I have read through all the questions that you submitted on my Ask Ellie 3.0 post, and Mr. Handsome and I are looking forward to answering them. Let’s start with a fun one about world travel. After you watch the video (embedded below), I would love to hear your answers to the question in the comments section. And feel free to continue to submit questions to the Ask Ellie 3.0 post as you think of them.
Archives for April 2019
We Have a Roller!
Just after he hit his three-month milestone, our Little Buddy made a very exciting accomplishment. He rolled over from his back to his stomach! He has always enjoyed lying on his back and kicking at the toys hanging from his activity gym. He showed no interest in rolling over, until one day he randomly started trying. He would hoist himself up on his side and then fall back down. After a day of attempting (he is a very persistent little boy, like his daddy) he finally made it happen.
Mr. Handsome wasn’t home when Little Buddy flipped for the first time, but when he returned home, we put him on the carpet on his back so he could show Daddy his new trick. We were cheering him on like he was an Olympic athlete. (Life sure changes when you’re a parent–who would have thought that rolling over would be so exciting?) It took him another day to figure out how to pull his arms up and prop himself up. At one point, he rolled from his front to back, but he has only done that once.
Now, when we put him down, all he wants to do is flip. A few days ago, he rolled several times in a row, but he usually just flips to his stomach and then gets upset and starts crying.
The downside of having a roller on our hands is that I can no longer place him on the couch or in the middle of our bed while I run and grab something. Our living room is hardwood, so I’ll need to purchase a rug or mat of some kind so he has a safe place to play. And it’s time to buy a baby gate for the top of our stairs!
Ask Ellie 3.0
Back in 2015 and 2017, I released posts titled “Ask Ellie” and “Ask Ellie 2.0.” Tons of readers submitted questions, and I answered them in blog posts and videos. Since it’s been a while, I wanted to do another “Ask Ellie” post.
Go ahead and ask questions, about any topic, in the comments section. They can be short-answer questions, like, “What’s your favorite color?” (it’s purple, in case you wanted to know). But they can also be questions that require longer answers. You can also feel free to pose questions to Mr. Handsome.
Baby’s 1st Zoo Trip
Spring has arrived, and the weather has finally warmed up! The three of us took a family trip to the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere in honor of my birthday. Of course, Little Buddy’s vision is still developing, so he definitely couldn’t see the animals, but it was still an exciting milestone. Soon after we arrived, he decided that he needed to eat, but thankfully I had thought ahead and brought a bottle so we didn’t have to find a place to nurse. Mr. Handsome carried him and fed him while we walked.
By the time we reached the rhinos, he had finished eating and immediately fallen asleep.
He completely missed the kangaroo exhibit, which is my favorite. It’s pretty much a kangaroo petting zoo. You walk into an enclosure that contains about a dozen kangaroos, and if they walk up to you or are near the path, you are allowed to reach out and pet them. Most of them were sleeping, but we were able to take a picture with one that was awake (see top photo). He was standing beside the path near the exit, almost as if he wanted his picture taken. And lo and behold, everyone stopped on their way out to take advantage of the photo op.
We thoroughly enjoyed our family trip to the zoo. It had been two-and-a-half years since Mr. Handsome and I had been (remember my post from October 2016?) My mother-in-law bought us a one-year membership for my birthday, so we look forward to many more trips. As the year progresses, I am looking forward to watching Little Buddy begin to recognize the animals. Maybe by this time next year he will be naming them!
Old Country Church
When we’re driving along backroads, which happens quite frequently here in Tennessee, I always enjoy snapping photos of old country churches, and whenever I see an old building, it blows my mind to think about the stories that it holds.
The photo to the left is of Station Camp Baptist Church, located in Cottontown, Tennessee (northeast of Nashville). One of the earliest frontier churches in America, Station Camp was established in 1796–the year Tennessee was admitted into the Union and the year John Adams, the second president of the United States, was elected into office.
I love this quote on the church’s website: “Just as the station camp (from which the church got its name) provided settlers and weary travelers a refuge from frontier dangers, Station Camp Baptist Church has provided a refuge for weary souls for over 200 years. May it continue to do so.”
