Coconut, You Made My Day Complete!

My birthday this year was pretty low key. Which is shocking if you know me because for the last many years I've all but insisted that my birthday be celebrated in week long format rather than day long. However, this year I didn't have the energy to celebrate for a week so I allowed everyone to take a break, hehe. I did however, get a sweet MyTouch 3g in honor of my b-day, so now when you email me, I can be answering you from the Dr's office, where I always am. Ha.

I also did make a cake. Yes, I make cake for my own birthday. But I honestly don't mind doing it, and the part that is the most fun is I get to choose the treat that I think sounds the very best with no other considerations... That either means coconut, chocolate or both. :)

For this year - Pineapple Coconut Cake via this book. (PS. I purchased that book because there is an entire chapter dedicated to coconut cake.)



The cake has coconut milk in it, the filling is very easy, basically a reduced, thickened and even more 'sugarized' version of a can of crushed pinapple, and the frosting is a cooked pineapple meringue frosting. I've never made a meringue frosting before, I found it was less daunting that it sounded from the instructions, but definitely more complicated than butter cream. Creates kind of a light fluffy result, which I found really cool... but if you LOVE butter cream, it may not be your thing.

Despite what the author of that book would like I'd happily share the recipe, if you're actually interested. :)

Spoiler Alert!

If for unknown reasons it's very important to you to be completely surprised about what our unborn looks like, you may not want to read on. However, to most of you this will simply look like randomness anyway, so even if you want to you may still have no idea.

This morning John and I went in for a 'growth ultrasound'... the Dr. offered us this service so we could see how things were progressing if we'd like (i.e. you guys have good insurance, wanna rack up the bill for them a bit?.... and yes, we always, always do). It was not due to any indication that anything is wrong - nor was I worried there was, but I just wanted to see him, cuz it's been awhile.

What we learned: The baby has assumed good laboring position (head down), and though he has time to change that, he most likely won't.

Also, according to their calculations, which admittedly have widely varying accuracy, he's just over 5lbs, which is a little bit big, but nothing huge. If it happened their "calculations" were on the nose and he put on the average weight from here to my delivery he'd be in the 8 lb range. So we're not talking anything real big. *Phew* To me he feels huge in there though, so I'm not sure how I'll survive.

And - he's definitely still a boy.

The following image of our baby's face is of their fancy 3-d type... Take from that what you will... they still look a lot like black and gray blobs... I actually thought this one was okay as far as being able to see him - from my experience with these types of pictures anyway. See what you think.

(Baby Heywood - 33 Wks)

Still not able to see him in there?? I have provided some help, which may help you decipher the code and break the mental wall like those pictures where it looks like one thing, but it's really something else - and you can't tell it until someone points it out to you... See if this clears anything up... (it's the same pic, but w/ arrows.)


Other than that, no, we still don't know what we're naming him, even if we decide we probably won't say for sure, so don't bother to ask. Although, tonight at dinner John did suggest the names Cannon and Exxon and Augustus... he was joking... thankfully.

Halloween Observance

John and I didn't do a lot this year for Halloween... it's not really John's favorite as he does not like scary stuff or dressing up, so all he's left with is candy. Ha. I like having parties, but am too fat to be up for that much either. I did think we should do something however, so we made some cupcakes from my aforementioned book. Had to take a picture, cuz they're all so super cute.