Thank the Lord for a Strong-Willed Woman!

I’ve known for about four or five years that I was a strong-willed-woman. I’m sure many people who have known me longer would have been able to clue me in on this a lot sooner, but I kept fighting the idea that I am strong-willed because I didn’t like the stereotype that went along with it.

My desire has always been to be one of those “wispy” women. A quiet woman with a “…meek and gentle spirit…” (1 Peter 3:4). And I do believe I possess these qualities as I’m molded by trials, motherhood and my marriage; but I’m embracing the other side of me, the more dominate side of me, that is in truth-a firecracker.

As I’ve come to accept this side of me, I realized (and am still realizing) just how valuable this quality can be.

First of all, I get s+*t done. I am a mover and a shaker when it comes to what most people would consider “too much work” or too much of a challenge. I have returned items, received discounts, negotiated schedules and asked for what I need when it comes to customer service from businesses.

I have the ability to be very organized and find things in a closet, even if it looks like a mess, I usually know exactly what’s in the that mess.

The part that struck me this week so profoundly is that I should thank God for my strong will when it comes to this diet so I can battle my Candida.

Ya’ll have NO IDEA how badly I want a doughnut! Most days it’s craving a piece of toast, oatmeal, crackers with peanut butter on them, or even rice.

I can’t have ANY of this right now and there are highs and lows.

But I haven’t CHEATED ONCE!

I even spit out coconut chips that were not my regular “lightly salted” ones. I grabbed the wrong bag that were salted and “sweetened with agave”.  I could tell the difference right away (since I haven’t eaten sugar in 5 weeks) and down the sink they went!

I haven’t had one piece of cheese, one sip of alcohol, one carb-nothing. And I realized that this is all because of my strong will!

It’s also because of the Lord’s blessing through providing support from my awesome husband, family and the ability to buy insane amounts of organic vegetables and meats every week. But it’s also because I’ve been blessed with a strong will.

So I’m quickly learning to appreciate this quality in myself and in all the other strong-willed people in my life.

God has designed each of us with unique personalities and experiences that shape those personalities. I am so grateful for all the people in my life who are not strong-willed in the same ways I am. I think there are so many benefits in how different personalities complement each other; and how every person has something to offer when it comes to life.

I’ll be posting later on what I’ve actually been eating. Some of the dishes are delicious, and some are getting monotonous. It’s all in the name of health! At this point, my husband and I say to each other, “at any cost.” My health is worth any medical bill, and any grocery bill. 

At any cost.

Homeschool-1

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Homeschooling, Take One!

While I’m waiting patiently, trying to wait patiently, for my body to heal and work out all my Candida-loveliness…I decided to take a moment to talk about my kids because they’re pretty cute.

Malachi (Kai) is four and Audrina (Drina or Drins) will be three in March. We decided to homeschool for a lot of reasons. I can get all passionate and on a soap-box but I won’t do that because I love my friends and respect the fact that every family chooses what is right for them to do as far as school choices. 

I do have to brag on our curriculum however. I started reading to our children when they were babies. When they were still a mushy lump on my lap I would read to them children’s books and include different voices for each character. They would sit and drool and stare wide-eyed at the next page as if they couldn’t believe yet ANOTHER new picture was in front of them.

As a result, my boy LOVES books! I don’t mean just this every once in a while, “hey, will you please read this book to me?” phase, this boy LOVES books!

So when considering homeschooling, it seemed so natural to start with Sonlight Curriculum. You can read more about it here. When I watched some of the  "Sonlighter Stories" for the first time I started crying (yeah, I do that) because it felt like the answer I had been so frantically trying to find. It felt like coming home.

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It’s all literature based. We are currently going through the P3/P4 Core. Every day we get to read stories that we have never read before. We get to have in-depth discussions about how things work, and how things grow and how different people live differently. And the difference between pretend and something real. All the things that get my boy excited, we get to explore.

I love it when people ask me, “How is homeschooling going?” I get to respond, “It’s the best fifteen minutes of our day!” Ha-ha-ha. Not because I want school to get over with quickly. If we need more time-we take it! But because kids are little, squirmy, balls of energy and need to MOVE more than they SIT, School is usually complete in fifteen minutes or so.

The rest of our day is filled with coloring, drawing, play-doh, building forts, and more and more discussions about life, finding the sounds that letters make, and singing…lots of singing in this house.

Here is a quote from a book we read this week titled, Petunia "Now I understand. It was not enough to carry wisdom under my wing. I must put it in my mind and in my heart. And to do that I must learn to read." -Roger Duvoisin

And yes, this is a pic of my children sharing a book we own, with my younger one “reading” to my older one.

