I have memories of a gloriously chocolatey bundt cake from my childhood. It was made for me on a regular basis by a woman who in many ways was like a second mother to me—although I babysat for her actual children, who were obviously much younger than me. I met her when she lived in my neighborhood. I was 11 years old and I spotted her playing on the lawn with her just-turned-1-year-old twin boys. I was obsessed with babies, and fascinated by twins given my experience with my own brothers, so I stopped and played with them, and talked to her.
That chance encounter turned into countless hours spent over at her house with the twins, “helping.” She called me her “mother’s helper” in those early years, toting me to the mall with her and the boys, each of us pushing an umbrella stroller with a twin seated in it.
I eventually became old enough (and trusted enough) to babysit on my own, so I did, regularly. And although they moved out of my neighborhood, they stayed in my same town, so the relationship continued. I spent weekends at their house. I spent the night after babysitting. I went on vacation with them. When the boys were 4 years old, they had another baby… a girl. And I was just as enamored with her as I had been with the twins.
It might sound weird, but as much as I loved the kids, I also really loved her. We were friends, despite her being approximately 20 years older than me. And anyway, she made a chocolate cake for me often, a cake that I would eat throughout my weekends at their house.
Once I grew up and went away to college, and her kids grew up and didn’t care so much for babysitters (or need them, for that matter), we lost touch. Life happened. We’ve since reconnected on Facebook and such, but I’ve never asked her for that chocolate cake recipe.
Last month, it was Michael’s birthday, and I wanted to make a cake. But I didn’t want to mess with frosting or glaze or anything else for that matter. We were fresh off of our vacation and trying to get back into the swing of things so I wanted something easy. And delicious.
I thought of that cake—the one from so many years ago—so I googled. I had a feeling that it wasn’t made from scratch. I remembered that it had chocolate chips in it. I thought I had remembered “triple chocolate,” and I knew it was always made in a bundt pan. So I googled “triple chocolate bundt cake,” and lo and behold… success.
I don’t know if this is the one that Kim made for me so many times back then. I could very well not be giving her enough credit—maybe hers is made from scratch every time—but I’ll tell you what. This cake is damn good. It tastes like I remember. It’s moist, chocolatey, and there is NO NEED for frosting or glaze. Alysha over at How Does She? did add glaze to hers, but I’m telling you… you don’t need it. Sprinkle some powdered sugar on the top and you have yourself a cake. And since it’s a doctored cake mix, it’s an easy one, too. It’s not good for you in the slightest (3/4 cup oil??) but just think of that as a trade-off for saving yourself the calories and fat from no frosting. :)
Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake
(Source: How Does She?)
Ingredients:
– 1 box chocolate cake mix (any)
– 1 box chocolate instant pudding
– 4 eggs
– 1 cup sour cream
– 3/4 cup water
– 3/4 cup oil
– 1 bag chocolate chips (milk chocolate) – use more or less to your preference
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix all ingredients well and pour batter into a well-greased bundt pan.
3. Bake on 2nd to bottom rack for 40-50 minutes.
4. Remove from oven; let cake cool completely in pan.
5. Take a small slender spatula and loosen cake around the outside & inside edges. Tip upside down onto platter.
6. Cake can be refrigerated & removed prior to serving or tastes just as good chilled.
For Christmas, one of the gifts my mom gave us was tickets for all of us (plus my brother, sister-in-law, my nephew, and herself) to see Disney on Ice together. A few weeks ago was “the day,” and we headed to the arena to see the show. Nora was psyched; she even wore her Minnie Mouse ears—purchased at Disneyland just a few weeks earlier—in the car on the way there, and through the majority of the show.
Our seats were good. We were basically in the third row, with only the people a couple rows of people “on the ice” in front of us. When the show first started and Mickey and Minnie came out, Nora was immediately on guard. She was nervous, and it was obvious. She barely tolerated the schtick by Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Chip and Dale, etc., interjecting with random cries of “Mama!” but then… Aladdin came out. And he had a big blue genie with him.
Nora FREAKED.
She turned around in my lap, basically trying to crawl up my torso to bury herself in my neck. I was trying to get her to sit, reassuring her it was fine, but she started crying and looked me straight in the face, yelling, begging, “MAMA!! BYE-BYE! MAMA, BYE-BYE!!” I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed her and we excused ourselves from our seats. I ran up the stairs to the top of our section, where she continued to cling to me like a monkey and bury her face in my neck.
