If It Ain't Broke Why Fix It?

If you are an avid reader of my blog you will know that I am completely and madly in love with the corporate coffee monster called Starbucks. In short, I heart Starbucks. 

Why do I love Starbucks so much? I love Starbucks because when you go to a Starbucks you always know what to expect. This applies to all Starbucks (except the one's at Barnes and Noble; they suck) no mater what city or country you are in. Whether you are in an airport, a hotel, a mall, or even a rest stop along the highway (yep, they are popping up everywhere) they are all the same. 

I live for the Grande soy latte. Live for. I am one of those unfortunate people who cannot tolerate milk so the soy is a must have. Over the years I have grown to love the soy. Love the warm vanilla taste. Love the thick constancy. Love the warm soy foam. Love it. Need it. Can't live without it. 

You see where this is going don't you?

Last week I noticed that my drink tasted a little but off. I thought that maybe they mixed up the milk and that is why the flavor tasted a bit like dish water. The next day I ordered the same and this time I watched them to make sure they were in fact using the soy. They did, and when I left I was a bit taken aback when I tasted the same watery drink when I got home. I started thinking (as I always do) maybe I am pregnant and so maybe my taste buds are off. 

When I went back the next day I asked my favorite barrista if they started using a different soy milk and yes, of course they did. I was completely horrified to find that this was going to be a permanent change. As in forever. As in no more Starbucks for me? Gasp.

I refused to be beaten. I asked for sugar free vanilla in my drink in the hopes that it would bring back that warm vanilla flavor of lattes past. Nope, still tasted like shit. Today I added mocha. Better, but now just tasted like warm chocolate shit. Shit with more calories and sugar. Not exactly what I was looking for. 

I know what you are all thinking. Just make the damn thing at home. Yes, I could have coffee at home, but it will never be the same. It's the experience that I love. The little man and I no matter what the weather take our 15 minute stroll the the Central Square store. I love ordering my favorite drink in my personal cup. I love that first sip as I exit the store. In the summer I love stopping at the park while my little man runs around and I drink that soy deliciousness. 

So now what? At this point I don't really know. I have heard from the store that everyone is complaining but the problem with giant greedy corporate monsters is that they don't care. Apparently they had a focus group who said they didn't notice a difference (my ass) so this is unlikely to change. There is an organic coffee shop just down the street from my beloved Starbucks and I may have to give them a chance. 

It's just all so sad. Not in anyway to be compared with the horrors that exist in the world, and I am not in anyway trying to present this in that way.

I really just want to know if it wasn't broke why did you have to go and fix it?

Egg Update.

So the eggs weren't spoiled after all. The delivery was just massively delayed. 

See this previous post if you have no idea what I am talking about.

I finally got the egg on day 26. Day 26? That's what I said. I feel like I owe a massive apology to Clearblue Easy for ever doubting them. Had I not been using the monitor we would have definitely given up by the time day 26 rolled around. 

So there you have it. I'm back on baby watch and I'm hoping to start testing again next week. One of our fellow bloggers turned me onto this site www.early-pregnancy-tests.com. It has tests that will pick up the pregnancy hormone days before the drugstore ones and the best part is that they are only 2 dollars a piece. With free shipping!

I am going to try to stay out of my own head and not get too crazy this month (remember the tape worm from last month?)

Thanks to Clearblue Easy at least I feel like we got a fair shot (no pun intended.)

Vegetarian(or not) Easy Italian Wedding Meatball Soup.

Back by popular demand (if one person can make things popular :))

The Yummy Mummy recipe of the week.

By accidentally deleting this part of the blog Yum almost left Sarah G. without dinner tonight. Gasp!

Here you go. It's so easy and please tell me what you think!

Ingredients

1/4 Bag Elbow Noodles

2 Containers Vegetable Broth

1/2 Bag Spinach roughly chopped

1 can Diced Tomatoes with basil/oregano mixed in  drained

1 Container Vegan Whole Kitchen Meatballs (in green box in the freezer section of Whole Foods)/ OR any Frozen Meatball.

Bring Broth to a Boil.

Add Meatballs and Pasta and Simmer for 10 mins.

Add Tomatoes and Spinach and Simmer for ten more mins.

That's it. I make it with a salad and garlic bread.

 Super easy and perfect for a freezing cold day like we are having in today in Boston. 

Just One of Those Days.

Today I'm just having one of those days. You know the days where you are feeling a bit blue? I have no reason to be down and I certainly am not complaining. I'm just feeling like more of a Slummy Mummy than a Yummy Mummy. 

It started when I woke up this morning. I just knew it was going to be "one of those days." 

