Our First Real Chapter Book

Henry found a random chapter book in a Little Free Library, which was geared toward middle schoolers who are trying to overcome the habit of procrastination. Henry insisted that we read the whole thing.

After that, I decided to see if he was interested in reading another chapter book. We picked up Little House in the Big Woods from the library and loved reading it! I think we'll take a break and read some picture books (they are good for building background knowledge) but after that we might pick up the second book in the series!

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Cookbook Recommendation

I'm not one to buy books these days. The library is my friend. I love how it's free and it keeps clutter from piling up in my home. 

But I had to make an exception for this book. I know it seems weird to buy a cookbook in the age of Pinterest, but I've been searching high and low for clean recipes on the internet, and I'm not having much luck with finding things that appeal to me. 

The book Everyday Detox is awesome! I learned how to make a pizza crust out of cauliflower (the recipe involves thawing frozen cauliflower) and an easy and delicious frittata. I'm eager to try the Southwestern sweet potatoes, banana pancakes, salt and vinegar Brussels sprouts, and more. If I weren't a vegetarian, I would enjoy the maple-glazed salmon and the fish tacos (with a lettuce tortilla).  

Meanwhile I'm reading Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food. It's a personal narrative about eating only whole foods for an entire year. It's inspiring me to look more closely at the foods we eat as a family. I'm considering signing up for a local CSA to support neighborhood agriculture and keep money in our community. 

I'm also planning to make sure the boys' breakfasts and lunches are as whole and healthy as possible. Matt is in charge of breakfast, so the boys get a lot of instant oatmeal (with an unnecessary amount of sugar already in the packages). My colleague recommend the website, 100 Days of Real Food, and I'm eager to check it out!

Hooray for my year of "Health & Wellness!"

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21-Day Cleanse

I'm almost done! Three more days and I will have officially completed a 21-day cleanse. My mom did it, too! 

The regimen for the past 21 days has been a smoothie for breakfast, a healthy lunch (I typically eat something like brown rice with roasted vegetables and chickpeas), and a dairy-free soup for dinner. 

On the good side: I feel great. I've lost about eight pounds. I sleep better. I don't have weird shifts in my energy levels. I can exercise easily (run three miles or do yoga for an hour). I think I have broken my addition to sugar.

On the bad side: I miss food! I especially miss cheese and bread. Big time. I thought I would miss desserts the most, but I don't. It's the dairy and the carbs! And I never want to touch a bowl of soup again. 

When the cleanse ends, I'm not going to go crazy and start stuffing my face. I'm going to ease into a life of moderation. I'm going to work really hard to primarily eat for sustenance, and then for joy, and rarely to fill an emotional need. I'm going to continue to look for recipes with cleaner, more whole ingredients and reduce my intake in general (especially when we go out to dinner on Friday and Saturday night).

Mustering up the motivation to resist bread, quesadillas, queso, chips, macaroni and cheese, pizza--etc.--for 21 days was so, so hard! It helped when I would project myself into the future (specifically to the end of the cleanse) and to feel what it would feel like to get to the end. I knew I would feel proud if I got to the end.  

I don't necessarily recommend the process I went through, although it was a good jump start to a healthy new year. My mom and I have had a great time talking every day (sometimes several times a day) about how it has been going for us. I look forward to continuing to support her for the rest of the year as she strives to achieve her weight loss goal by Christmas 2016.

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Woodworking with a 4 Year-Old

One of the things I love most about Montessori is the idea that children should do real work that involves real risk. For example, toddlers should be taught how to use knives, preschoolers should learn how to use needles, and elementary children should learn how to light matches. (You can read all about the philosophy here.)

The process of working with real tools that carry real risk conveys to children that they are capable of being careful. When they are trusted to be careful, they, in turn, learn to be careful. They also build their self-esteem and their sense of worth by receiving real trust and real respect from the adults around them. Henry once said, "You trust me to be careful, right Mama?"

Henry and Tate both use hammers to practice hammering nails into logs, but it was fun to watch Henry actually build something. We used the pieces from this woodworking kit (received as a Christmas present) to build a toy train. I was a little disappointed that most of the work was gluing the pieces together, but there was still a little hammering for reinforcement. 

I'm looking forward to continuing to create these kinds of hands-on experiences for Henry and Tate as they get older and older.

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Family Goal #1: Road Trip to Oklahoma!

I've been Facebook friends with a blog reader for years, and when I asked her for her address so I could send her a holiday card, she invited us to visit her in Oklahoma any time. I plugged their address into google maps and realized they are only 6.5 hours away. Totally a doable road trip! 

We added it to our list of Family goals for 2016. Since my trick for following through with my goals is to clearly articulate when, where, and how I'm going to follow-through on the goal, I got to work with the planning. I realized that it made the most sense to take the road trip over a three-day weekend. There aren't a ton of three-day weekends during the year. I could only think of MLK, President's Day, and Labor Day. Oh, and Memorial Day but that's always a super-busy time of year. 