An usher came by and said to me, “Is the music too loud for her?” I said, “I’m not quite sure what it is, honestly.” He said, “I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn’t.” He invited us to sit anywhere with open seats (the show wasn’t sold out).
After a few minutes, I could tell that Nora was still watching the show, but she was doing so with her head on my shoulder, and clutching my neck with a death grip. So we sat down in the last row of our section (instead of being in the first row of our section, ha!), and Michael came up to join us. I held Nora tightly, reassuring her that it was OK. But damn, the following acts didn’t do me any favors. After Aladdin and a million genies, Nemo came out. I thought this would go well (she loves the movie), but then of course, they had to act out the shark scene. Three big, scary sharks with loud, booming voices over the loud speaker who are trying to eat Nemo. Awesome.
Then? Beauty and the Beast. The part where the Beast gets angry at Belle for going in the West Wing or whatever and he flips out on her. Nora was no longer freaking out, but she sure didn’t seem to be enjoying herself, either.
But then! Then, the Beast turned into a prince, and they did a routine to the Beauty and the Beast theme song and Nora was… won over. That transitioned into a medley of all of the princesses with all of their princes and theme songs, and Nora was officially enjoying herself. She was even quietly singing along to some of the songs. Girl loves her princesses.
Throughout the rest of the first act/half, I asked Nora a few times if she wanted to go back down to sit with Grammy, Hunter, and company, and she kept adamantly saying “NO!” But at intermission, we successfully got her back down there with the lure that Grammy had fruit snacks. Hey, we’re not above using bribes sometimes. :)
And what do you know? She was fine the rest of the show, even from our up-close-and-personal seats. There were even some scary parts—Pinocchio being eaten by a whale, deep drums and an army of men from Mulan, etc.—and she was a trooper. I guess she just needed time to adjust.
Overall, we thought it was a great show. It was a lot better once Nora was no longer terrified, of course. Lots of songs, lots of characters, and some very entertaining effects. I would definitely take her back next year.
After the show, we went out to dinner with everyone. It was actually Michael’s birthday! Nora and I had made a cake earlier in the day, so when the three of us got home, Nora was chanting, “CAKE TIME! CAKE TIME!” She was convinced that it was her birthday, too. :)
We sang, Nora and her daddy blew out candles.
And then… Nora had cake. Michael and I were still too full from dinner!
It was a great day for our girl. So, in turn, it was a great birthday for her daddy. Funny how that happens when you’re a parent, huh? :)
Another week down. Another day closer to meeting this baby.
It seems impossible, but I feel like my belly grew a lot this week. I don’t know, I have been feeling “bigger” for a few weeks now, but this week, I feel really big. Like, I’ve actually caught myself reaching down and rubbing the roundness of my belly. It’s there, that’s for sure!
17 Weeks PregnantI was just talking to a friend of mine (Lynsay) via text this morning; she had her second baby last week. She lives in North Carolina and although I had sent her a few messages of congratulations, I hadn’t actually “talked” to her since the birth. I texted to check in on her when I was eating breakfast, and she ended up telling me about her labor. With her first son, she was one of the unlucky ones—she was in labor for 27 hours. But with this one? Just three hours from start to finish. She said it progressed so quickly that she almost didn’t make it to the hospital. She got there and the baby was born 20 minutes later. Yowzers.
This made me think (again) about my birth experience with Nora. It was 5.5 hours from beginning to end, and I didn’t even get to the hospital until I was nearly four hours into it. By the time I was actually seen by a doctor in triage, my water had broken, and we soon realized that things were going to happen FAST. Let’s just say that they were running me down the hallway on my stretcher to get me into a room in time. No time for drugs or anything. (Full story here.)
Anyway, after Nora was born, the doctors told me that with my next baby, I better head to the hospital with the first contraction. This morning, my conversation with Lynsay revolved around pregnancies and deliveries, and how different they can be—even for the same woman. Lynsay is a perfect example of that. So it made me wonder—what about me? I joked that I hoped I wasn’t going to give birth to my baby on the side of the road, but I also joked that I hoped we hadn’t “swapped” labors, and that I wasn’t going to have a 27-hour one this time. You don’t hear about that very often—the second labor being longer than the first—but really, anything can happen, right?
We also talked about how I seem to be bigger this pregnancy. But Lynsay, despite popping out sooner, actually ended up being smaller—and her baby was, too, despite being another boy. It’s just so strange to think about. After you’ve been through pregnancy once, you think you know what to expect for yourself… but then it can be so completely different. What is a woman with a Type A personality to do?? If you’re a mom of two or more, I’d be interested in hearing your story about how your births were different from one another.