My heart is overflowing; my hands will do the work. I know my God is knowing where in the end I’ll perch. Take time to see the path, on which you’re on today. Don’t worry about tomorrow, He’s already there, He’s there always. -C.A. Dixon

Candida Livin'

Candida Livin’

So I’ve been on the Candida diet for six days now (that’s right, I am so desperate to feel better I started Christmas morning with eggs, steamed spinach and a big glass of water!).

I’ve noticed a few things.

First of all, I’m hungry, but not actually body-hungry…head-hungry. I had a dream right before I woke up one morning and I was dreaming about Pip’sDonuts. I could actually taste the Nutella and Sea salt on my lips. I almost started crying last night as I watched a commercial about chocolate chip cookies because I knew I couldn’t eat one. Lol! It seems humorous now, but it was very real in the moment.

I’m not sure how much my cravings have to do with my condition or how much of it is just a “me” thing. I’ve always been a girl who LOVES food…and I’m not picky either. I can eat mac and cheese cold out of the fridge after it was cooked two nights ago, or dine on a tasty wine with fresh grilled veggies and a prime-cut steak.

I have started feeding my children differently too, or at least with more focus. I’ve always been pretty strict about sugar, juices or any “unnecessary” extras in their diet. But I do allow treats and I try to make sure they’re just that…a treat. However I realized I started doing silly things, like putting agave on their buttered toast EVERY morning, hot cocoa has been a regular for the last couple weeks and I’ve allowed cookies after lunch every day for a week or so as well. Part of this could simply be the holidays, or it could be me craving sugar more and more and feeling like it would be comforting for my kids to eat too.

I did the “spit” test in a glass of room-temp water. I had my husband do it the next day with me, just to see if there really was a difference and mine definitely looked different than his!

My body hurts, joints ache, I often have a lot of uncomfortable gas-pains and trips to the toilet are not pleasant. I have experienced cold sweats, hot-flashes, aches and overall “ick” feeling. But I’m determined and if I didn’t feel like I might feel better after this part is over, I wouldn’t have the strength to go on.

The ONLY perk about all of this is that I’m finding foods I love, and I’ve lost almost ten pounds in a week. My body is definitely freaking out as I restrict any sugar, carbs, fruits and some veggies. Detoxing (truly detoxing-and not one of those “I drank a bunch of salt water and sat on the toilet for two days and feel SO much better thanks to my new skinny-jeans!”) is hard! Especially with two little kids running around demanding a lot of your time and attention.

My home-made tomato soup ready to freeze.

I’m pressing on! Finding things to look forward to other than my next meal. And I couldn’t be more thankful for my husband who is very understanding as our refrigerator is taken over by fresh-pureed tomato soup, and very little of what he would prefer to be eating.

One day at a time…

Can you Candida?

Can you Candida?

My brain is clicking and my fingers have been itching to get this all out, so I’m choosing this avenue.

Truth is, I’ve been sick…sick for a long time. For the past ten months I’ve been struggling with nausea on and off. It’s debilitating. I never know when it will strike. I never know if I will wake up and if it will be a “good” day or a “bad” day due to how I’m feeling.

My symptoms are mostly intestinal. I’ve had an endoscopy, colonoscopy, gone on meds, gone off meds, taken Zofran, worn sea-bands, tried essential oils, and am currently working with a Gastroenterologist and a Naturopath Physician.

During the visit to the Naturopath, he discovered my heart most likely has a valve that isn’t closing all the way and causing my heart to beat “musically” (as he put it). Not that I mind feeling musical from the inside out, but this has NOTHING to do with my nausea or GI symptoms, so I get the joy of adding this to my “basket” of physical ailments.

The Naturopath also asked me to fill out a questionnaire that was titled “It May be a Yeast Problem”. The high score for women is 180 and over, my score was 352.

I now may have self-diagnosed that I’m possibly struggling with a yeast-overgrowth and might be battling Candida.

My family and I are exhausted. We need me to be running at full-capacity if possible. I’m so tired of being tired. I’m so tired of not knowing what is going on with my body. I’m putting this out there so others might join me, give advice, pray for me, and maybe I will touch someone’s life who is also struggling with unknown health issues.

So pray with me as we continue to pour our hope, finances and time into searching for some definitive results.

Thanks for your time!   

We're Here

We're Here

An Annual Update

I figured it was time for my annual post. In this moment I have a 2.5 year old pulling on my leg saying, "Mommy, can you pick-me-up-me???" 

It's life.

Some exciting things have happened, my husband started working a job that actually uses his degree...it's pretty amazing. Not because I doubted at any point whether or not this would happen, but because he's one of the few people who graduated from college and is actually using his degree (ahem, myself included).

