 maidens and 6 bachelors that in ‘twelvemonth and a day’ they have ‘not wisht themselves unmarried again’.”

Seriously, that would be an awesome custom to revive. I love bacon! Though I think there should be an award for going 10 years without feeling regret. How about lobster, filet mignon, and a good cheesecake?