While I have been to a couple churches that can trace their roots back to the 1800s, they have always been in more modern buildings. I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience attending service at an old country church. It happened one year ago, while Mr. Handsome and I were on vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii. …
Body After Baby
Regular physical activity has always been important to me. I was involved in sports throughout my childhood and teen years (more about that in another post.) In college, my friend and I worked out most days, either at the campus gym or in the small gym that we had in the basement of the house where we lived. The habit of working out continued after my college graduation, and when Mr. Handsome and I got married, we were thrilled to have a gym a few short minutes from our rental home.
Fast-forward four years, and the house we bought just isn’t close enough to a gym for it to make sense for us to join. And with all the busyness of life, who has time for the gym anyways? I enjoy running and walking on our street, but weather gets in the way of that too often for it to be a dependable means of working out. For me, not working out is not an option, so I had to find a new way to be active three to four times a week.
Last fall, I started using Leslie Sansone’s Walk at Home DVDs, and they quickly became a regular part of my schedule. I had used them in the past, before getting married, but had to stop when I lost track of them in a move. I came across some of Leslie’s DVDs at the bookstore when I was about 20 weeks pregnant and decided to give them another try. Ladies, these workouts are amazing! Leslie Sandsone is a certified fitness instructor who is also a wife and mom of three. The workouts are based on the idea that walking a few miles each day can greatly improve your health. But her routines are more than just a walk. She throws in additional moves to provide a full-body workout that will leave you feeling energized.
Whether you are trying to get your body back after having a baby, hoping to get back in shape for other reasons, or are just looking for a new fitness routine that can be done in the comfort of your living room, I strongly encourage you to check out Walk at Home. Leslie has a variety of different walking workouts that can be found on her website. Whether you want to Walk Off the Pounds, Walk to the Hits, Walk Down Your Blood Sugar, or Tone Every Zone, Leslie has a workout for you. As someone who has gone through different levels of physical fitness throughout life, I’ll tell you that these workouts are appropriate for anyone. (I suppose if you were training for the Tour de France, you might need something a bit longer and more intense, but most of us don’t have to worry about that.)
I am thrilled to be partnering with Walk at Home for this sponsored post. It really bothers me when bloggers promote products that they don’t actually use, but I can honestly say that I love these workouts, and I started using them years before this sponsorship was even on the horizon. (I ended up finding one of my old DVDs, and the copyright date was 2002!) Would you be interested in a giveaway of some of Leslie’s DVDs?
Quick Chicken Noodle Soup
In the Northern Hemisphere, spring is underway, and summer is just around the corner (which means it’s early fall for my readers in the Southern Hemisphere, right?). Here in Tennessee, the weather is slowly warming up, but our evenings are cool, which means that soup is still an appropriate dinner food. Mr. Handsome isn’t a huge fan of chicken noodle soup because he associates it with being sick. I, on the other hand, love it, but when I do cook it, I usually try to make sure there are some leftovers in the fridge for him.
Mr. Handsome was sure that after my labor and delivery, I would no longer have any desire to eat chicken soup. You can read more about it in my birth story posts, but I was only able to eat clear liquids for 30 hours, and plain chicken stock was one of the few things I could have. I ordered several bowls from the hospital kitchen while I was in labor, and we laughed because it came on a plastic tray with a fancy cover.
Honestly, I think I enjoy chicken soup even more now because I remember how starving I was while in labor and how that stock really hit the spot. And even though my delivery was really difficult (I recently read that drug-induced labor initiates much stronger contractions that are closer together than natural labor, which explains why I had insanely painful contractions with barely any breaks nine hours before my baby was born), I somehow look back on the whole experience with rose-covered glasses.
Now back to the soup. This recipe for chunky chicken noodle soup is from my childhood. It can be ready to enjoy in less than 30 minutes if you use prepared chicken stock. If you buy a rotisserie chicken for dinner the night before, you can make your own chicken stock the next day by boiling the carcass and adding herbs, but this soup tastes great whether you use homemade or store-bought stock. If you really want an easy meal, buy an extra rotisserie chicken and use the meat from that one for the soup….
Mr. Handsome’s Gift to Me
It’s already April, but I just realized that I never showed you the Christmas present that Mr. Handsome gave me. He’s so good at coming up with thoughtful gift ideas. Several times since we have been married, I have accidentally found out about a gift before Mr. Handsome gave it to me (more on that another time), but this one was a complete surprised. What do you think?
I admit that I cried when Mr. Handsome gave me this portrait of myself, along with a sweet note saying that he wanted to paint what he considers to be the most beautiful sight. I have to laugh, though, because the picture is currently hanging on our wall next to the crazy chicken that he painted last week.