These are the things I’m obsessing about.
No real pregnancy updates or changes since last week, except for my (perceived, at least) size. By the time I write this update next week, I’ll have had my next doctor’s appointment and the anatomy scan. I’m excited to see this little nugget again!
Other than all of that, I’m just really, really wishing for spring. The weather is really getting to me now. I am craving the warm, sunny outdoors more than I can accurately express. And I can’t wait to be able to take my weekly photos when it is LIGHT outside so they are brighter! :)
Flashback! 17 Weeks Pregnant With Nora
On Friday, I let go of another piece of my “baby.”
Nora got a big girl bed. A real big girl bed.
We made the transition to a toddler bed a few months ago without issue. All we had to do was take the front off of her crib and add the toddler rail, so it was no big thing, at least to her. I was sad back then, knowing that I would no longer walk in her door to see her standing, smiling at me over the edge. I would no longer lower her down into it at night, leaning on the side of the crib as I rubbed her back while I sang a song.
There were other changes we instituted at that time, too. We no longer rocked while we read bedtime stories. We took the change as an opportunity to break the rocking “habit,” and instead read to her in her bed. Again, she adapted like it was no big thing. The glider continued to sit in her room, but it went unused.
The truth of the matter was… I had a big girl now.
With the new baby on the way, we had a plan for all of this. We knew we’d need to transition her to the toddler bed to transition her to a big bed, so that we could free up the crib. We knew we’d have to get her off of the rocking part of the routine so we could also take the glider. I didn’t plan to actually get her a big bed until the spring, but we started seeing ads for President’s Day sales, and someone told me that President’s Day is one of the four best times of the year to buy a mattress. Go figure.
So we shopped around, we debated—do we get something cheap, or something that we hope will last a long time? We ultimately decided to spend a little more than we initially planned to get something that will hopefully carry her through her whole childhood. We ordered it last Sunday, and it was scheduled to be delivered Friday.
Friday came faster than I thought it would. On Thursday night, I couldn’t believe that I was putting her to bed for the last time in that little toddler bed. On Friday, before the delivery could come and screw everything up, I went into her room to snap the last pictures of my baby girl’s nursery. It’s not the one we brought her home from the hospital to, but it has the same color walls. Same furniture. A lot of the same stuff. It’s still a place where I nursed her and rocked her and literally watched her grow from an infant into a toddler.
The walls—they will soon be purple. Because my baby? She has opinions now. And she doesn’t like to be referred to as a baby, by the way. On Thursday night, as she was crawling into her toddler bed for the last time, I said, “I’m sad!” Nora said, “Mama! HAPPY!” And then I dramatically exclaimed, “But you’re my BABY!” And Nora looked at me, smiled, and said, “No BABY, Mama. BIG GIRL.”
And so she is.
The big bed—the new one is a full, by the way, so it is definitely BIG!—is just the first step. Now, over the next few months, we’ll transform this space into her big girl room. Purple on the walls, new bedding, some other new stuff. We’ll actually paint her bedroom door (it’s still the manufacturer’s “primed,” since we STILL have not painted the upstairs doors after replacing them all, whoops). We’ll actually put up some closet doors again. For a while, her room will be a mish-mash of stuff, but by the time this baby gets here, it will be very different. I actually have to work up the courage to paint over that bright, cheerful aqua blue, because I feel so very nostalgic about it. *sigh*
We made a big deal about the big girl bed. We took Nora with us when we ordered it, and talked it up while in the store. We let her “try out” mattresses in the store. We asked her what color she wanted the new bed to be (meaning the sheets), knowing for sure that she would say purple. And she did. So then we spent all week talking up the “purple big girl bed.”
When Michael brought her home on Friday night, I told her I had a surprise for her in her room. She scrambled up the stairs and into her room with a big grin. She saw that big girl bed, and she immediately wanted to get up onto it. She loved the purple sheets. She loved that it was hers. The crib (well, toddler bed) was still in the room, just pushed over to the side. I was nervous about removing it completely because I didn’t want her to freak out. Of course, she had a field day playing in the toddler bed, too, because don’t you know that moving something to another wall makes it REALLY COOL AND NEW again? :)
At bedtime on Friday night… it as big girl bed time. And she did so, so good. She loved that we could both lie in it to read with her. We did our normal bedtime routine—three books, three songs. And then I kissed her goodnight and left the room and… she went to sleep. She was passed out within five minutes.
