Another interesting book with its dry moments.
It lays out healthy eating habits for runners and other endurance athletes. There is a LOT of technical stuff and dry facts but also an interesting looks into elite athletes diets.
The entire concept is to eat a varied, whole food, healthy diet with minimal amounts of processed food.
This is actually a few days worth of photos and happenings because my husband was gone for a week and my mom was here for a week and it was baby girls birthday party.
My baby slept through the night which was amazing. Toddler woke up at 545am looking for his moose. Got that for him and he dozed again for about an hour.
Baby got up at 615am. Fed her and she played a bit.
Toddler up just after 7am.
1130-1145am ish we sit down for lunch
After lunch is nap time. This goes from 1230ish until 230-330 depending on when the kids wake up.
After nap time we try for a little more school
After school we play outside more until dinner
Family dinner around 530pm then bath time!
The kids get to run around a bit then Ella goes to bed around 7pm, Robert runs around a bit longer than my husband puts him to bed around 8pm.
I clean up the kitchen then read until I go to bed around 10pm……. Though I should go to sleep around 9-930pm.
That is the basic layout of our day.
There’s no such thing as bad weather.
Love, love, loved this book. It was so interesting and eye opening. It’s all about how scandanavian countries put a premium on getting their kids outside versus how we do things here in America. There was a lot of data to back up what was said.
I try and get my kids outside daily but this really showed me that I could do more and how used to being comfortable I am.
I also love that the author gives a book reccomendation at the end of every chapter and I plan on working my way through those.
I didnt find it dry or tedious to read, i enjoyed picking it up each night.
Sunday – off
Monday – off. I needed a 2nd day. I was still really fatigued
Tuesday – full body strength and 3 miles
Wednesday – core
Thursday – 2 miles
Friday – off (exhausted from teething baby)
Saturday – off (running errands for daughters party tomorrow)
Total miles this week – 5. That’s life
My children are not school aged so I am not doing any formal schooling yet. But I am trying to foster a love for learning and put as many learning opportunities in our lives as possible.
I bought a nature study curriculum called exploring nature with children that I am currently dipping in and out of for inspiration. When we are playing in our yard or taking walks I mention the seasons and ask about flower colors and flower bulbs and on and on.
The other curriculum I was introduced to by my friend Stephanie is by a company called Timberdoodle. So far I love, love, love it. They have curriculum for kids from 0 years old to a senior in high school. I don’t know how long I will homschool for but the state of public education in this country is scaring me more and more.
I picked and chose what I liked and wanted to start with. We don’t touch on everything every week but i try and hit 1-2 things a day m-f. The weekends are just bonuses if we manage anything because our schedule is different.
I just love when they understand something, when they learn something new, and when he tells me something I taught him 5 min ago, 5 hours ago or 5 days ago. I love when she actually communicates something to me bub pointing or bringing something to me.
Come on this crazy journey with me!
I am incredibly thankful that is was so,easy for me to get pregnant both times and I dont take that for granted but I do not enjoy pregnancy. Pregnancy tends to hit me really hard.
I think I am right on the cusp of that hyperemesis gravitarium. WITH anti-nausea meds from my dr I still throw up a few times a day. So far in both pregnancies I have been able to keep hydrated enough to not need IV hydration. I dont worry too much about nutrition in the beginning of my pregnancies, I eat whatever I can keep down the best. My first pregnancy that was a lot of fast food, this pregnancy its been a lot of noodle and rice dishes. I also take a prenatal vitamin everyday.
Thank goodness for Gerber raviolis and skillet meals so my little man still had a semi balanced diet on the crazy days when all I could get down where mashed potatoes and top ramen. Also, because he is still young formula is a staple in his diet (my milk dried up around 6 months) so I never had to worry too much about him.
Now I got pregnant in August and I threw up for the first time 3 days before my positive pregnancy test…..yea it started that early. Thankfully it took a few weeks to really gear up but by mid September I was miserable…..and we were drowning in tomatoes and had a fair amount of carrots. I have said it every pregnancy, I dont know how the woman of the past did it. Pregnancy knocks me on my a** and I dont have to work even half as hard as they did to put food on my families table and if I miss the harvest my family wont starve this winter.
That being said, no one wants to waste their harvest. Thankfully my mon tries to come up every 3ish months to visit her grandbaby and boy did she earn her keep in September. She cleaned the house and did our laundry and helped me get the bulk of our carrots cut up so I could dehydrate them easily over a few days. We got lots of cherry tomatoes harvest, cleaned and bagged in the freezer. We also made a big vat of homemade chicken soup to eat for the week after she left…….which i ended up throwing almost all of it out because the smell of the cooked chicken made me puke. Couldnt even give it to my little man, just a hint of the smell had me running to the bathroom lol.
But with all that we have made it through the 1st trimester and we are happily settling into the slower winter months.