• The little man, who usually wakes up with a big smile at 8:30am was screaming from his bed at 8am,  and these were not happy screams.
  
• I went in and saw the "day after" injuries. It's unimaginable that it could look any worse, but it does. I can only describe it as if a dog chewed on his left cheek. I have so much guilt that I wasn't right there watching him when it happened and I think this is the main reason I am so down in the dumps. (This is not to say that I didn't totally appreciate all of your kind comments yesterday and they made me feel 10 times better to know I am not the only "Bad Mommy.")
• The temperature started out at 22 and will be falling to the single digits by nightfall. Did I mention that I hate winter? It's supposed to stay this way all weekend with more snow. More? How much can a California girl take?
• I took a much needed shower while the little man was talking his first nap. Given the deep freeze outside I thought I should blow dry my hair. As I was plugging in the blow dryer I was electrocuted. Like for real.  Like drop the blow dryer, my fingers still feel burnt (4 hours later), and my arm is shaky. I have NO idea what happened and it worked fine after, but it still scared the shit out of me.
• The little man then woke up from his nap screaming and still in a bad mood. More Guilt. 
• I went to the gym, tried to leave the man in kids club. Usually he blows me kisses. Today he screamed bloody murder. More Guilt.
• At the gym I had to face the barrage of "oh my god what happened to his face?" To which I replied "he fell." To which everyone asked "how?" My answer, "I don't exactly know" which never goes over too well.
• I went to Yoga only to find my usual instructor was again out and there was the same sub. The same sub who I knew would be there but I totally forgotten. The same sub who I didn't like at all on Monday.
• The little man and I then left the gym and went for a walk through the Prudential Center. You should of seen the looks that people were giving me when they looked at his sweet little bruised face. Lots of guilt. Guilt followed by concern that DSS was going to come up to me at any minute and demand an explanation. 
• Finally at 3:30 we arrived home. I put the little man down and now am curled up with my computer. Still feeling shitty. Hormonal almost (not going to get my baby hopes up this month so lets not go there.)

Like I said. There is certainly nothing wrong, and I'm sure tomorrow will be a better day. Today was just one of those days.

Bad Mommy?

Baby proof clearly does not equal little man proof. 

There I was standing in the kitchen making the little man's breakfast while he was playing ever so nicely with his step stool, a basket, and a metal toy truck.

Then came the scream. Then I saw the blood. Gasp. This is what I was left with.

When I say that these pictures don't even do justice to how bad this looks, that would be the understatement of the year.

The worst part is the looks that people gave me as we walked for our morning cup of joe. I can't even imagine what The Husband is going to say when he gets home. 

I know, I know, "shit happens" as my Mother in Law said after seeing him on Skype this morning, and yes "boys will be boys" as my other friend said. But I still can't help feeling like I did something wrong, and now I have this constant reminder on that sweet little face that is breaking my heart.

The Little Man is quite resilient and has gone about his day not realizing what kind of horror show is on the left side of his face. Thank God I have the sitter today so he can stay home and "hide out." 

Tomorrow I'm expecting some bruises and there is a 90% chance of a black eye. 

Oh today I am feeling like quite the Bad Mommy.

The Twitter Twitter of Little Feet.

YM just had a new addition. The birth of twitter! I have no idea how this works yet, but I'm thinking that if it's anything like updating my status on Facebook I should do just fine! 

Bare with me the next few days as I work out the kinks. 

As always if you hate it, let me know and if you can offer any help that is even better!

 

What a Girl Won't Do For a Good Cup of Coffee.

This weekend it snowed. Again. That now makes for more than 30+ inches since December. I know what you are thinking, Duh Yum you live in New England. Yes, yes I do, but this is a lot even for us. It's an exceptional amount for a former Southern California girl. Such is the price we pay for the best Summers in the Country I suppose.

Snow or no snow a girl has got to get her coffee. Especially on days where she may have had one too many glasses of Champagne the night before. Luckily, the husband was home to do the heavy lifting and we headed out to our local Starbucks. 

Here are the boys getting all bundled up.

This is what our front "yard" looked like. You will be happy to know we park in a garage so thank God none of those cars are mine.

The little man was enjoying the view.

He looks so little next to his Daddy.

We finally made it! Grande Soy Latte please!

Well worth the trip!

 Of course it is easy for me to say as I wasn't the one with 32lbs on my back. Believe me I have done my fair share with that bad boy, and I have the aching back to prove it.

Hope you all had a warm and relaxing weekend!

Anniversary Weekend Recap.

Whew. This was quite the weekend for the Yummy Mummy. All of the anniversary celebrations have left me a little hung over and a lot tired! Despite that it was a great weekend!

