Eating Better in the New Year

Welcome to the first post in my series, "Doing Better in the New Year!" I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but I do like to take the opportunity at the beginning of a shiny, fresh new year to think about what I'd like to change or do better this year than last year. It's nice to set out in the new year with a few goals in front of me. One of the things I plan to do better in 2014 is eat better.

We don't actually eat that badly as it is. When it was just the two of us and we still had 25-year old metabolisms, I didn't really think that much about what we ate. We just kind of ate what we wanted, ate out when we wanted, and just didn't worry about it. All of that changed when Carsen was born. That's when I started paying attention not only to healthier options, but started buying more organic foods, started reading more information on healthy ways of eating and the latest research on nutrition, and watching out for things that really shouldn't be in our diet at all like artificial ingredients.

Three years later we've made a lot of progress and are eating much better than we used to, but there's always room for improvement. And even though we've learned a lot about cleaner eating, some of those habits can be hard to kick {choc-a-holic, right here}. We're a long way from perfect, but I'm a strong believer in taking baby steps to make a goal achievable. Changing small things at a time and conquering those tough habits one by one takes time but helps make the effort more manageable and less overwhelming. If I woke up one day and couldn't eat any sweets, carbs, dairy, or anything from a package, I might have a panic attack.

To be clear, eating better for me does not mean cutting out entire food groups. In fact, I find that as soon as I make something off-limits I want it even more than I did before. Instead, I try to focus on what I should eat, and still allow myself to eat the not-so-good stuff if I want it, just not all the time {kind of like an 80/20 rule, but maybe even more like 90/10}. I like knowing that I had the option but chose something better. For example, instead of making cereal totally off-limits for breakfast, I'll try to eat eggs with vegetables, or a fruit & veggie smoothie most days of the week. I find if the new options are interesting enough {eggs baked into tomatoes, yum!} and don't require too much work, then I'll be excited to have them every day. It's certainly easy enough to scramble or hard boil a big batch of eggs on Sunday to eat during the week and I'm definitely going to try some new smoothies like this one or one of these, and I really like this idea. I'd love to get the hubby and kids on board with some more vegetables and I think smoothies might be just the trick. Plus I can add chia seeds and other goodies that they'll never know about ;) There will always be times that I'm in a hurry or just really want a bowl of cereal. For those times I'll keep healthier cereal options in the pantry.

Kale & brussels sprouts salad - don't worry, it has bacon

When it comes to lunch, I often rely on the good ole turkey sandwich. It's quick, easy, doesn't require cooking, and simple enough to keep the ingredients on hand. However, it's not so great for you. Lunchmeat is processed and full of sodium, and bread is something {in my opinion} we should all try to eat a little less of. Again, I wouldn't swear off sandwiches, but for the every day I need to aim for a better lunch plan. A little bit of Pinterest perusing and I'm thinking about adding things like this, this, or this to my standard rotation. I also like a good cobb salad but it can be hard to find a salad dressing that isn't total junk. I found this recipe for a honey mustard dressing that I'm going to try out though and see if that can help keep me in the salad habit for lunch time! Of course, I'm sure I'll still have a turkey sandwich from time to time among other things.

Dinner has always been my easiest meal to plan. I usually just pick a meat, prepare it some way we like, and have a vegetable for the side. Or if we're going meatless, as we do for half of our meals {actually half, not just figure-of-speech half}, then it's usually beans, quinoa, or eggs as our protein source instead of meat. I don't believe in fake meat substitutes like tofu.

