tasty tuesday - chocolate cookie bark

this one is pretty easy... but delicious!

this is what you'll need:

1 pkg (8 squares) semi sweet chocolate
1 pkg (6 squares) white chocolate
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
10 oreos


what you need to do:

melts chocolate in separate bowls over double boiler
add peanut butter to the white chocolate and stir until well mixed
crumble 5 cookies into each bowl and mix well

drop spoonfuls of the chocolate mixtures onto a wax paper covered baking sheet alternating chocolates.
cut through chocolate on sheet with a knife for marble effect.


refrigerate for at least 1 hour then break into pieces.
store in an airtight container.


variation:
instead of cookies and peanut butter add crumbled candy canes to the chocolate and sprinkle red sugar sprinkles on top for some delicious peppermint bark.

back when i was a kid... (memory monday)

i guess since i'm a parent now i'm going to have to start practicing that line.

i've got some good ones.

i'm hoping hugo will have many of the same stories to tell when he is all grown up.
i plan on using him as an excuse to do all those fun childhood things again.

for example:
as soon as he can wear rubber boots he will be getting some and we will be going frog hunting. this is not optional.


little bit of history here...

6 weeks and weighing in at....

we went to see the doctor today - a different doctor than we have been seeing to get a breastfeeding consultation. since having to supplement with formula it has been an uphill battle trying to keep hugo breastfeeding.
i have to say that i love the doctor that we saw today. she is going above and beyond to help us.
she was on call at the hospital when hugo was born and she was amazing then as well.

i had to start supplementing with formula 2 weeks ago because he started losing weight when he should have been gaining. after getting back up to his birth weight of 5lbs 5oz by 2 weeks he continued gaining week 3 but by week 4 he was back down to 5 lbs 2oz.
not good.

once i started supplementing he went on a total nursing strike and wanted nothing but the bottle.

i am apparently more stubborn than he is and managed to get him back nursing a bit, but he still will only nurse for about 5 minutes at a time before screaming like a banshee and refusing to nurse.
i refuse to let him win this.

last week he gained over a pound and weighed in at 6 lbs and 3 oz.
today on his 6 week weigh in he is sitting at 7 lbs 4 oz. so again just over a pound in a week. he's going through a crazy growth spurt it seems.

after over an hour with the doctor today trying different things - rather unsuccessfully i may add - he proved to be almost as stubborn as me. i am waiting to hear back from the doctor to find out where i can get my next secret weapon... i refuse to quit and i am not going to let him win this battle.
i am a sore loser and this is something that i refuse to quit so next i will be trying a supplemental feeding system.
i am optimistic that this will help.

interesting little contraption. it may seem like a lot of work but i'm hoping that even though it seems a bit crazy now that it will work and in the long run and help to end up exclusively breast feed in the near future.

fingers crossed!

ok and one more picture just because i can't help myself!

new accessory?

hugo seems to LOVE the sling! this means i'll have 2 hands again!
YAY!

i'll be able to get so much more done around the house now that he can go in there and hang out while i'm feeling productive!

and to make this even better? the sling was free!

now i'll be able to really keep up with my blog... maybe.... i guess i'll have to see how cooperative hugo is.





Success! x2

Hugo survived his first craft sale! and we started BIG... 4 days at the Kingsway Aviation Hangar for Make It!

great sale, lots of visitors, and lots of help from my parents who spent 3 of the 4 days with me helping out so i could get some work done... well ok, they just came so they could snuggle Hugo, but in doing so they made it possible for me to be there. without their help i don't think i would have been able to be there for the whole weekend without losing my mind!
it was a super busy sale with record breaking attendance.... people were actually lined up outside waiting for up to half an hour on saturday throughout the day.
lots of toques and scarves found new homes on the first cold and blustery weekend of the winter.