Friday night our very good friends came over for dinner. We celebrated with raclette, a Swiss dinner (I think I have mentioned before that The Husband is a swissie?) that involves cheese and potatoes. An excellent combination. Throw in a few bottles of wine and a great night was had by all. 

Here is a picture of the table. Including the "grill" used to make the dinner. We were supposed to follow up the night with some chocolate fondue but after the 5000 calories we each consumed no one was interested in anything other than their bed.

Here is a picture of our boys playing so nicely together. 

Saturday was our big date night. We had quite the plan. We were going to go to Upstairs on the Square for drinks. Harvest for dinner, and L.A. Burdick for desert. Given the blizzard that was expected to begin at the same time we were exiting our house this was quite ambitious. 

We arrived to Upstairs on the Square only to find that the bar was closed for a private party (can they do that?) I was fairly annoyed, but given the sub zero temps we decided to get a before dinner drink over at Harvest where we were having dinner. This ended up being the best call of the night as it started snowing as soon as we began our short walk. 

Harvest was great. I really liked the bar. The only thing that turned me off was that there were two flat screen TVs showing football. Kind of ruined the mood, but I get that it is playoff season so what can you do? Dinner was excellent. We were seated by the fire and everything was divine. We started with a dozen oysters. I had the Rib Eye and The Husband had the Hake. We drank we laughed and at one point The Husband leaned over and said that if I really wanted the Louboutins, then they are mine. Um hello, did I not mention I MUST HAVE THEM? So yes, honey I will be ordering them as soon as I finish this post and yes, this was the high point of the evening.

We then decided to head over to L.A. Burdick arriving at 9:59pm. You guessed it. They close at 10 so we were SOL. We then cruised over to Whole Foods through some pretty heavy snow in search of a cupcake and alas they were closed too. Luckily our neighbors were having a party downstairs so I popped by for a glass of wine and found some cookies (did I ever mention how much I love dessert?) 

All and all it was a great weekend. I was very impressed with my outfit that I pulled together at the last minute. So impressed that I had The Husband take some pics for you all to see. 

Here I am dong my best Gwyneth Paltrow impression. 

I love this La Rok jacket. I usually wear it with jeans, but I thought the tuxedo look went well with the ensemb. 

Jacket Off. 

It's hard to see but the shoes are patent leather round toe platforms (Marc by Marc Jacobs.) They looked great but were very slippery as we ran all over town.

Thanks for all your anniversary wishes. I'm off to a much needed nap.

The Child Bride.

About three years ago my bestie K.D. dubbed me as the "child bride." We were at Marc Jacobs buying the most amazing patent leather round toe platform heels when I said to the salesman, "oh my husband is going to kill me." He made some remark to the effect of, "wow you're married, I thought you were in high school or college." To this K.D. proudly announced that I was a child bride. To this day I still crack up when I think of his face.

Clearly I wasn't a child, I was 24 and my husband was 28 and today at the ripe old age of 29 I am celebrating my 5th wedding anniversary. When I got married I never even thought that we were young. We had been dating for over 2 years, having been engaged for one. Most of my friends were getting engaged (I did got to Law School in the south ((Maryland)), this may have had something to do with it.) We were in love and I never thought twice about it. Once we moved up North I realized that we were definitely ahead of the game, for better and for worse.

So here we are 5 years later, the supposed hardest years behind us. Usually I don't pay much notice to our anniversary but today does feel like a bit of a milestone. It has also made me very nostalgic and I have spent a good part of the week looking at our wedding photos.

Back then we opted for a "destination wedding." I realize that this is now very popular, but at the time it was a bit out of the ordinary. The Husband had said very soon after he proposed that he didn't care where or when we got married, just as long as he could do so wearing flip flops.  We chose Kauai, Hawaii as our destination and on January 9th, 20some of our closest friends and family joined us on the beach as we said our vows. We then celebrated with a significant amount of Mai Tais and dinner and dancing under the stars. Looking back it really was the most amazing wedding and it was very "us." 

Here are some pictures of yummy mummy aka "The Child Bride."

Although the wedding was non traditional we did have the traditional sharing of the cake, and a few kisses. 

My bridesmaids also known as my little sisters (my Maid of Honor was my bestie from Law School R.L.) 

Here we are dancing under the stars. The dress was "off the rack" and cost us a whopping $55 dollars at the time. Yes, some things have changed.

Here we are saying our "I do's" with the Hawaiian Judge.

Tonight we plan to celebrate with some friends and tomorrow it is a night out on the town just the two of us. I must say 5 years have flown by, some taking a bit longer than others. 

The benefit of getting married young? There is always the possibility that we could be celebrating 60 some day.