Day 1: Maternity Leave

It's Monday, it's after 10am, and I am not at work. No, my NJ Transit train is not delayed (for the 2 millionth time)...I am officially on maternity leave! So, instead I sit here with a cup of (decaf) tea and leisurely write this post.

Baby R officially has a birth date (due to a scheduled Cescarian Section)~ October 19th, if he decides to behave until then. This gives me a nice amount of time to get the house further prepared, finish the nursery, do some more baby stuff laundry, and rest (HA!). I do not rest easily, so this will be a task within itself.

Some of the other things that I have scheduled during this maternity leave include: get my hair done (cut & glaze color), get a facial, get a massage (hey- girl has got to look good for those after baby pics...), go on an amazing date night to see Newsies with hubby on Thursday (EEK! so excited.), few more doctors appointments, possibly do a little apple picking (or just dictate which apples I want picked to Matt, since I get dizzy when my arms are above my head), and cook & freeze.

My cook & freeze mission started yesterday. I now have a beautiful new Kitchen Aid french door refrigerator with pullout bottom freezer and I intend on putting it to work. As beautiful as the fridge is, the freezer isn't too large, so I am only going to make a select amount of things to freeze. We also have some amazing family members that are cooking and freezing for us, so I need to leave room for that stuff too! Everyone has been telling me how insanely tired we will be and that we will barely have time to shower, so I am trying to be as prepared as possible with dinners. I don't want to always rely on a family member or a take out menu to feed us, therefore I am hoping that I can at least get 2 weeks of prepared, healthy meals in our freezer by the time Baby arrives so we can defrost & eat when necessary. The nice thing about it is, I just cook more than what I make for that evenings dinner (choosing a freezer friendly food, of course) and then freeze the extra! No double cooking!

Some of the items on the cook & freeze menu:
~Lentil Soup (made yesterday- froze 2 containers without pasta added)
~Baked Pasta with chicken sausage, baby spinach and fontina cheese (dinner tonight!)
~Lasagna Primavera... made with spinach, cheese, carrots & a bechamel sauce
~Tomato soup (a favorite of mine. Especially paired with a gruyere grilled cheese & tomato)
~Breaded Pork Chops (not cooked, just breaded and frozen. Maybe for a night that we have "more time")
~Chili
~Hazelnut Biscotti
~Buttermilk Scones
...those last 2 are to have on hand for visitors- if I don't eat them all as they come out of the oven and they actually make it to the freezer.

I'm taking additional food suggestions (and donations) if you have any! I've never, ever done this whole frozen prepared meals thing, so I'm kinda winging it.

Hoping that this next few weeks will help me get even more prepared for Baby. The less other house stuff I have to do when Baby arrives, the more time I will have to recover from my C-section, learn how to be a mom, figure out nursing, and most importantly, spend time with the new little love in my life. {Smiling/tearing up. Sigh.}