Hugo was amazingly cooperative and is already turning out to be quite the lady killer. he definitely helped draw people to my booth... even though he refused to stop squirming out of his toques... i'll let him get away with it. he's too cute for me to be anything but ok with it.

another great update -
Hugo had not gained enough weight at his last check up... i had to start supplementing him with formula to try and get his calorie intake up and make sure he was growing like he should be. i was worried about this. he was pretty small to start with so the doctor was watching him pretty closely to make sure everything was ok so when he didn't gain as much weight as he should have i had to take him back in a week (this past thursday) and make sure that he had gained some weight so if he hadn't he could get a referral to a specialist so we could figure out why.
well, looks like he was just a late bloomer.
he gained over a pound in one week. he went from 5 lbs 2oz to 6 lbs 3.5oz


time to relax and unwind after a busy weekend...

happy 1 month hugo!!

hard to believe that hugo is one month old today.
part of me feels like he's always been here and part of my life but then part of me is like holy crap its already been a month?!?

so many things have happened in the first month of Hugo's life.
first with quite a rocky start,
then things were going great...
then a setback... breastfeeding was not enough for my little monkey and he wasn't gaining any weight
i started supplementing with formula as per doctor's orders and by the second bottle i had the happiest most content baby.
then the guilt of knowing that for 2 weeks i had a fussy and unhappy hugo only because i wasn't feeding him enough...
then boob strike.
he completely refused to nurse. literally would scream like i was boiling him in hot oil if i put him near my boob.
now he's coming round to the boob... but literally... just one. its a start.
he's drinking about half the formula he was a couple days ago and nursing every feeding for at least 15 minutes happily.
this was a HUGE relief to me.
i was starting to get really discouraged as i wanted to breastfeed exclusively... now i'm back to half and half at least and working my way to get back hopefully to exclusively breastfeeding.
fingers crossed!

things i've learned about hugo in this first month:

HATES baths
hates being naked
loves snuggles
can almost roll over onto his tummy already
likes having music playing
loves being swaddled

thats all for now...

foto friday

well i've been slacking a bit with this...
but here are a few pictures from hugo's first month (almost)
just a few for now... more to come soon!

daddy loves couch time with hugo

meeting great grandma for the first time

what you lookin at?!

milk drunk

my godmother came to visit at my parents and meet hugo

ready for winter...

nicco wasn't sure about the noisy little guy on the table... had to go in for closer inspection.

uncle ryan is scared to touch me and blogger for some reason is being difficult and won't leave this picture the right way

the run down...

well little Hugo decided to make a big scary entrance into the world.

i experienced the easiest most symptom free pregnancy one could possibly have.

labour and delivery made up for it.

for anyone that doesn't want labor details you should probably not read any further.

i went to the hospital for an ultrasound and non stress test on thursday october 13th and was told that due to a few small reasons that i was going to be induced. they were going to do it right then and there, but i was totally not ready - i had no idea that i was going to be admitted so i had not brought anything with me and i had my car there... the baby was under no stress so they booked me to come back the next morning to be admitted and induced.

i went home and scrambled around trying to get as much done as i could since i was going to be coming back with a baby and no time to do anything but be a mom for the first while.

first thing Friday morning i got a ride to the hospital and was induced.
they warned me that it wouldn't necessarily do anything right away and to just hold tight and they would get me into a room to wait it out. turns out there was no room available where i was supposed to be so i got to stay for a while where i was and read. i wasn't too worried about it.
by about 1:00 i was told they had a room ready for me and since i had missed lunch i went and dropped my stuff off and headed down to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat.
by this point i was cramping a bit (or so i thought) so once i got back to my room it was time to be hooked up to the monitors again and see how things were progressing. turns out what i thought was cramps was actually mid level contractions that were about a minute apart.
the "cramps" were getting a bit worse but still only uncomfortable.  it continued this way for the rest of the afternoon. by dinner time they were getting painful but not unbearably so. they checked and i was barely dilated so they told me that they were going to give me a shot of gravol and morphine and that i should try and sleep because nothing would be happening until the next day.
by about 11:00 that night the gravol had worn off and i was in a LOT of pain. the contractions were about 15 seconds apart and they REALLY hurt. they checked and i was still barely dilated. i thought that i might be asking for an epidural after all... if i ever got to 3cm (that's the point where they'll do an epidural). they hooked me back up to the monitors to check the intensity of the contractions and the baby's heartbeat and left me for 20 minutes to see what the results were. when they came back they were a bit worried and the doctor stayed in the room and kept monitoring the contractions and the baby. the contractions were off the chart (literally) and every contraction was causing little Hugo's heartbeat to slow down dramatically. it dipped so low at one point that the doctor just started pushing my bed and yelling to get the OR ready that i needed an emergency C-section. they didn't even take me out of the hospital bed and put me on a stretcher to take me there... it happened THAT fast.
throughout all of this i am still having what they are calling "off the charts" contractions, they're bashing into all the doorways and walls trying to maneuver the bed down the hall, and taking my clothes off en-route to the OR. once we get to the OR they try and get an IV in but they were having a really hard time so 4 tries later (with the bruises to prove it) they finally end up with one in the back of my right hand. then they have to take the Cervidil out because it is apparently "aggravating my uterus" and they want the contractions to stop so they can do the Csection. at this point they realize that in half an hour i've gone from barely dilated to 7cm and my contractions were back to back. too bad it doesn't matter any more.

