Lessons From the Rocking Chair

 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...

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...