Coconut Cream Larabars - My Whole Food Life

Snacks... are my weakness. I have a sweet tooth. Actually it's more like a chocolate tooth. If I try eating an apple instead of chocolate, I end up eating 3 or 4 other things too because, really, an apple doesn't satisfy a chocolate craving. I have found that energy bars like Clif bars or Larabars do the trick since they taste like a treat but are also pretty satisfying. The problem is they're expensive, and you have to watch the ingredients in some brands/varieties. They're really meant to be more like a small meal than a snack, so they're higher in calories than you'd want a regular snack to be- another caveat. Thankfully, there's a great blog I read called My Whole Food Life which is full of recipes for all kinds of wonderful dishes, including homemade energy bars. I've made her most popular Coconut Cream Larabars before, but it was before I had my food processor so the texture didn't turn out. I wanted to wait until I had my food processor to try again, and I just got one for Christmas! I'm really excited about trying some more of her recipes like this one, this one, and this one to keep our snacks healthy and clean. Just to clarify, we don't currently snack on chocolate all the time. Carsen and I both love string cheese, cheddar, raisins, a variety of fruits, and nuts. I try to stick to those {or something similar} for the most part so she develops healthy snack habits. It's me personally who needs to have a better alternative when I'm tempted to grab a handful of m&ms!

Are you eating better for 2014? Trying to better yourself in other ways? In addition to eating better, I'm also trying to parent better, workout better, and better our home in 2014! Stay tuned for those upcoming posts and some others in this series :)

2013: Year in Review

Happy 2014! I don't know about you, but our 2013 was a bit of a rollercoaster, so we were pretty much ready to say farewell when the ball dropped. We had some really amazing moments, and others that we'd rather forget. So to give 2013 a proper send-off, it's time to take a look back at the ups and downs before we turn our focus to all the potential of 2014! 

Here's how we spent 2013...

JANUARY

We started the year with baby preparations, completing Carsen's new room, and making a quilt for her big girl bed. It was a lot of work but well worth it. She loves her room and has a blanket handmade by her mama :)

FEBRUARY

The Ravens won the Super Bowl! We joined nearly 100,000 fans in welcoming them home after the win. More baby preparations ensued: cooking, cleaning, writing detailed instructions for the babysitters.

MARCH

Last-minute baby preparations and finally, just when we began to think we might have another April baby, Reagan arrived! One of the absolute best experiences of our lives. 

APRIL

Mostly spent getting back on my feet, getting to know Reagan, and adjusting to life with our two baby girls. And my sweet baby Carsen turned 3!

MAY

We continued to adjust to life with 2 babies, enjoyed some outside time whenever we could, tried to get back into the swing of normal life by actually cleaning the house and developing somewhat of a routine with the girls. 

JUNE

I turned 31, we soaked up sunshine at the playground and out on our front walk every chance we got, I officially began training for my half-marathon, and we bought a new car to better accommodate our growing family!

JULY

Much of my time was spent trying to maintain a regular training schedule. Reagan hadn't settled into a consistent nap schedule yet so we were working on that too. Otherwise we spent lots of time out in the sunshine enjoying summer. We played with sidewalk chalk a lot {even made our own} and hung out at my mom's to splash in the hose & baby pool.

AUGUST

Time to prep for our big family vacation to the Outer Banks in NC. List-making, planning, plotting, graphing, and other forms of type-A bliss ensued. I also planned, prepped and froze a lot of our car and beach snacks ahead of time. Oh, and more half marathon training, that is until I came down with a random chest cold. Carsen was also in my cousin's wedding as a flower girl - cutest ever. And Josh's grandparents came to visit to meet Reagan and our niece Faye {born in July}.

SEPTEMBER

We spent the first week in NC at the beach with my family for some much needed rest, relaxation, and time away together. It was amazing. I can't wait until we go again. Then there was more training and another hiatus for an infected toe. Cheers! Reagan turned 6 months old :) </3

OCTOBER

Training went into high gear, though not quite where I wanted to be. Race day went really well, though again not quite where I wanted to be. We spent a traditional day at the pumpkin patch with my siblings and their kids - it was randomly 80 degrees that day and we were all hot and sweaty. We also celebrated a dozen or so family birthdays in a 2 week span. The government shutdown caused Josh's contract at work to lose funding. He was placed by his company on a different task well below his skill level and at a 30% lower salary. Shit got real.

