Everyday Randomness

Last night I purchased a Buitoni Shrimp & Lobster Ravioli with Garlic Butter Sauce meal for Hubby and I to try.  I had planned to write a review of this meal as it says it’s quick and easy to prepare in 5 minutes.  It comes with a bag of pasta, and a bag of sauce.  The kit is supposed to be a “complete dinner for two”.

For a mom like me quick and easy is great, especially if the meal tastes great as well.  Hubby’s Italian gene has him wanting to eat Italian as much as possible, so I thought the Buitoni meals might be as close to the real thing as I could get without having to make it myself.

The prep and cooking were super easy.  You just drop the bag of sauce into 4 qts of water, cover, and bring to a rolling boil.  In a separate pan bring water to boiling, add the ravioli, and gently boil uncovered for 5 minutes or until tender.

Dinner was on the table in 5 minutes, and we were sitting down ready to chow down.  Hubby asked that the sauce be kept separate instead of adding it to the ravioli so that he could control how much sauce he put on his.  He added his sauce, and took a bite.  With a weird look on his face he said “this does NOT taste like shrimp and lobster.”

I took a bite, and sure enough it didn’t taste like shrimp and lobster at all.  In fact it tasted just like sausage. I cut open a piece of ravioli, and what I found inside was definitely not “lobster, shrimp, and custom Impastata Ricotta cheese.”  It was definitely sausage. Read more…

As you can see I’ve finally settled on a new theme for this blog.  I’ve spent a couple hours tweaking it tonight, and I think I’ve got it how I want it…almost.  I’m sure I’ll load it again in a few days and find something else I want to change, but for now I’m pretty happy with it.

I’m ready for a few changes both online and offline. Whenever I tell my Grandma I need to make a few changes in my life she always tells me “hun it’s time to throw out your old breeches to make room for the new.” I don’t know where she got that phrase, but I’ve definitely been doing that.

I spent some time last night going through my closets pulling out clothes I no longer wear. After sorting through things around the house I felt like it was time to tackle my blogs.  I feel like I’ve been neglecting my blogs for the most part because I just don’t have the time to devote to them like I used to.

I’ll probably be revamping The Ramblings of JennShuey sometime soon, and I’ve begun to change around the layout on my review blog, Informal Critique.

I still need to upgrade JennShuey to Wordpress 3.0 before I start messing with the layout.  I need to upgrade this blog as well, but I have a little issue with my database being too out of date to support 3.0.  I’ll have to fix that issue first.

I’m sitting here looking at door chimes thinking about how I need to replace our broken door bell, and I need to do it soon. Our door bell was one of those cheap crappy battery operated ones that we picked up for about $15. It only lasted about a year, and I wasn’t sad to see it go because it drove me crazy. My grandparents have the same kind of door bells in their house, and whenever someone would ring them at the front door it would cause mine to go off. I don’t know how many times I went to the door and no one was there, so I looked outside and saw someone standing on their porch. It used to drive me insane because it would happen at least a couple times a day.

When it died I told Hubby I didn’t want another one because I was perfectly fine with people knocking on the door. We hardly had anyone dropped by unannounced anyway, so if someone was coming over I knew to listen for the knock. These days it’s totally different, and no matter how many times I ask people to call before they come someone is always stopping by unannounced to see the little one. Today it’s happened 3 times, and because of it Ellie has been refusing to nap. Every single time I’ve gotten her down, she’s slept for about 2 minutes, and someone has knocked on the door. The dog barks, she wakes up screaming, and I have to go through it all over again.

The dog never barked at the door bell, so I think it’s finally time to replace it. Then again if people would just stop dropping by unannounced I wouldn’t have this problem to begin with!

There has been a lot going on this weekend, so I really haven’t had the time to sit down and blog like I would like.  Friday I did end up taking Ellie into the doctor just to be on the safe side.  I wanted to make sure she got seen before the weekend hit in case she did have an ear infection that would only get worse.

The good news is her ears look great, and she doesn’t have any sign of infection, but I wasn’t expecting to hear the nurse and nurse practitioner tell me she’s not gaining enough weight.  What?  Have they seen the thighs on my child?  She has so many fat rolls on her thighs diapers don’t fit her right.  She has 2 extra fat rolls on the inside of her diaper, and I constantly have people telling me “you need to stop feeding that baby too much.  She’s too fat.”

They told me she’s “lost” weight since she was 15lb 8oz at her 6 month checkup, and Friday she was 17lbs even at 8 months.  Basically she hasn’t gained as much weight as she did in the last 2 month period, so to them that means she must be losing weight.  The nurse practitioner kept asking me over and over again if I was sure she was eating enough.  My child will eat 24/7 if I’ll let her.  I did let her know that she has been teething, and she refused solids while she was popping through her 2 teeth, but she will never turn down the boob.  I also brought up the fact that she’s mobile now.  She’s all over the place in her walker, and she also spends a lot of time jumping in her Jumperoo.

She’s always been below the 25th percentile for weight, and now she’s right at the 25th.  I don’t understand how it’s calculating that she’s losing weight.  The doctor has always told me not to worry about her size because she’s not only a small framed baby who comes from a family of small babies, but she was 5 weeks premature.  Sometimes I think the nurse practitioner forgets to take this into account.

I know my child is eating like a pig, and those massive fat rolls everywhere tell me I’m probably worrying about what was said about her weight more than I should.  I do take into consideration that she’s playing catch up from being a preemie, and babies gain weight at different paces.  If she were actually losing weight, as in dropping from 15.8 to let’s say 15.6 instead of gaining 1.5lbs I’d be worried.

I swear every single time I leave the doctor’s office with her I feel like I need to find wrinkle creams that really work. These doctors and nurses are stressing me out and making me feel like I’m aging before my time. Sigh.

Oh, and the other bad news is that Ellie was perfectly healthy in the doctor’s office, but as soon as we got home she started feeling lousy again. She started coughing, and within a couple hours she sounded like she was losing her voice. Her cries were raspy, and she sounded congested even though her lungs were clear in the doctor’s office. She was like this most of the weekend, but Sunday she woke up happy as could be and sounding clear as a whistle. I do now believe the ear stuff is sinus/allergy related as it seemed to go away with everything else.