My friend Sarah brought over her baked spaghetti while the babies were still in the NICU. We loved it so I emailed her requesting the recipe. Five months {oh so quickly} later & I was left this weekend craving warm baked spaghetti for this cool week. My aunt stopped by Saturday & helped me prepare a couple of things including this. We doubled the recipe then divided it into three freezer ready containers.
Ingredients
1 box of noodles {we used rotini, Sarah used spaghetti noodles}
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 lb ground chicken or turkey {we used turkey, Sarah makes hers with chicken}
2 c shredded cheddar cheese
{we threw in chopped onions & mushrooms too}
Directions
Boil water for the noodles, add the pasta & cook until a dente {usually 7-10 minutes}. Drain the pasta & set aside.
Cook the ground meat in a large saute pan. Stirring to make sure it browns completely. Pour the spaghetti sauce & vegetables if you want over the meat. Simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour a layer the meat sauce mixure in the bottom of your freezer/oven safe pan. Top with pasta. Top with cheese. Continue to layer until you reach the top of your dish. Stopping with sauce. Cover with an extra layer of cheese.
We covered with aluminium foil & the plastic freezer dish cover & placed two in the freezer. The third pan, I put in the refrigerator so we could enjoy it Sunday night.
From the refrigerator, bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. Uncover, add a little more cheese if you wish & bake for an additional five minutes.
I’ve mentioned before that our daycare decision was made easier when our top pick was also the only daycare we interviewed that would allow us to bring in cloth diapers.
I was so excited for the money it would save us to continue cloth diapering at home & while I’m at work. And that’s very true. A pack of disposable diapers will last us a long time since we only use them overnight where as if we used disposables all the time, we’d quickly go through a 40 pack of diapers in two days.
To make it easier on their teachers, I decided we’d bring only prestuffed pocket diapers or AIOs to daycare. No cloth diapers that required multi-steps or covers.
When they first started going to daycare, we had approximately twelve AIO/pocket diapers from a variety of brands that I’d purchased, won from giveaways or been given over the last few years including itti bitti, AppleCheeks, BumGenius, FuzziBunz, Thirties Duo, Charlie Banana & SoftBums. We also had four Flip covers/inserts to use as daycare backups only since they were still pretty big for Zach.
Lucy came home from daycare with her itti bitti poking out!
My friend Poe then lent us a set of 16 BumGenius 4.0 AIOS in size medium. They’re a tad big on Zach for now but very handy when we’re behind on laundry. My friend Emilee decided against using cloth on her daughter after she’d already bought some. She sold what she could then graciously gave us what she had left ~ four Dry Bee’s AIOs & a couple random other pockets. I bought a few more of our favorites on sale & our stash of fluff was enough {for now}.
Zach with his BumGenius poking out when I arrived at daycare 9/18.
We need ten cloth diapers a day for daycare. Two for them to wear in the mornings & four each for diaper changes throughout the day. I’ve found we have enough diapers that I don’t have to do cloth diaper laundry but every other night. Of course, days that they poop {they still don’t poop daily}, we tend to do a laundry load or at least a rinse cycle over night.
I was greeted by these sleepy fluffy butts when I arrived at daycare 10/5.
I’ve continued to wash my cloth diapers like I started & mentioned in my first diaper post: cold rinse, add Tide Free & Gentle at the first line, then hot/cold wash with double rinse. We have had just a few times with super poopy diapers that I’ve needed to rewash them & had just a few stains that needed sunning.
I dry everything on low once then pull out & line dry the covers. Sometimes the first drying cycle starts as we’re going to bed & the second during Zach’s dream feed, if that’s the case, then everything might get dried a second time.
The pocket diapers get sorted by me, then stuffed by Jason & I while the babies are nursing or napping in the evenings. We’ll then place the four needed per baby in a wet/dry bag & add both bags to the diaper bag to be ready for the next day. I already had two Planet Wise wet/dry bags & a FuzziBunz wet bag. I soon purchased an additional Planet Wise medium bag so that we wouldn’t have to do wet bag laundry nightly.
Pockets stuffed & ready to go for another week of daycare
We’ve taught daycare to place the dirty diapers in the wet section. And now they will even put poopy diapers in one wet bag & the pee only diapers in the other bag. So far, both their teachers & I feel like it’s gone very well.
