Rolling, rolling, rolling

Allie is 3 months old. Her latest milestone is rolling over from her back to her tummy. I was pretty surprised when I had set her down and walked out of the room and came back and found her on her tummy since she hadn't really seemed to be trying to roll over very often. I didn't think she would do it again for me, but she did. Now pretty much any time you set her down she flips over. But then she gets kind of mad because she can't get back to her back. I've been kind of surprised that she has kept doing it. Selena would always complete a physical milestone a few times and then not do it for a few weeks and then start doing it all the time. I guess Allie is a quick learner.

In the last week she has decided that she absolutely hates the car. Car rides are no fun. I feel like a baby torturer. She has also decided in the last week that 5 and 6am are good times to get up. I'm blaming the rolling over. She rolls over and then gets all mad because she keeps knocking her binky out of her mouth when she moves her head back and forth, and after she does that a few times she figures she might as well wake up. Luckily Selena's been sleeping in so after getting up for an hour we go back to bed and get to sleep in till 8:45. I did catch her sucking her thumb while sleeping last night, so I'm wondering if the thumb will supplant the binky.

Other random tidbits include that she now can ride in the backpack which is more convenient than a front pack. When she gets fussy I can load her up and still be able to get some chores done. She loves the stroller as long as its moving. We've been walking to the farmer's market, Target, the library, and out to eat. She doesn't seem too bothered by the abuse her sister dishes out. She hardly ever poops. I think she goes about 2 weeks between bowel movements. She loves baths, holding people's hands, talking to people, and being naked. She has also started to show interest in toys.

Best Salad Ever

I have always hated salads. I hardly ever would eat one. Probably because most salads have iceberg lettuce and/or light salad dressing. Yuck. About a year ago I went to my sister-in-law's bridal shower where there was a salad bar and it was really, really good. I added a few things to the salad I had there, and now I am eating one every day (and craving it if I don't) for lunch. I admit while it is super tasty it isn't completely filling. I usually have a half a sandwich or some raviolis as well.

Recipe:

• Organic spinach or mixed salad greens. I get these at the farmer's market every Saturday. The mixed salad greens makes interesting salad because you get different tastes every bite. Once there were sprigs of dill in it, and that was so good. Floyd teases me and says I'm eating weeds, but I do think there are some dandelion in the mix so I guess I might be. Buying packaged lettuce at the grocery store is not very tasty, and they probably add some sort of preservative or something. Buying romaine or spinach at the grocery store is a better bet. I have mixed results with the spinach at Fred Meyer. The spinach from the farmer's market was the sweetest spinach I've ever had. This is definitely an instance where the fresher it is, the better it tastes.
  
• Organic unsalted hulled sunflower seeds. I buy these in the bulk section at Fred Meyer.
  
• Regular cottage cheese
  
• Organic canned garbanzo beans
  
• Organic berries - I've tried strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. All are good.
• Random organic veggies. I like green onions and carrots. Sometimes I use cucumber, broccoli, or avocado.
• Dressing - 2 parts olive oil, 1 part balsamic vinegar (I eyeball it), a pinch of sea salt, and grind in some fresh pepper. Mix it in a bowl and sprinkle over the top.

This salad has a ton of anti-oxidants in it to flush out all the yucky stuff in you. The veggies and sunflower seeds are packed with vitamins. The cottage cheese, sunflower seeds, and olive oil give you a nice amount of fat to help you absorb the vitamins. The whole thing is delicious. Make sure you don't leave anything out, because it really isn't as good if you do.

Let me know if you try it and enjoy it.

This is part of my What I am Eating series.

