Low Carb Sopa de Fideo (Mexican beef noodle soup)
Makes about 4 bowls
2 T canola oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb + finely diced sirloin steak
several dashes of cumin
several dashes of chili powder
2 servings Dreamfield’s spaghetti, uncooked & broken into 1 inch pieces
2 cans low sodium beef broth + 1 can water
1/2 jar of your favorite salsa, pureed if desired
juice of 1 lime
several dashes of pepper
Place the oil in a nonstick pot, rotate to coat the bottom. Add beef, garlic, cumin and chili powder; mix to combine. Add broken noodle pieces and mix well again. Turn heat on to high and stir-fry mixture for about 5 minutes. Stir often so the noodles don’t burn.
Add the remaining ingredients, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Nov 16
Bren: What’s that B thing on your screen?
Darrell: It’s a bomb, a new thing I just got.
Bren: That sounds like fun. It’d be a blast and a half!! LOL.
Nov 20 Bren weighs 55.4 on our home scale. Andy is not copperating (See below).
I do not believe there is not a correlation between when a child (Andy!) starts acting like a terrible two year old and when they decide they don’t need a nap anymore, yet can’t make it to bedtime either. It’s lose, lose, lose… you can spend a fruitless hour trying to put them down for a nap and it won’t happen. He’ll crash where he falls later on, about 2-3 hours before bedtime. Wake him up and he’ll be a real crab til bedtime. Let him sleep and you’ll both be up all night because he is wide awake from that nice late nap. *Jen pulls hair out* The only solution, which we do maybe twice a week is to go somewhere in the car right at about 5 pm and either sit in the car for an hour or takes turns doing solo runs. If we time it just right (10-20 min into the nap, no more, no less) we can put him in the stroller and he’ll go back to sleep.
11/21 Andy is really starting to talk in complete sentences now. Just tonight he’s said both “I have peepee Dad” and “How you doing, Mom?” 😀
11/22-24 Vomit Fest. Joy.
11/26 Andy sad both “I’m helping Dada” and “Good job Dad!” 😀
12/5 Andy weighs 29.0 pounds via our home scale. His new favorite food is “deep” (dip), aka ketchup cubes from Whataburger, lol. Not to be confused, “Deeps” are grapes.
12/8 Brendan lost another tooth- the other bottom center tooth. This makes #3! He put the $2 in his piggy bank.
12/17 Andy says sure- “dur!” He also draws a picture and gives it to me and says I made [it for] you!- “I mate you!” LOL
12/29 Andy calls Haley the cat “oh honey”.
Says “I love you too dad/mom”
Calls a monkey a “ooh ooh at”
Tells knock knock jokes
Loves eating whole apples right now. Wants one all the time.
Bren says things are tricky all the time.
1/3 Andy told me I am adorable. 😀 He has also been singing his ABCs… albeit a bit off. He also read the first 4 letters of DH’s Blogger shirt correctly. O.o He has really leveled up in the talking dept!
1/17 Andy says “excuse me” after he burps. He also likes broccoli! Brendan is learning silent E words.
1/20 At 29 months, Andy is over the top of the charts at 39 inches tall. He weighs 31.0 pounds (about 68%ile) and his head circ was around the 90%ile. He got 3 vaccines- Hep A, DTap & flu (nasal). He goes back in July for more shots… these were technically his “18 mo” shots. Andy wasn’t timid at all until we took his clothes off but he didn’t fuss too much… just was worried and uncomfortable. He got french fries with his burger as a treat.
Dr Gulde asked Bren what school he goes to (duh… I brought him with us during school hours) so he now knows we homeschool. He actually approved… once he found out I am certified to teach. ::rolls eyes:: I am just glad he approves at all. One less hassle.
Funny enough, the 2 people I deemed most likely to not approve of homeschooling (my MIL being #2)… had no problem with it!
1/21 Andy slept in his toddler bed in Brendan’s room for the first time- the entire night, too! I did nothing but give him a kiss and cover him up and left the doors open for him to join me… and he never did!
1/23 Rebellion at it’s finest! Brendan’s journal writing for today…
“I’m sitin inmy Charedoin nuthing. Andy is buginme.”
LOL.
Andy has now slept in the little bed in Brendan’s room for *3 nights* without me even telling him too and without waking in the middle of the night.
1/28 Andy has learned “I’m just joking! Haha!” from Brendan. Ironically, it is so not funny. We gave him an informal quiz and apparently he recognizes about half the alphabet! o.O
1/30 *10* nights in his own bed and going strong. 😀 I’m thrilled!
A little TMI funny here… Andy has chosen his private spot to “do his business”… and it is the same place Brendan chose when he was Andy’s age!! Why is it my kids feel the need to hide when filling their diapers? We don’t do anything to embarrass them. And the place they chose… it’s the dumbest place in the house to seek out when you want to be alone!! They both chose behind the opened glass door that separates our kitchen from our living room. Because it’s a glass paneled door, we can see him from both directions!! Why bother “hiding”?? It’s so funny!
Brendan is now 57.8 lbs on our scale… but considering he has a fever and has eaten almost nothing in 24+ hours… that just might go back down! DH and I are both floating about 2 lbs over where we stopped losing while doing the low carb diet. Both right at 50-51 lbs lost. DH is still low-carbing but it is slow going now. Per the dr visit last week Andy is 31 pounds.

is a month wait until you can gather up more money to try again. 14 dpo and the hag found me. Damn I’m disappointed.

BFN again. AF isn’t here yet though and if it was last month she would’ve arrived already.
Yeah, I’m feeling in the dumps.

BFN… but wait!
So, I took a test with FMU about 8:30. Negative. I also took a OPK (you can take an OPK as a HPT… I’ll find my diary post about it if you are interested in knowing why that is…) which was quite blank as well.
First Morning Urine and I don’t get along. So when I next had to go at 11:00 I told myself if an OPK had a line, I’d do another hpt.
It had a line. I took an hpt. And the sucker is driving me nuts. There is an SUPER SUPER SUPER FAINT pink shadow… and after manipulating the color and contrast, the computer detects a small change too. The regular scan however shows nothing.

No more today. Still undecided whether or not to use FMU or not tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do the OPK test first. I have lots of those.

IUI complete. We got a good laugh because they first took us to this small room with a recliner… and a toilet. I was trying to figure out what was going on when DH blurted out “No, no we have frozen donor sperm!” We really aren’t going to be needing that recent issue of Hustler. Blush. LOL.
4 eggs, 29 million sperm. I know that’s good enough but sheesh, last month we had 33% more eggs and almost 300% the sperm. We really need this to work because our insurance decided not to cover the many ultrsounds we’ve had done so our bill is an unexpected $775 higher now. 😥

Ovidrel shot complete! Wasn’t bad at all. I deliberately didn’t let myself think about it today and then *just did it*. That really helped. I’m rather proud of myself. 😀
We paid $1.31 for gas today and filled up for $29- remarkable!
We had our annual counting down & watching fireworks from the Tower of the Americas at midnight from a downtwn church parking lot. That’s always fun!
Health and happiness to everyone!
Neighbors, it is 1:17 am- you can turn down the music now!!! Grrr.