next comes the spinal.
not the best experience i've ever had... first of all, trying to sit still and in a 90 degree position while having back to back contractions is NOT easy.
long story short, the spinal didn't work.
the first incision they told me i would feel some pressure.
i felt a lot more than pressure. when i told them i could feel them cutting they put me under general anesthetic. the funny thing is that as much as that hurt, it was no worse than the contractions i was still having.
after that i was out completely and don't remember anything until a jumble of random things in the OR while they were finishing closing me up. turns out the spinal did work, just not fast enough.
i know they were talking to me but i could barely make sense of it. i don't remember much of what they said but i remember asking them if the baby was ok... i'm pretty sure i did that repeatedly because i was so drugged up that i couldn't remember asking the first 3 or 4 times.

i was in the recovery room and they brought in my mom and again i was asking about Hugo...
he was in NICU getting tests done because he was not very responsive when he was born. turns out it was a reaction to the morphine they had given me at dinner time and even though it was out of my system it was still affecting him.
i got to see him for about half an hour and then i was taken back to my hospital room to finish my post op recovery while he was monitored and had a few more tests.

he tested perfectly and was finally brought to me at about 7am saturday morning.
i hadn't slept yet because i was so worried about him.
i managed to get a couple hours sleep once they brought him to me and i fed him a bottle of formula since that was what they gave me to feed him and i wasn't able to breast feed him yet.

at about 9:30 am saturday morning the lactation consultant came to see me since i was adamant that i was going to breastfeed him. unfortunately a stretcher was wheeled into my room at about 10:00 am to take me to nuclear medicine for testing. because of the intensity of my contractions during my c-section i had a lot of extra tearing and damage so they needed to do scans to make sure that everything was closed up ok. what i didn't know at the time was that because of the dye they inject to do the scans i was not going to be able to breastfeed for yet another 24 hours. this was devastating for me. i was returned to my room and to hugo around 1pm and shortly after that my parents arrived to visit.

the rest of that day was a bit of a blur. sunday proved to be the day i fell apart. i cried and cried. i couldn't do anything on my own... no getting out of bed for me because of the iv's and catheter meant that if i needed anything or to feed or change hugo i had to call the nurse in to do it for me.
i was also really struggling with breastfeeding. my milk had not come in yet and since hugo was used to getting a whole bottle of formula each feeding now he was not satisfied with the little bit of colostrum he was getting each time that i tried feeding him. so i'd try to feed him and he'd just scream and scream... he was hungry. the lactation consultant had been back and told me that he shouldn't have any more formula if i was planning on breast feeding him. i cried every time i tried feeding him because i knew he was still hungry and i felt like a complete failure.
the nurse who was working sunday night was a godsend. she consoled me and told me that if i had to supplement with formula for the first little while i wasn't failing, i was just doing what was best for my baby and myself.


monday was a long day and i thought that i would be in the hospital for at least another day but i was up and about moving and doing well and hugo was doing well so when the doctor came that afternoon she told me that if i wanted to i could go home. she couldn't have said anything to make me feel better at that point. i was thrilled.
once all the paperwork was done and i was ready to go i was out of there by dinner time.
within hours of getting home my milk was coming in full force.
fernando arrived home around 2am tuesday and for the first time our family was together. it was amazing.


as rocky a start as it may have been at that moment our happily ever after began.


now that i'm settling into a bit more of a routine i'm hoping to get back in the swing of things with this blog and start posting more regularly again.