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{Katie’s Baby Blog} Baby Girl #2 is 21 weeks!

 I wanted to update you on our second baby girl growing! I had my 20 week sonogram last week and she is doing great!

The anatomy appointment is always a fun one, and it’s nice that Tim is able to join me whenever I have a sonogram, because he isn’t allowed to come into the office otherwise for my appointments.

She is about 13oz already! and HEALTHY!! Which is what I pray for every night…another healthy baby girl!

I am feeling LOTS of kicks. I think way more than I did with Lily and I started feeling them a lot earlier this time around…15/16 weeks! Maybe it’s because I’m actually drinking a little bit of caffeine this time. When I was pregnant with Lily, the smell of coffee turned my stomach so I just didn’t drink any the entire time.

I’m also wayyyy more tired all of the time than I was last time, so a little coffee helps, especially with early weekday mornings.

Yay!- we’re halfway there!

<3 Katie Ryan

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Grooms Stand On The Right At A Wedding

A lot of our wedding traditions don’t really have the best of origins: brides originally wore veils to safeguard against the groom changing his mind in case he didn’t happen to like her face; and, the garter toss harkens back to the days when guests helped disrobe brides shortly after vows were exchanged. Yikes! And, while couples today probably don’t give much thought to where they stand at the altar, the traditional placement (with the bride on the left & the groom on the right) has its own dark backstory.

According to Reader’s Digest, the reason couples getting married stand where they stand is a remnant of “marriage by capture”. Early European grooms would sometimes literally “take a wife” against the will of her & her family. A man would kidnap a woman from her home, while his groomsmen would fight off anyone who tried to stop them. Then, at the actual wedding, the best man (the guy who had the best sword skills) would stand by the groom, ready to jump to his aid in case any uninvited guests arrived.

The groom had to be prepared to battle his angry soon-to-be in-laws, too. And, since most people are right-handed, the groom standing on the right side of the altar meant his right arm would be free to draw his blade at a moment’s notice.

Thankfully, marriage by kidnapping declined in popularity over the centuries, but the groom’s position on the right side still remains. However, one religion switches up that placement: Judaism. And the reason arose from a different tradition: a line in the Bible that says “at thy right hand does the queen stand”, which, in Jewish weddings, means the bride & groom are treated as royalty. (But, then again, every woman should be treated as a queen, right?)

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

CMA Country Christmas Special Bloopers

Thomas Rhett and his wife Lauren have officially proven how awesome they are with the release of this blooper reel. The outtakes show just how real they are and make them even more lovable check it out.

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Is One Side of Tin Foil Shiny?

In the wake of Thanksgiving, you more than likely utilized tinfoil to cover some, if not all, of your leftovers. Have you ever noticed, though, that tinfoil has 2 different-looking sides, one shiny & one dull? Why is that?

The fact that tinfoil has 2 sides with different appearances is mostly the result of the manufacturing process. To create aluminum foil, a huge slab of aluminum is fed through heated steel rollers until it’s a mere 5 millimeters thick. Then, it’s moved to a set of cold rollers to be thinned even further. And, since it’s thin enough to break at that point, manufacturers push through 2 sheets at a time. When the top of the top sheet & the bottom of the bottom sheet brush against the rollers, they get shiny. But, since the bottom of the top sheet and the top of the bottom sheet only touch each other, they stay dull.

Since the shiny side seems more reflective, a lot of people think that side should face up while cooking or baking. And, if you were trying to fry an egg outside on a hot day, that would make sense, since more sunlight would reflect off the shiny surface, transferring more heat to the egg. But, most regular ovens heat food through convection, where the air in the oven circulates heat energy from the hot coil elements to the food. In other words, convection ovens don’t care how reflective the tinfoil is.

With that said, shiny-versus-dull does matter when it comes to certain specialized types of aluminum foil. For example, the dull/non-shiny side of Reynolds Non-Stick Aluminum Foil has a coating that helps keep food from sticking to it, so you should definitely place your food on that side.

