Confectionery Confessions

After two months of "being good" by not eating sugar, I have completely blown it these last two weeks. And by "blown it" I mean BLOWN IT. After weeks and weeks of denying myself any sugary goodness, I have recently been indulging in almost as much as I can get my hands on. I went from snacking on almonds, avoiding sweet tea, banning sweet cereals -- even any type of granola bar -- to having a dessert of some sort pretty much every day. Argg. I knew when I started this it wouldn't be a permanent thing, and that sugar would inevitably re-enter my life. However, I was hoping that 8-weeks of sugar constraint would at least help my body "be okay" with just "a little" sugar now and then when everything was said and done. But -- apparently I'm an all-or-nothing type of girl when it comes to baked goods and the such. Tisk tisk. I have four-ish weeks left in this pregnancy and I hope to get back on track (after I eat the cupcake a friend gave me today...apparently it's the mother of all cupcakes and will totally be worth it. *well, it's now a day later, and yes, I ate the cupcake, and yes it was in fact worth it). Another hurdle to jump over (or just knock over and fall on my face) is that I have two loaves of zucchini bread in the oven right now. Mmm...zucchini...sounds healthy, right? Well, 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of oil later...not so healthy. However, I did substitute half of the oil with applesauce, so that "helps" according to the ladies on the website where I got the recipe. Yes, by adding the applesauce and subtracting oil, I am decreasing the amount of fat but increasing the amount of sugar. Fabulous. But it just sounds healthier than chocolate and ice cream (my weaknesses), so I will just pretend it's good for me. Not to mention, I just had to make the bread b/c D grew the zucchini in our garden and it was massively huge...better for baking than stir frying.

So I finally took a belly pic the other night, purposely wearing the same thing I had on when I was about to pop with Charley (well, I purposely took the picture when I remembered I had the same shirt on). My only observations when comparing the two are that even though the current pic is two weeks sooner than the Charley one, I do seem to be carrying slightly differently (but I still think it's a girl!)

37 weeks - Charley - 2008

35 weeks - Baby 2 - 2009

It's funny to guess what this baby is and when he or she will come...especially when you put it in writing and can go back and look at it. The day I went into labor with Charley, I had posted a blog and a poll about "when the baby would come." I had NO CLUE it would be within 24 hrs of that post. At this time in my pregnancy with Charley, D was in Kenya and I really wasn't very apprehensive (I credit the Lord for that). If he, Donald, had to leave today for Kenya, I'm not so sure I'd be confident that he'd make it back in time. But only the Lord knows. I may be sitting here on October 1st with no baby. We will see! I am just grateful for the miracle of pregnancy and don't ever want to take it for granted.