And, we made the decision to home-school our older child, Kai, for pre-school this year. It blows my mind that we're at that point already, but so far it's been awesome.
We're using Sonlight Curriculum, for those of you who are interested. It's going to work well because I have a kid who can be a mellow-guy, and two kids who love books. And this kid, LOVES books! 

Because of my husband's (relatively new) job, everything this summer has been spontaneous. We only know his schedule six weeks in advance and even then it can change. But it's been a really wonderful summer. 
We have gone camping-once. (In the past we've tried it with our very young children and I think we got pretty scared at the idea of being trapped in the rain, inside a tent, with two crying, dirty kids...again.).  
We do our best to really enjoy Portland, we visit local parks, splash pads, museums (Child-friendly for now...I'm not sure the Art Museum would appreciate a loud "Mom! I have to go poop-poop" in the middle of a gallery). 
Even though the planner side of me wasn't very satisfied this summer, it has felt nice to relax and "see what happens" for one of the first times in my life. 

I'm slowly learning these lessons of striving for balance, even now that I'm in my thirties I'm still experiencing something new. It's nice to know that will never end. Some lessons are sad, some lessons are happy, and all of them hold some element of surprise. 

Yeah, I'm Really Consistent With Blogging...


I had no idea it has been almost a year since I've touched my blog. Time truly has flown by. And things have changed! 
I have a husband who not only survived but graduated nursing school in June. I have two children who currently nap at the same time during the day, every day, and I thank God for my "Mommy Quiet Time".
We welcomed a new little girl into our lives three days a week which we are enjoying her company, and overall the friendship of this family we are delighted to be sharing our lives with weekly. 

The biggest thing on my mind lately is babies. Are we done at two??? That's the huge, resounding, "can't get it out of my head" kind of question lately. The reason this has thrown me for such a loop is because I'm dead-centered, in the middle with my thoughts on this.
 There are pros and cons to either side of trying for a third, or just staying where we're at.

The Pros
We have a boy and a girl. Not everyone's dream, I realize, but it has definitely been my granted wish.

 Four fit nicely into cars, vacation packages and restaurants. It's just the truth. With only four of us, we never have to worry about one kid left out on carnival rides, paying for an extra kid in a hotel room, or "nope, there's no WAY we're all going to fit in THAT car."

Equal "Mommy and Daddy Dates". We can easily switch kids and have kid-dates that are solely focused on them. Our time won't yet again be divided into, "Okay, who's week is it this time?" 

For Sanity's Sake. We (my husband and myself) know a LOT of families who have a large number of children (we're talking 5+ kids). And we all have noticed a consistent trend with MOST of these families...that the mom's tend to be a little on the batty side. 

Now don't get me wrong, some of these moms seemed to have needed most of the kids to leave the nest and they recovered nicely from staring at the wall and drooling into their cold coffee, but some...have not. I'm not sure I want to risk being one of those moms that completely looses herself for decades only to discover it's too hard to remember who she was before and can't recover from that. 

Birth (and really the three months after that when you're in the fog of no sleep). Need I say much more? I experienced a C-section and then a VBAC (look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about). I feel like I've truly experienced all the birth I want to experience.

The Cons

It's strange for our family culture. We both come from families of four and five children. Stopping at two feels so foreign to our culture and to what we always said we wanted pre-marriage and up until this point in our lives.

Who would they be? We will never get to see what a third baby would look like, who they would be, or the joy we would experience in simply delighting from the inside out in how that child is growing and what they discover daily. 

Will it mess up my older children's relationship with each other? My kiddos are about 20 months apart, and although there's more arguing than you think there might be between a 3 and a 1.5 year old, they are truly the best of friends.

Will it put more pressure on my marriage?   Mmmmmm...k...

Three kids are hard to juggle. My husband and I are considering home-schooling our children, at least for a time. We both agree we're both more of a "three plate-spinning" type of person and not someone who is type A enough to spin fifteen plates at a time. Is adding a third kid like adding five more "plates"?

As I've been thinking about all these things over the past couple months (a couple months ago was the only point in time I could even THINK about the possibility of having a third child)...I realized something new today. Whether we end up having a third, or a thirteenth, there's something deeply engraved on my heart and who I am, where I consider a large part of my identity to come from, in being a mom. When that is final, when we say, "Okay, we're done." I am going to need to make room to mourn that "loss". 

Not that there aren't wonderful things ahead. Not that there aren't seeing your children grow and discover and struggle and become these people right in front of you, but that stage of my life...where I grow human beings and complain about how much I hurt during pregnancy and give birth to this precious little baby...will be over. 

Will you join me in making room in your life? Whether it's making room for someone's child coming into your home three days a week, making room for your own new baby who is going to arrive soon, or making room for complex thoughts and feelings, it's good to stretch out and take a moment to breathe. Even if the breathing part hurts a little.