Cereal Bad, Eggs Good

So my New Years resolution this year was to eat less processed food. The number one processed food I ate was cereal. I love cereal and I would eat it every morning for breakfast. But in my effort to fulfill my resolution I decided to switch to eggs and peanut butter toast in the morning. The switch has almost been life changing. I have always had to eat often. If I didn't eat every 2-3 hours I would get seriously grumpy, and feel like I was going to pass out. I always got angry when I went to someone's house around lunch time and there was no food. I didn't understand why most people had no problems delaying or skipping meals, but I did. The symptoms became even worse in the past few years because I've been pregnant or nursing. My grandmother once mentioned that I might be hypoglycemic, but when I looked it up the symptoms had nothing to do with me. But after I stopped eating cereal I read something about carbs causing spikes and drops in blood sugar and cereal being one of the biggest culprits. I read up on hypoglycemia again and found a link about REACTIVE hypoglycemia, and the symptoms of that fit fairly well - fatigue, dizziness, sweaty, light-headedness, irritability, increased appetite, craving sweets, runny nose, usually 2 -3 hours after eating a high carb meal. The treatment is to exercise, eat often, avoid sugars, carbs, alcohol, and caffeine, and increase protein. I have always instinctively did all those things except avoiding the carbs and increasing protein. By changing what I ate for breakfast I was fulfilling the last two things and I have felt a remarkable difference. I still get hungry sometimes, but it isn't as soon, and I don't feel like I am going to die if I don't get food immediately. Sometimes I have wondered if it is in my head, but when we run out of eggs I will eat cereal for breakfast, and a few hours later I feel like I am going to pass out. I am much better off eating whole grain toast with peanut butter or even nothing at all.

I'm not sure if I'm being a hypochondriac. Reactive hypglycemia is hard to diagnose because you have to get your blood sugar taken 2 - 3 hours after you have eaten and are in the middle of a "crash", which is hard to time. It is supposedly pretty rare, but I've talked to many people who seem to have some of the same problems. So I'm not sure if I really have it, but I know that I feel so much better if I act like I do.

Since I've been eating eggs every morning I now have a very discerning palette as to good and bad tasting eggs. For a while I was getting fresh eggs from my egg lady, but she lives about 30 minutes away and I can't make an hour long trip every week with 2 kids to go and get eggs. But they do taste the best. The next best are Naturally Organic eggs (not Naturally Nested though the packages look similar). I get them at Fred Meyer, but I've seen them at QFC as well. They are free range (which is better than cage free),organic, and come from Everett, so they are local. They taste almost as good the eggs from my egg lady and are worth the extra money. Some people worry about the cholesterol in eggs, but your body needs cholesterol. If you don't eat it, then your liver will manufacture it for you, which isn't a good thing (but I can't remember why).

I also get Dave's Killer Bread for my toast. This bread is at Fred Meyer and Costco. It is expensive (but it is a better deal at Costco) but it is so good. Whenever I have guests over and I make them a sandwich they always comment on how good the bread is. It is organic and doesn't have HFCS or hydrogenated oils. It also has lots of seeds and grains, but it isn't dry at all.

For peanut butter I get freshly squished peanut butter at Fred Meyer. There is a machine that chops up your peanuts and pours it into a container for you. It is much better than commercial all natural peanut butter, like Adams, because for the most part the oil doesn't separate, and it is easy to spread. You make it on the spot so you know it is only peanuts.

Nutritional Philosophy

So I haven't been able to find much time to sew. I get a couple hours kid free late at night, but I'm usually tired, and sewing while tired is not a good thing. So, while I haven't been able to make anything crafty lately, I still have been able to make food, since we need to eat. I am not a good cook (I have a strange aversion to following recipes), but I've been getting better, so I'd like to share what I've been eating.

In the past I've never really cared about what I ate. I was a multi-sport athlete through high school and college so I required a lot of calories and I ate whatever was convenient. I mostly ate carbs and not very many vegetables. I took a class in college my senior year called Body Image, and nutrition was discussed a bit and that was pretty much the first time I really ever thought about nutrition. Basically what I took out of the class was that the closer a food looked like its original form, the better it was for you. But since I was an athlete and carbs provide instant energy I still ate very carb heavy. Once Selena was born and I was not anywhere near as active as I used to be and had gained a bit of baby weight I started thinking more about what I ate and reading more about nutrition.