Aluminum foil also isn’t just for ovens. From sharpening scissors to scrubbing grills, it has tons of other uses & none of them depend on whether you use the shiny or the dull side…the tinfoil company just wants you to keep using it!

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Does Turkey Really Make You Sleepy?

You’ve probably wondered, as you struggled to keep your eyes open amidst all the Thanksgiving Day football & family chatter, “is it the turkey that’s making me sleepy”?

Here’s the chemistry involved: turkey contains L-Tryptophan, an amino acid involved in sleep; your body uses that to produce a B vitamin called niacin, which generates the neurotransmitter serotonin, which yields the hormone melatonin, which helps regulate your sleeping patterns. But, plenty of other common foods contain similar amounts of tryptophan, including other poultry, meat, cheese, yogurt, fish, eggs, and others.

Moreover, for tryptophan to produce serotonin in your brain, first it has to cross the blood-brain barrier, which a lot of other amino acids are also trying to do. To give tryptophan a leg up in the competition, it needs the help of carbohydrates. Eating a small, all-carbohydrate snack a little while after you’ve eaten something containing tryptophan, will help the carbs will ferry that tryptophan from your bloodstream to your brain.

Thanksgiving isn’t about eating small, well-timed snacks, however; it’s more about mounds of mashed potatoes, mountains of stuffing, and moats of gravy. Combine that with alcohol, and you’re more than likely going to collapse into a spectacular food coma after the meal. Your body has to work extra hard to digest when you overeat (especially high-fat foods), redirecting blood to the digestive system & leaving little energy for anything else. And, since alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, it also slows your brain & other organs down.

In short, you can still hold turkey responsible for your Thanksgiving drowsiness, but you should also make sure that the mac & cheese, spiked apple cider, and that second piece of pumpkin pie also share the blame.

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Put Paper Chef’s Hats On Turkey Legs?

Sometimes, you feel like wearing a chef’s hat while you cook Thanksgiving dinner, and that’s okay. But placing a tiny chef’s hat on the end of each turkey leg could be considered taking the holiday cheer a bit too far. Why do we always see that, though, especially in movies & cartoons?

Over the years, those paper coverings have had many creative names: turkey frills, turkey booties, even turkey panties. While they’ve (thankfully) fallen out of fashion in recent years, they did originally serve a very specific purpose. According to writer John Cordy Jeaffreson in the 1800s, paper trimmings sprung up in the 17th century as a way for women to keep their hands clean while carving meat.

Here’s what he wrote in his 1875 book, A Book About the Table: “To preserve the cleanliness of her fingers, the covering was put on those parts of joints which the carver usually touched with the left hand, whilst the right made play with the shining blade. The paper-frill, which may be seen round the bony point & small end of a leg, is a memorial of the fashion in which joints were dressed for the dainty hands of lady-carvers”, before the introduction of the carving-fork.

When etiquette books started encouraging “lady-carvers” to use carving forks, the paper didn’t become obsolete…it just got frillier. During the 19th & 20th centuries, chop frills were a cute & classy way to conceal the unsightly leg bones of roast turkey, lamb, chicken, or any other bird. So, if you have dainty hands like me, you can use them if you wish…or, just use a carving fork and knife & you’ll be set.

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Is There A Difference Between Stuffing & Dressing?

If you’re a carb lover like me, nothing completes a Thanksgiving meal quite like dressing…boatloads of bread, celery, and other ingredients & spices to complement that beautiful bird protein.

Some people don’t call it dressing, though…they say stuffing. In these unprecedented times, knowing how to properly refer to that magnificent mound of moist bread seems necessary. So what’s the difference?

Let’s knock out one theory right here at the top: dressing & stuffing do not correlate with how the side dish is prepared. A turkey can be stuffed with dressing, and stuffing can be served in a casserole pan. Whether it’s ever seen the inside of a bird is irrelevant, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong & should be run out of town on a rail.

