To Live is to Learn

One day during a counseling session, I mentioned my bewilderment from my daughters tantrums and outbursts. He recommended a different way to parent a child based off of their brains development. Being a nurse, I was intrigued. I came home and devoured the book he gave me called The Whole Brain Child  by Daniel Siegel.  The book gives scientific evidence of how a child's brain isn't developed enough to understand anything during a tantrum. It states that the part of the brain responsible for reasonable thought 1. isn't developed and 2. Is in fight or flight during a tantrum and cannot hear or understand anything that is being said. The book recommends affirming a child's feeling or frustration that led to the tantrum. I was skeptical about this but I tried it and what do you know it works.  Something that was helpful for me to understand is that kids are people just like me. They have feelings and they desire to be heard and validated in those feelings. As a p...

So, I've been thinking about this post for a few weeks now. Our little Henry is super fussy and I'm amazed at how a fussy babe can just eat up an entire day and before you realize it, it's three weeks since you blogged. This post will be long and detailed and I believe will need to take place in multiple entries,we'll see. My decision to seek a more gentle and grace based parenting style came after my first revelation of grace through books like TrueFaced with John Lynch and  Grace Walk by Steve McVey. I knew I wanted to do something different than what I had experienced in my own life and what I believe is the commonly accepted and promoted Christian style of parenting, my husbands preference, authoritative. I didn't understand how to do this but I knew I wanted to do something different. I started with Loving Our Kids On Purpose by Danny Silk. It helped to understand some of the concrete day to day ways to implement natural consequences and to put your relation...

Unfortunately, I'm like the rest of America and I'm addicted to sugar! My body craves it! It's so sad. It's something I desperately want to change. Again, unfortunately, with all of the stress in my life, my daughters cancer, my mothers cancer, my mother in law's cancer and a very challenging season in my marriage. Chocolate has been my coping mechanism and it has been for a very long time. This will not be an easy thing in my life to change but I'm hoping I can. I will be realistic about it though. I do believe that if I try to get rid of all sugar in every form I will fail miserably and rebel. So, my game plan is to wean myself off refined sugar. I hope to substitute my organic cane sugar for coconut palm sugar, dates, figs, honey and maple syrup and hopefully, eventually, stevia(I'm not there yet). Stay tuned for how this goes, should be very interesting!

Hey! Look! A blog post when I said I would. It's a miracle! Ha! My journey with real food started shortly before our daughters diagnosis. I was interested in it and very curious about monsanto and simply reading the back of boxes to see what the ingredients were. Once I started to learn what monsanto was and how deep they were in most major corporations and I began reading the ingredients, I was appalled at what I found. Then our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. In no uncertain way, my life was shattered. It took me a while to pick up the pieces and realize that though I didn't cause her cancer, I wasn't helping matters with all the processed foods we were eating. Thus spurred my desire to learn more and to do better now that I understood more. My quest led me to traditional cooking school with Wardee. I learned a ton about soaking and sprouting. I'm not sure why but I glazed over when they would talk about anti-nutrients. Truthfully, in recent months that ha...

So..Drum roll please....I want to reboot this blog. I really have to make it a priority even more so now with three littles. I know that writing is good for me. I know it is a sort of outlet for me that I need ever so badly. I also think if I need to keep up with this blog it will help me be accountable too. I have some goals I'm wanting to achieve and believe that needing to keep up with this little blog will help me do that. The topics that I hope to share with you and thus make me accountable are my real food journey, my sugar addiction and my desire and implementation of positive parenting with my kids. Over the next three days I will make a separate blog post of these three things and why I'd like to blog about it and hopefully make myself accountable. Don't hold your breath but I hope to surprise you! Enough for now, goodnight.

I realize if you follow this blog you have no idea what's going on with our kiddos so here is a little update.... Kid # 1 Maggie girl Ah, my wonderful and challenging 4 year old. That's right Maggie girl is 4! She just celebrated a birthday in January! Maggie continues her treatment for leukemia. She is doing as well as can be expected. I give her chemo every night with her medications and once a month we go to the clinic and she gets IV chemo as well. Her hair has finally begun to really grow and she's so excited that she can have ponies now!  She continues to like puzzles and games. Coloring is hit or miss. Both the kids love play doh and gak. Though due to the mess Mommy doesn't always allow them to play with them. We had a little scare last weekend, she awoke with a fever of 102.5. So off to the closest hospital for her care her and daddy went. Praise God all her blood cultures came back negative but she was positive for RSV and they believe that is w...

Hello all, Ah, yes, I'm still alive and pregnant. My personal life has been emotionally exhausting lately and with being pregnant, nauseous and very busy with our two littles there has been little motivation to update this poor little blog. No excuse, I love blogging I'm just absolutely terrible about being consistent. I have plans and they always fall through so I will not be making any promises this time. But I have something to blog about so here it is.  I've quietly continued my real food journey, it has been hit or miss with being so nauseous and unable to meal plan for the past five months but my research has continued.  In my research I have found some truths and I find myself feeling angry at the lies that are perpetuated about our food and what's done to it before we eat it. Truthfully when I make my family bread, I've started soaking the grains because I knew it was good but had no idea why. I'm baffled by the fact that grains, beans an...