NOVEMBER

Josh scrambled to find another job as we started to wonder how long this financial situation could keep us afloat. This was probably one of the most stressful things we've experienced in our 6 year marriage. He got an offer for another job almost right away but the company couldn't start him until an FY14 budget was passed on the federal level. So he continued searching and sending his resume out to everyone he knew in any industry he could possibly work in. In the mean time we were trying to operate on 2/3 of our normal budget. Finally, the week of Thanksgiving he had a very promising interview that led to a new job at his original salary. Thank you, Jesus.

DECEMBER

We got into the Christmas spirit with a month of Advent activities. Josh started his new job. We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary with Olive Garden take-out {so romantic!}. And we had what we both agreed was our best Christmas yet!

To bid 2013 farewell, we went with a very original "2014" theme for the night, and decided to celebrate according to our age {old} and stage in life {parents of small children}. That basically translates to a quiet evening at home and forcing your eyes to stay open until midnight so you can kiss and fall asleep. 

In addition, I did make steaks in my new cast iron grill pan from West Elm! I was rather excited to try it out and it did not disappoint :) 

Reagan celebrated with somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean east of Bermuda but not quite to Ireland and went to bed at 8. She's a partier, that baby ;)

After Reagan went to bed Carsen and I played a few rounds of Curious George Memory, and she went to bed around 9. 

Josh and I watched a pretty awful movie called Idiocracy. That was a few hours of my life I'll never get back. We turned on the NYE special at midnight to watch the ball drop and start the year with a kiss. Then we made fun of all the painful remarks from Carson Daly & friends for a few minutes before calling it a night. 

So, what's up next for 2014? We have a few things in mind :) I'm more of a goal-setter than a resolution-maker, so I have a few goals I'm planning to work towards this year. Check back soon to read about them!

Aaaand We're Back!

Back to blogging, and back to Blogger!

Who knew the month of December would leave me with not a moment to blog!? I envisioned regular updates on all of our Advent activities. Instead I got busy doing the activities {as it should be, after all} and found no time to sit down and write. I did take photos though, and I do intend to share, probably in one longer recap post. Also, I got involved in making a particular Christmas gift and that endeavor took longer than anticipated- as always! The project was well worth the extra time in the end. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.

You'll also notice that we're back on Blogger instead of WordPress. I just couldn't get settled and comfortable at WordPress. It felt like living in a hotel- none of your stuff is where you like to keep it, and you can't find what you're looking for. Coming back to Blogger felt like getting back home and putting all my stuff away where it belongs (does that analogy translate for non-type-As?). Maybe it's because I was so used to Blogger, where I originally began blogging. Maybe it's because WP is really not as well designed. I personally find Blogger much easier to use and much more customizable. WordPress had options, but they were all part of the "upgrade," of course meaning that you had to pay to use them. I also like the Blogger mobile app much better. Again, easier to use. And if I'm being totally honest, easier to use = more blogging. It's that simple.

I couldn't help but notice that 2013 has been my least blogged year on record {except for 2007, my first year of blogging}. While that's a little disappointing, I know it's mostly due to a new {and very cute} little somebody who I'm spending my former blogging time with these days, and I'm just fine with that. I'm looking forward to starting 2014 with a few posts including Advent, Christmas, and 2013 recaps :)

Until then, Happy New Year to everyone! We'll be partying family-style... a special dinner {at home}, followed by naps when then kids go to bed so we can stay awake until midnight. Yep. That is our actual plan. Cheers to being old! :D

Advent 2013

For me, there is no more exciting time of year than the Christmas season. I've always loved Christmas and do even more now that I'm a mom. Watching your babies experience the magic of Christmas - from Santa, to snow, to the miraculous birth of Baby Jesus - is like nothing else in the world. It gives me some serious warm fuzzies! So you can imagine my excitement each year when it's time to start the countdown. We celebrated Advent for the first time last year when I felt like Carsen was big enough to start understanding that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Of course, even this year she is a little young to grasp the notion of a savior, but I'm happy to start with the idea that we're celebrating his birth.