*Note: I will admit that our water bill has gone up since the babies have been home from the hospital. From $44 to $93/month. *But* for the first four months, we had almost constant visitors which meant extra clothes, towels & sheets & dishes being washed. Not to mention that we did & continue to do clothes laundry pretty much daily for our clothes, the babies’ clothes, bibs & burp cloths. And we’re eating at home more to save money which also means we’re running the dishwasher more frequently as well as hand washing bottles & pump parts. Plus we now have two more in the household taking baths. Long story short, we can’t & don’t blame cloth diapering on our increased water bill & are saving more than the $49/mo water bill increase.
{edit: I wrote this guest post for Diana with our BlogHer11 roomies in mind. But it applies to all online friendships, like ours!}
While Diana’s cruising away {& having so much fun without us!}, she asked if I’d jump on over to Hormonal Imbalances for a day. And of course I said yes!
I ‘met’ Diana online when we decided to become BlogHer 2011 roommates. Then months later, we hugged in person for the first time. One of those ‘life will never be the same’ moments.
There’s something special about online friendships. Since you’re reading this, you probably know what I’m talking about. The best part of social media, & the near obsession my friends & I have with it, is that we’re almost always connected. Whether it’s a tweet how the days going in 140 or less, a silly photo of your child that morning from Instagram, a Facebook update on your night, or a detailed blog post on your dinner, I know how my online friends are & what they’re up to sometimes in more detail & much more frequently than my not-as-social-media-savvy IRL friends.
Meeting Diana, & Miranda & reconnecting with Alena, at BlogHer ’11 solidified them in my mind as making the shift from strictly ‘online friends’ to ‘friend friends’.
The four of us roomies bonded quick in the months leading up to BlogHer thanks to a myriad of emails, texts, a few silly nights Sypking & more Facebook group conversations than I’d be willing to admit. Our relationships only bonded further in person in San Diego. And our goodbyes were certainly tear-filled.
For the past five months, I’ve been on the best, most effective diet of my whole life. Breastfeeding two babies.
I’d heard nursing multiples I’d burn about a thousand extra calories a day. Take a second to let that sink in, 1000.
So the multi momma nursing books recommend you compensate for that by eating 1000 fatty extra calories. That’s 100 more than when I was eating for triplets & 400 more than my calorie goal when I was pregnant with Zach & Lucy.
Somedays I’m better at eating than others. And the days I’m too busy at work to have second breakfast or weekend mornings I nurse before I drink or eat anything, I pay for it with hunger pains & nausea worse than when I was in the first trimester. My body is working hard & I’m trying my best to keep up.
I’ve learned to carry a big jug of water with me at all times. And I keep snacks now in my drawers at work. I pack a lot of food for my workday & still sometimes take advantage of our cafeteria.
But yall, even eating as much as I do, with a scoop of gelato on top, I’ve still lost close to 60 pounds since May 21.
taken in NICU bathroom May 26th.Monday morning in office bathroom
It’s crazy. And while breastfeeding multiples & pumping at work is tough {& probably needs its own post later}, it’s so worth it. Hello! I’m wearing my skinny girl khakis & have set aside my fat kid pants for the first time in years!!
{I swear I’m not trying to be braggy, annoying or knock-you-down-pro-breastfeeding, I’m just shocked at the weight loss & wanted to share.}
Our Zach has had a cold/runny nose/cough for weeks now thanks to daycare. But you’d never know it by his near constant smile. Tongue out, wide gummy grin. He’s beginning to be more vocal now too. Zach has a softer voice than Lucy, but its worth listening closely for, as are his giggles. He’s quite willing to smile at everyone. And bat those to-die-for lashes. He’s going to be quite the lady killer.
Zach loves to be held. He will look around constantly taking everything in. He’ll only lay his head down on you when he’s sleepy. Standing is his favorite activity. He’ll do squats like he might be a future weight lifter. 🙂 He’s great at reverse push ups during tummy time but hasn’t yet figured out how to roll from back to belly or vice versa.
Zach is our night owl & has been sleeping in the rock-n-play in our room. It sits him up which helps him breath through the sniffles better. He won’t nap in a crib at daycare either. He crashes on the floor or swing or this turtle thing for hours long naps.
He’s continued to wake about every 4-5 hours to nurse. Our breastfeeding relationship is still going well. He usually finishes his 4 oz bottles for daycare but sometimes leaves an ounce behind. He’s still taking zantac morning & evening for reflux which seems to really help.
Zach is in 0-3 or 3 mo clothes. Carter’s fits him well because he’s still a narrow lil dude. We’re guessing he’s around 12 pounds. He can still wear the kissaluv size 0 fitteds & XS covers although he’s in AIO or pocket cloth diapers at daycare. Overnight he’s still fitting in size 1 Huggies naturals.