The terms are actually separated due to regional dialects. Dressing seems to be the favored choice for southern states like my home state of Mississippi, as well as Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia. Meanwhile, stuffing is preferred by Mainers, New Yorkers, and other folks of the northern areas. There are some parts of Pennsylvania where they call it filling, but…no harm, no foul.

If stuffing stemmed from the common practice of filling a turkey with carbs, why the separation? It was likely because Southerners considered the word stuffing impolite, so they never really accepted it.

So, while there’s really no material difference between stuffing or dressing, when visiting relatives it might be helpful to utilize to their regionally-preferred word to avoid confusion & dirty looks. But, otherwise…just enjoy stuffing yourself!

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: How Does Food Go “Down The Wrong Pipe”?

Most folks aren’t very well-versed on human anatomy, which is why many of us call biceps “guns”, elbows “funny bones”, and heads “noggins”. So, when throat irritation & coughing spring up after you swallow something in a weird way, you might say that the food “went down the wrong pipe.” But what’s actually going on when that happens?

More than 30 muscles operate when you chew & then swallow. When the food’s ready to leave your mouth & head down into your stomach, it’s near the top ends of two “pipes,” the esophagus & the trachea. You want that food to travel via the esophageal route, since that leads to the stomach. Your body knows that, which is why, during ingestion, the voice box & epiglottis shift & close off the trachea, which, for food, is definitely the “wrong pipe”.

We don’t typically hold our breath when we eat, so food can end up taking a wrong turn down into the trachea every now & then. That “aspiration”, as it’s medically known, triggers an adrenaline response & causes you to cough uncomfortably. Dislodging the food will usually ease the problem, but sometimes it can get stuck & obstruct your airway, at which point you’re officially considered to be choking.

You might notice, though, that this happens more often with liquids. That’s because liquids move more quickly than solids, giving the body less time to react.

In rare cases, food or liquids that head down the “wrong pipe” can end up in the lungs & cause pneumonia. Thankfully, that’s uncommon, as coughing tends to get the food moving back into the esophagus where it’s supposed to be.

To minimize your chances of getting food stuck, try to avoid talking with your mouth full. Also, thoroughly chew reasonable portions. Y’know…all the things your mom & dad used to tell you.

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Do We Say “Bless You” After A Sneeze?

We absorb a lot of how we socially interact at an early age, from it not being polite to cough without covering your mouth, to saying thank you whenever people give you things like money or gifts. And, what do we do when someone rears back & lets loose a violent burst of snot & spittle? We say “bless you”. But why? What do blessings have to do with sneezes?

The ‘bless you’ phenomenon dates back to as early as 77 BC. While there weren’t any explanations given for it, it was obvious people tended to acknowledge sneezes as a sign of good health, deserving of some cheer. Greeks & Romans would follow sneezes with phrases like “live long” & “may Jupiter bless you”.

That positivity changed in the 6th century, though, with Pope Gregory I as Europe experienced the depths of the bubonic plague. Sneezing was considered a symptom of illness, so the Pope thought saying “God bless you” would add some extra insurance for what was, at that time, near-certain death.

Also, there was a myth that the heart briefly stopped during a sneeze; perceived blood flow changes were believed to cause a pause between heartbeats. So, folks would say “bless you” to ensure that the heart wouldn’t stop beating. Basically, it was a way of congratulating someone for not dying: “Bless you, Oliver…that sneeze didn’t kill you!” Some cultures even believed demons were transmitted during sneezes, so they adopted the blessing as a way of warding off evil spirits.

However it came to be, we’ve clearly adopted a blanket blessing policy for all sneezes. When people don’t say “bless you”, we think they don’t care about our well-being. One etiquette columnist even put it like this: it’s considered more rude for people getting hit with sneeze shrapnel to bypass a “bless you” than for the person detonating the germ bomb to not say “excuse me”. And we have the plague to thank for all those blessings.

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].

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