Are there more I'm not thinking about? Oh, sometimes the 4th of July is a three-day weekend, but our summer is already packed.  

Anyway, we messaged back and forth and realized that MLK weekend would actually work for both of us. And so we started planning it! I created a detailed schedule (yes, I am a nerd, but I also feel like this kind of planning is necessary for helping me be able to spontaneous in a way that also maintains my sanity). Once the plan was in place, it was full steam ahead!

I bought a bunch of snacks (like Pirate's Booty and Annie's snack mix) and packed them into small ziplock baggies. These bags kept the boys pretty busy. Matt also bought a Lego kit at the last minute, and it kept the boys busy for HOURS. I brought the tops from two storage boxes, so each boy would have a flat surface upon which to build Legos. We also checked out two audio books from the library: Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Double Fudge. Additionally, we listened to some Sparkle Stories.

On the first day, we ate breakfast and lunch in the car, in order to reduce the number of stops we had to make. We had a gallon jug of water that we used to refill our water bottles. We did make an unexpected stop once we crossed the Texas/Oklahoma border and it started snowing! 

My colleagues thought I was weird for planning a road trip to visit someone I had never met, but I knew that Anna and I would be kindred spirits. I knew she would be someone awesome to meet from the minute I read her guest post on 2000 Dollar Wedding almost four years ago.

And Anna did not disappoint! It was so great to connect with another family trying to balance it all: work, children, social justice. We had a lovely afternoon, evening, morning, and early afternoon together before it was time to make our way back to Texas.

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I'll Lose Money If I Don't Stick to My New Year's Resolutions

Phew! At the time of writing this, I am eight days into my cleanse and I'm feeling great. I've been spending this time reflecting on my intentions for the year and trying to figure out how to make them actually come to fruition. This quote from The Art of Simple really resonated with me:

Quite honestly, I’m kinda on the fence about making resolutions on January 1—I appreciate the sentiment, but I know how seldom those resolutions are actually resolved. Sometimes, they merely serve as a catalyst for frustration when January 7 rolls along, and you’re already back to your Dr. Pepper-drinking, staying-up-too-late ways.
But I am in to: fresh starts, and I relish the bright-eyed, clean-feeling-in-the-air about a new year. I’ll take any excuse to spend time mulling over thoughts with a mug in one hand and a pen in the other.

I want to go on a personal retreat this year (like I did last year, but I won't host it myself this time around), and July is a great time for me to step back for serious reflection again. It aligns with the academic year for me. I also want to push myself to reflect once a month (via a blog post) so that I am checking in with myself frequently (and even changing my goals if they no longer feel like the direction I want to head). 

I am serious about my year of "Health & Wellness." I have a clear, step-by-step plan for how to meet all my goals, and I have all the systems in place to make it happen. As I was getting everything set up, I googled, "Best fitness apps" and got reacquainted with the Pact app. I heard about it years ago but never did anything with it. 

Pact is amazing! It allows me to create and track my goals in the app. I said that I am going to run two times a week (I have to wear my phone in a belt, so that the app can verify my movement) and that I am going to do yoga once a week (I have to "check-in" on my phone when I get to the YMCA and my GPS will verify that I stay for at least 30 minutes). If I complete my goals, I earn money! If I don't achieve my goals, I have to spend money. I decided to put $5/workout on the line. We are on a tight budget this year, so I definitely don't want to waste money by not exercising! 

When I actually made a financial commitment in the app (literally linking it to my PayPal account), it was like I entered a whole new level of seriousness about my goals. I realized, "I'm actually going to do this! I'm really going to exercise at least three times a week." It sucks that I needed the threat of a punishment to elevate myself to that level of seriousness, but I'm fine with it. I don't really have a problem with extrinsic motivation systems if people set them up for themselves. 

Even though my year will be focused on "Health & Wellness," I want to focus on it in a way that enables me to set up the habits and patterns that I want to maintain for ever after. I don't want to have some crazy intense fitness year and then go back to be a couch potato in 2017. I want to use this year to focus on my energy on figuring out what will work for me for the long term. 

I'm so excited for a [knock-on-wood] lifetime of health and wellness!

The picture is from our trip to Florida to visit family. The rental company let us choose any car parked in the "mid-size" aisle, so the boys gravitated toward this truck. I loved watching Henry give Tate a boost into the back. I feel like this app is going to give me the boost I need to stick to my goals!

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5-Minute Home Improvement

You know you're a busy, full-time working, full-time mothering blogger when you write about something as simple as cutting a piece off your outdoor bushes and sticking it in a vase with water. 

But sometimes it's the little things! 

This easy, peasy strategy is an awesome way to add real greenery to a space without having to sustain a live houseplant. Even the darkest areas of a home can sustain this kind of green! 

And, sometimes, those of us who are busy full-time working and full-time mothering need some quick and easy solutions!

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