We have ALSO given away probably 5 or 6 dz eggs at least because guess what?! Eggs havent sounded good to me either! Lol. Ive managed to use a few here and there but man. I am actually begging these chickens to slow their production down now that its gettings darker. We are finally getting them back in our diet a bit but we are still swimming in eggs hahahahahaha
I need to get garlic in the ground this week or it will probably be too late. I am battling a cold which is zapping my energy so we will see………
I am almost 12 weeks pregnant with baby #2. It is a little earlier than expected but we are thrilled!
We also found out that its a girl!!!
I get really bad morning sickness so that has been hard to deal with while taking care of our little man. However, with the 2nd trimester just around the corner i am starting to have a few easier days here and there. Talk to you soon!!!
This week we are focusing on the Ocean
Monday
I also pointed our blackberries and talked about how they also have seeds that help them grow after they drop to the ground.
Lastly, we read a poem from a book called Songs of the seasons which has about 60 poems going through the seasons of the year.
Tuesday
We had the same basic morning. Finished the oceans documentary and read the ocean life book and the next in our BOB book set.
In the afternoon I tried a simple sensory bin with things around the house……he hated it hahahahahahaha. He was angry that I wouldn’t let him eat the beads.
We also looked at this weeks suggested painting from our exploring nature course.
Wednesday
We started drain the seas on national geographic and read the next BOB book. In the afternoon we practiced our ABCs
Thursday
Same morning routine. Then in the afternoon we went to a new park for a playdate.
We were also supposed to read a Magic Treehouse book about Pirates but Amazon had delayed it indefinitely.
Friday
We watched drain the seas and took 2 walks and practiced counting from 1-10.
Our public library was closed for renovations and was supposed to reopen on Tuesday but due to the increase in the delta varient they did not. They just announced that they will be starting curbside pickup again so i am going to try and get that set up for us to do.
Saturday
We are finishing the week by reading the poem from our exploring nature course.
On a side note i started the movie Finding Nemo and turned it off within 15 min. I HATED it. First the mom and all the siblings die then Nemo gets kidnapped!!! Sorry if that was a spoiler. I know I watched this movie years ago but clearly that was before I was a mother.
So that was our very basic first week. We haven’t perfected this by any means. I’ll bring you along for another week next month.
Hello!
When I first started this blog I asked for help naming it. I believe it was my friend Aimee who came up with Trailing the Blonde. Now I need help coming up with a name for our “farm”. Well I call it a farm, its only a quarter acre right hahahaha but I want the name to be something that represents where we are now but will also be carried with us as we hopefully move to a large plot of land one day.
Comment with your ideas!! And feel free to ask questions about us and our “land” to come up with ideas.
I feel like the past 5 months have gone in leaps and jumps. In the beginning when I had such bad post partum depression and anxiety I looked forward to marking each day off the calendar because it meant I had made it and was one step closer to being done breastfeed and him being more independent and now suddenly I look at the calendar and I haven’t marked a day off in 3 days. The saying the days go slow and the years go fast is 100% true……though even some days go fast.
This last month we moved the little guy to his crib in his room. He had definitely outgrown his bassinet and was waking up all turned around in there and even sideways with his head and feet pushing against the mesh. I had been doing at least one of his naps in his crib everyday so the transition was pretty smooth….for him…..for me it was a little rough. I slept in there on an air mattress for 2 days and could have totally stayed longer. It is so bittersweet to hit these milestones.
We have also just switched him from a swaddle to a sleep sack at night. He is close to rolling over so we started leaving one arm out of the swaddle to ease his transition. He also started getting out of the swaddle and waking himself up and half turning over in his sleep getting stuck so it was time. I ordered a Nested Bean sleep sack for him. It has a little pouch over the chest that has about 3-4oz of weight in it, just enough to mimic mamas hand comforting him. So far that has also gone off without a hitch….🤞🤞🤞🤞 during the day we still use the swaddle for now because we are awake and can keep an eye on him via the camera.
The 4-5 month time frame is a weird time. You are starting to to get a loose schedule but are fluctuating between the old time and new time. We are in between 3 and 4 naps. Some days we have 3 great naps and its all smooth sailing some days we have 4 and its a struggle. Some nights we do the dream feed then make it through till morning and some nights we still wake once or twice but we are getting there and most nights I get at least 7 total hours of sleep so its all good. Of course after I wrote this we had a rough night and 2 nights in a row I got less sleep lol.
We started solids!! Well purees. Right now its mostly about getting him used to eating and trying to feed himself but I can already see that his appetite has increased a bit and its so fun seeing him eat new things. As of right I am using store bought baby food because it takes him 2-3 days to get through 1 jar, but as he starts eating more and more I will start making more of his food. We were doing some at lunch and dinner but he was getting constipated so we only do lunch for now as his body gets used to it. We will try increasing again in a few weeks.
Some friends have offered us their old baby hiking backpack holder thing (that is the official name of it) we need to go pick it up so that we can start doing some hiking with him. I am super excited for that.
We are also in the middle of teething I do believe, so lots of cuddles and crying and waking during the night and extra sleep during the day. Another bittersweet milestone.
Trailing the blonde 