Skip to main content

Posts

What I Learned after Making my First "Guide"

 Let's learn something shall we... Many of us have opted in with our names and emails to get a free guide from someone. Usually, I don't focus too much on how much effort the original creator must have put into their guide.  That viewpoint has changed. Recently, I created a free recipe guide with 5 different recipes in it. It honestly took me way longer than I thought it would.  That is the 1st thing that I learned: Time Some of the things that contributed to it taking a little bit longer were available time to dedicate to making it. Most of the time that I had to dedicate to it was after my children went to bed. Even then, it was only about an hour at most that I had. Some nights I spent a little longer than an hour, but in order to show up as the best version of myself for my family, sleep was an important thing.  Another aspect was the aspect of deciding what I wanted to include completely. I felt that it was important to do more than just give the recipes. I felt...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Making Popular Grocery Store Products at Home

A little while ago, after my youngest turned 6 months and we are started to try to give him things like yogurt, ice cream, products that had a milk base essentially, he really struggled with.  I already had a difficult time with dairy, however, the things I would normally swap with for things like granola bars, weren't exactly an easy snack for him to consume. Most of the baby products on the market like the "teether wheels" or even some of the "puff" products unfortunately, in some fashion were riddled with dairy (usually whey).  This continued for him up till he was about 18mths of age. No matter what I did, it seemed like the items he could have from the store were a little difficult to eat at times but I wanted more for him than just fruits and veggies.  I set out to see if there was a recipe swap for granola bars that I could make him that would be tasty, simple to eat, and be free of dairy.  I found one and ran with it.  Fast forward to now and he has outg...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kids don't need perfection from you, they just need your presence.

Let's learn something shall we... Here is what I am learning lately that maybe you've already learned as a parent but frankly, I need constant reminders.  Are you ready for it? Kids don't need perfection from you, they just need your presence.  I think the difficulty of parenting, especially in the current generation, is that we have to correct everything that we grew up with. Our parents did the best they could with the information they had and we, in my generation (the millennial generation), feel the need to be better.  I think that we have people that fall on both ends of the spectrum too. Some that are too left extreme that they aren't really a parent to their children but rather a friend. Think Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls. Those who are too right extreme that follow the principle of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." They choose to parent exactly how they were parented, refusing to recognize that their might be a better way to do it.  Final...
Post a Comment
Read more

Digging Deep

 Let's learn something shall we... Often times, when people think of therapy, they think of digging down deep into those crevices that many of us know are necessary for us to explore, but none of us really want to explore because we know there is a chance it's going to hurt, bad.  I think we're often afraid of the truth of our flaws, fears, insecurities, etc. and that if we bring them to light, well, now we have to deal with them.  When I attended therapy in college, my therapist did some deep digging with me and some big personal family struggles were brought to light for me. Stuff that I really didn't want to dig into, as we did though, I found that I was able to make peace with a lot of them.  Some of those I am still working on, but there is one area that I never really dove into. Until this last therapy session that I had.  My therapist gave me an assignment to write a letter. For context, the concept I am currently working on in therapy is breaking down wh...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Kids Are Asleep, Let's Go!

 Let's learn something shall we... So, it has been a long minute since I have put up a post of any kind really. Between family visiting, being busy, & in all honesty, & just not really feeling like putting up an effort, here we are.  On my last post, I talked about utilizing this space here as a "journal" of sorts as I followed through with counseling directions to really navigate the potential "why's" in why I was getting frustrated with my kiddos.  Obviously, I did very poorly at keeping a record on here. However, I did keep both a mental & external journal on the matter & here is what I have understood so far.  Burn out... I find that probably 9x out of 10 the reason that I find myself in annoyance or effecting to put distance between myself & the kiddos is because I am burnt out from them. When upon rising & going to bed the main prerogative is them, it gets a little mundane & often leaves me feeling claustrophobic towards the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Let's Taco 'Bout It

Let's learn something shall we... This post is going to be short & sweet, but hopefully, you as the reader will find a nugget of helpfulness within my words.  I believe & research has shown that the concepts of how to deal with life, i.e. our emotions, difficult situations, etc. we learn in our youth.  We learn it from our parents, our friends, those within our sphere on influence play a crucial role at teaching us, directly & indirectly, how to deal with the hard, the joyful, the easy, the confusing, the painful... We learn all of that from those around us. Our brain takes it in, stores it (i.e. we develop schema's), & when situations come up, recalls those lessons & that is how in turn, we learn to interpret our situations as adults.  So, what do you do when you want to change how you routinely respond to something?  For the record, I'm still learning this too & if I can be perfectly honest, while I know what science says, & I could spit...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Waiting Place

 Let's learn something shall we... I'm going to start off with a disclaimer that what I'm about to talk about, I don't necessarily have a prominent solution for. Why? Well I'm still trying to figure it out myself. "The Waiting Place." In Dr. Seuss's acclaimed children's book, "Oh, The Places You'll Go," he discusses a place called "the waiting place".  He describes initially, how we can end up in such a place. "You can get so confused that you'll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace & grind on for miles across weirdish wild space headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place..." He follows by describing "The Waiting Place," as a place where "everyone is just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, [...] waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite, or waiting around for Friday night, [...] or a pot to boil, or a Bette...
Post a Comment
Read more