Last year, I made an advent calendar using some pretty winter cardstock I had on hand, and some leftover Christmas ribbon. You can read the how-to along with our list of Advent activities here. It was really cute, but it got on my nerves a little with the way it was assembled. So this year, I decided to simplify the calendar itself. I still wanted it to be reusable for future years, though, so I used a piece of foam-core posterboard and a pad of sticky notes. I started by making a calendar grid on the posterboard {it was 20" x 30" so I made 4x4 squares and left a 1" margin on each side of the 30" length}. Then I wrote each of the activities on the back of a sticky note - 23 total this year. Since certain activities are better for weekends or some are better for earlier/later in the month, I used our Google calendar to plan out what activities to do on which days and stuck them on the Advent calendar accordingly.

Once all the sticky notes were in place, I just used silver and black Sharpies to write the countdown numbers on them. I personally like to do the numbers as a countdown, although I know a lot of calendars count up to Christmas. To hang it, I placed a command hook upside down on the back of our basement door. Then I hot glued some ribbon to the back of the calendar and looped the ribbon over the command hook. Voila!

 Originally, I had my heart SET on red sticky notes. In my mind, they were everywhere for the holidays. I mean, they're sticky notes... how else would they capitalize on the holiday season?? In reality, I could find them nowhere. It got to be a few days in when I finally decided to just use blue and go with a "winter" color scheme. They're a little too electric blue for my taste, but I feel that I did the best I could with the resources that were available. I did find a pack of Post-Its that were more of a dark blue and they would have looked better, but I couldn't bring myself to spend $8 on a 6-pad pack when I only needed 23 stickies. UGH. I'll begin my hunt for red {or even a nice true green that's not neon!} for next year's calendar promptly on January 1st.

In the mean time, here's our list of activities for this year:

• Decorate the tree and our house together


• Read "The Story of Christmas"


• Make cards for soldiers


• Write a letter to Santa {Carsen dictates, mommy writes. Save it in her baby book!}


• Visit Santa {at the mall}


• New Christmas jammies


• Christmas movie night #1 - Carsen's pick


• Make ice cream cone Christmas trees with cousins


• Learn about the symbols of Christmas


• Make paper cone Christmas trees for decorations


• Visit Valley View Farms {Carsen LOVES looking at Christmas trees in the stores, so this is a huge treat for her}


• Make brown paper garland {like this} for decorations


• Christmas movie night #2 - mommy's pick


• Make gifts for grandparents


• Make & decorate cardboard "Gingerbread" houses


• Go see Christmas lights in the neighborhood


• Read "The Night Before Christmas"


• Make ice bubbles


• Christmas movie night #3 - daddy's pick


• Hot cocoa bar {like the one in this post}


• Make a birthday card for Jesus


• Bake cookies


• Make {prep} a special breakfast for Christmas morning

Some of these are repeats from last year and some are new. As Carsen {and eventually Reagan and any future siblings} gets older there's more she can understand and participate in, so I'll change and adapt what we do each year accordingly.  Some things will probably always be on there like decorating the tree and house together as a family, Christmas movies, baking cookies, and making gifts for grandparents. In the future I'd like to add more service-related activities like volunteering and gathering food, toys, clothing or household items for donations {right now we usually do that around Thanksgiving}.

So far, we have... decorated, read "The Story of Christmas," made cards for soldiers, written a letter to Santa, visited Santa, and gotten new Christmas jammies.

 

 

 

Season of Thanks

Every year at this time people start posting all of the things they're thankful for in their lives on Facebook. I've never participated in that. It just doesn't feel like me. But I do like to put my gratitude out there, so I usually write a blog post. It doesn't change much year to year I guess because I'm a simple girl with a pretty simple life. There's of course much more I'm thankful for that isn't mentioned here, but that would be a much longer post than anyone would care to read. Here we go...