MY BABY. She’s so big, but she looks so small in that giant bed. I can’t even take it.
She apparently loved the big girl bed so much that she actually slept until after 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. I went in and WOKE HER UP, people. She slept for 13+ freaking hours. And then? We weren’t sure how naptime would go, but… 3-hour nap. Again, HAD TO WAKE HER UP. Who is this kid? :) One who loves her big girl bed, that’s for sure.
Saturday night was also successful. So, tonight after dinner, we went into her room with the allen wrenches and we disassembled that crib. That crib that we picked out of a catalog before we even knew this little girl—before we had ever laid eyes on her. The one that we put together when I had a burgeoning belly, so excited to prepare for our little one’s arrival.
And again, it was sad. But we moved each of the pieces out of Nora’s room… and into the one next to her. The one that right now is a dumping ground for a lot of stuff, but will soon become the room of another precious little baby. Somehow, it made the sting just a little less painful.
But I will definitely miss this room.
I “journaled” my pregnancy with Nora on this blog, posting a photo and my thoughts/progress each week. I started at 16 weeks and went all the way through the end. I am so glad that I have those posts to look back on, and I really hope I can keep up with it for this baby, too.
So, here we are. 16 weeks. It’s time to start, considering I haven’t written down anything about this pregnancy prior to this point. I was too sick in the first trimester to do anything requiring any effort, and once that went away, we had a vacation, birthdays, work, etc. that got in the way. Plus, it’s only fair that I start them both at 16 weeks, right? :) Here we go.
It’s a good thing that none of my pants fit, because otherwise, I’m at that stage of pregnancy where I don’t feel pregnant. Not really at all. Even the belly still feels mostly like I’ve eaten too much junk, not like there’s a baby in there. My belly is still mostly soft and squishy, not that glorious round ball of BABY. But that whole thing about “popping out” earlier during your second pregnancy?
Totally true.
Um, yeah. I’m pretty sure my belly wasn’t this size until I was 20+ weeks pregnant last time. Whatever. I just hope it evens out at some point, and that this doesn’t mean I’m going to be HUGE this time around. :)
I felt the first signs of movement at 16 weeks with Nora, and I think I’ve actually been feeling a few periodic pokes for a week or two now. I know it’s really early for that sort of thing, but it’s common to feel it earlier in your second pregnancy than you did with your first, plus my doctor told me at my last appointment at the beginning of the month that my baby was moving all over the place in there. She was trying to get a good listen to his/her heartbeat and kept hearing these big SWOOSH sounds instead. She commented how it wouldn’t stop moving, and how she wouldn’t be surprised if I felt early movement. *shrug* I’m still waiting for those pokes and jabs that are SO COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that they can’t be mistaken. I think it’ll make me feel a lot more pregnant once I feel more regular movement, too.
Other things that are different this time: I just don’t have a ton of time to THINK about this pregnancy. I mean, when I was pregnant with Nora, it was like the pregnancy was the center of my universe. With this one, there’s so much going on and we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives… so again, instead of having it be on my mind all of the time, I instead have moments when I have to remind myself, “Oh yeah. I’m pregnant!”
I’m also definitely noticing how I’m six weeks ahead in this pregnancy than I was with Nora’s. In other words, with Nora, I was due on September 19, and this time I’m due earlier in the year—August 6. By the time I was at this point in my pregnancy with Nora, the weather was already getting nicer and I was able to take walks outside several times a week. This time, it’s still freezing cold and dark by the time we get home and have dinner, so I’ve still been doing a whole lot of nothing. I can’t wait to be able to get outside and be at least a little bit active again!
I’m in maternity pants full time now. I made the switch a couple of weeks ago because I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m not a big fan of the Bella Band (it rides up and shifts around and I feel like I am constantly adjusting it), so my real pants just had to go. By the way, it’s total crap that you can reuse all of your maternity clothes. There are a few pairs of pants that I was able to “shrink” enough in the dryer, but other pants are so huge from being stretched out in my third trimester last time that I can’t even consider wearing them right now. I had to go out and buy some new ones. I am already feeling extremely limited in what I can wear—I have like ONE pair of work pants, yay! (sarcasm)—so I need to do some more shopping.
We’re excited. But it’s still really surreal. Right now, our focus is on making some pretty big transitions with Nora—all of which are in preparation for this baby. I know he or she will be here before we know it!
Flashback! 16 Weeks Pregnant With Nora
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