I am so incredibly thankful for every piece of my life. I'm a big believer that all the parts add up perfectly to the whole. I wouldn't change a moment, even the icky ones, because I want to be right where I am. I'm thankful every single day for the people in my life- from my precious little family, to my great big family, to our amazing friends, to those people who pluck my last nerve. They're all part of my life and who I am, and I'm thankful for them. I'm thankful for our health. We don't have to look far to find someone struggling with a chronic illness, who can't seem to catch a break, or who's fighting for his or her life. There's not a day that passes when I don't consciously acknowledge how incredibly blessed we are to be healthy. I'm thankful for our home. I don't love it, but it's ours. It keeps us warm and sheltered. It welcomed our girls home from the hospital and has been the only home they've ever known. It has taught us many lessons that will weigh heavy when we buy our next house, that's for sure. It has been  a place of fun and laughter and family for us- squeaks, creaks, leaks and all. I'm so thankful for our income. In a time when many seek work and can't find it or work half a dozen small jobs to feed their families, we have steady income. And it's enough to afford me the luxury of staying at home with our girls, snuggling, playing, adventuring, teaching, and making memories - where I know I belong. That is something I will never take for granted and never stop thanking God for. I am beyond grateful for the sacrifice of every member of the United States Military and their families. Our lives are what they are because they do what they do. Above all, I'm thankful for God's love and mercy. To live life knowing God's love is a gift I can't describe. Words will never be able to express how thankful I am for a loving, forgiving God.

While a blog post about what I'm thankful for is nice, just like all the posts on Facebook every day, what better way to show gratitude than to give back and pass the blessings on? Each year we kick off the holiday season around the beginning of November by collecting things we no longer need or use and make a huge donation. We take some things to Goodwill, some to a local transitional housing shelter, and some to the food bank. Not only does it feel great to clear some things out of the house that we no longer need or use, but I can't put in words how great it is to know that someone else will be warm, or fed, or clean because we made that donation. We are very fortunate to have parents who love to spoil us and our girls at Christmas. As a result, we always have older, lesser used items we can pass along to those in need. This year, Carsen is 3 1/2. While she doesn't have a concept of what it means to be needy, we did encourage her to help us pick out some of her toys and books she doesn't play with as much, and told her we were going to give them to children who had no toys. She was totally on board and didn't make a peep about the toys getting boxed up.

Donating to local charities and helping the less fortunate in our community will continue to be a part of our holiday season as the girls grow up. In today's world of 7-year olds with cell phones, I refuse to let my children be consumed by a materialistic culture and lose sight of what the holiday season is truly about. Of course, as they get older they'll be able to participate more and will certainly understand more what it means to reach out to others. Hopefully it will help to instill in them a sense of gratitude for what they have and compassion for those who go without.

 

How are you showing your gratitude this holiday season?

Sleep Happens

I'm keeping it real for you today and talking about our sleep situation around here. Getting babies to sleep is one of the great mysteries of humanity. There are countless methods, doctors, experts, books, old wives tales, and advice {both solicited and unsolicited} all focused on how to get a baby to sleep. Yet, the answers seem to change every few years on what works best.

In my experience, having gone through it once with our now 3-year old and going through it currently with our 7-month old, there is no one answer. What works for one kid may not work at all for another. Every baby is different, which makes it extremely difficult to apply any blanket solution or method to all of them. For example, Carsen started on a nap schedule by the time she was 4-5 months old. She established it herself and took two almost 2-hour naps every day without a peep until she was about 1 year old when she switched to one long nap. To this day she naps every single day from 1:30-4:30, and would sleep longer if I didn't go wake her. From about 6 months old she woke up once every night around 4/4:30 to nurse and would go back to sleep until 8/8:30. Once she moved into her own room around 1 year, she slept 12 hours every night and still does. Easy!

Reagan is totally different. I have been trying to figure out her nap schedule for months. She rarely sleeps more than 30 minutes at a time during the day. You could set your watch by it. I've tried laying her down earlier, later, swaddled, un-swaddled, her room, our room {where she sleeps at night}, and I've just never found anything that seems to make any difference. Usually when she wakes up at the 30 minute mark I can give her the paci and she'll go back to sleep. Sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for an hour, sometimes not at all. Again, I can't seem to find any pattern or indicator as to what makes for a longer nap vs. shorter nap. Night time is another challenge of its own. For a long time she slept 8 pm - 3:30 am, and then woke up for the day around 6:30-7. Then for about a month she started waking up around 11 pm and every. two. hours. after that for the rest of the night. Brutal! Just recently, thank the Lord, she has gone back to sleeping until a wee morning hour (3-4) and then waking around 6:30 am when I pull her in bed with me to nurse {she sleeps in an Arm's Reach Co-sleeper which we LOVE} and she snoozes for another hour or so.

Like many sleep-deprived parents, I've turned to the Interwebz more than once in a moment of bleary-eyed exhaustion when I thought I just couldn't take it any more. Of course, what I found indicates that I'm doing everything wrong. Here's the list of infractions...

• Nursing her to sleep


• Using a pacifier


• Using a swaddle blanket


• Staying with her until she falls asleep


• Picking her up when she cries {though only when other attempts fail}


• Nursing her in the middle of the night


• Sleeping inches away from her {in separate beds though}

Most of the advice I find suggests that nursing her to sleep will make her dependent on the boob to fall asleep, as will the pacifier and swaddle blanket, and staying with her until she falls asleep. All I'm doing with all of those things is teaching her that she can't possibly  fall asleep without them. Here's my question about that... if I did all the same detrimental things with Carsen, how did she end up being such a champion sleeper?? My answer to that is simple- all those things aren't the problem.

I mean, is there even a problem? Some argue that babies shouldn't be waking all night long. Well, she doesn't. But when she does wake up, I do something about it and we're all back to sleep in less than 10 minutes. Sure, I'd love to know what it feels like to fall asleep at 10 pm and not wake up until 6 or 7 {or 8}. I'm just not willing to put my baby through a traumatic training experience for my own luxury. She falls asleep nursing, so no, I'm not waking her up just to teach her to fall asleep in her bed instead of happily snuggled against her mama. I have zero trouble transferring her into her bed once she's asleep. Per all the "rules," I've tried not swaddling her. Instead of waking up after 30 minutes, she woke up every 6 minutes. I haven't even attempted taking the pacifier away. While she only uses it for bed/nap times, it is very clear to me that its disappearance would not go over well. The pacifier and swaddling both provide comfort and are part of the reason I can easily get her into her bed. We've also tried putting her in her crib in her own room. It was a disaster. She woke up constantly, sometimes the second I'd step my foot back in our room. If you think waking up twice a night is torture, imagine waking up twice every hour and standing bent at 90 degrees over a crib for 20 minutes soothing a crying baby only for her to start all over again less than 30 seconds after you leave the room.

So why bother with all the rules? Like myself, here's another mom who suggests trusting your instincts and listening to your baby instead. My approach to parenting, and the advice I always give new parents, is don't over-think it. I use my own common sense and Reagan's cues to determine when she needs to sleep {and all of her other needs for that matter}. If it's not in a perfect pattern, then her needs must be fluctuating at the time. As I type this, she has taken a fantastic 2.5-hour morning nap and went right out for her afternoon nap. It's been a good day, but I've done nothing any different than any other day. The inconsistency can be kind of annoying, yes, but I have to accept that that's just her. I'm sure that when her system settles into a pattern it will emerge on it's own.

In counseling, we always approach things from a standpoint of impact on daily function. Do you need an intervention if everyone is healthy and functioning even if not "by the book?" If it ain't broke.... I'm just saying. If you can't function on the amount of sleep you get and your baby seems miserable, try something different to get more sleep. But you don't need to force a baby into an expert's mold. Your sleep habits are different from other adults, so why expect that all babies will sleep the same way and for the same amount of time? Do what works best for your baby instead of fighting them for sleep, and sleep will happen.

I'll keep you posted on Reagan's sleep as it develops. In the mean time, what worked for you? Does your baby sleep all night or wake up a few times? Is your baby a napper, or not?

Weekend Humor

Do you ever mess with your kids or spouse to amuse yourself {and others}?? I grew up with a prankster brother and sister, so in our family BatDad is classic humor. My sister first discovered him and shared his antics with us one weekend when we were at my mom's for dinner. As a result, we've all been walking around doing our BatDad impressions to each other {and our kids} ever since.

This is just one of many of his videos. I highly recommend checking the others out, too :)