The funny thing about nutrition is that it is very complicated so there are lots of conflicting studies, and advice. The U.S. Dept of Agriculture has changed their recommendations multiple times over the years. There are various diets that recommend low fat, or low carb, or low calorie. There are vegetarians who say meat is unnecessary or vegans who say we don't need to eat anything animal related, or people who think we should eat a lot of meat. Then there are the food producers who spend lots of money trying to market their various concoctions as healthy. It is very hard to know what is really healthy and what is not. I find it funny that if you take a few people who are conscientious about what they eat there will probably be some stuff that one person goes out of their way to eat but that another person absolutely will not touch. Based on my research and readings I try to aim for whole, unprocessed foods. The less processed it is, the better it is for you. I believe in eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full. I think its better to listen to your body than try to count or measure your intake. I believe in making changes to eating habits slowly so your body can get used to it.

Here are my opinions on:

Meat: I am sympathetic to vegetarian and vegan arguments against the unethical treatment of animals as source of food for us, but I do think that meat is important nutritionally for humans. I do not believe that red meat and/or saturated fat is bad for you. Meat provides lots of proteins, amino-acids, and fats that are body requires. You can get most, but not all, from other food sources, but not in the quantities and ratios necessary. However I think the way we raise animals does not provide us with that best nutrition. In general chickens and cows are fed food they are not meant to eat and thus we have less nutritious meat. They should be allowed to graze on green grass and eat what they are meant to eat. When possible I try to get grass fed and/or free range meat, if not available I try to get organic, and/or supplemental hormone free.

Fish: I think fish is a very important, most specifically for the Omega-3 DHA it provides. There are tons of well conducted studies that show eating fish causes vast improvements to your health. I do not eat enough of it and have been taking a fish oil supplement instead, and it causes dramatic and noticeable differences in my mood, and energy levels. If I forget to take it I am a very grumpy person. I would rather eat more fish than use a supplement, but have not got to that point yet. There are large problems with fish being polluted and environmental concerns about overfishing.

Dairy: I think dairy offers a lot nutritionally. I think we should be eating it in its most unprocessed state. The pasteurization and homogenization of milk kills lots of the beneficial bacteria that make milk healthy. I do not drink raw milk, but if I had a convenient source I think I would. I do drink organic whole milk, or eat whole milk yogurt. I try to get pasteurized versus ultra-pasteurized when I can. I eat free range local organic eggs.

Oils and Fats: I think hydrogenated oils are very bad for you and try to avoid anything with hydrogenated oils. (This guy has a great idea to boycott hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup.) I think vegetable oils are ok when not cooked. Cooking vegetable oils causes free radicals to form, so I try to cook with butter instead. I would use lard if I could find it. I try to avoid all soybean oil as well as other processed soy products as the chemical structure of soy is very similar to estrogen and the body sometimes acts as if it is estrogen and I would rather not mess with my hormones. I do not believe that fats make you fat.

Sweeteners: I prefer maple syrup, honey, or plain sugar. I think not eating any sweeteners would probably be the best, but I'm not ready to make that leap. I avoid high fructose corn syrup as well as corn syrup, but I think plain corn syrup is better than HFCS.

Nuts and Seeds: Nuts are shown in many well conducted studies to improve health dramatically. Nuts are packed with vitamins in amounts you can't find in any other foods. Some people avoid them because they are high in fat, but once again I don't think fat is bad, and I think you should eat as many nuts as you are hungry for.

Grains: I think these should be eaten as sparingly as possible due to the fact that they cause spikes in blood sugar which is stressful for your heart. Also many baked goods have aluminum in them and I don't think that is good for you either. I do eat whole grain bread daily. This one is really hard for me, but I try to avoid crackers, chips, cereal and non-whole grain bread.

Fruits and Vegetables: Eat as much as you want of these. Some say to eat less fruit, or not potatoes, but I say eat away. Eat organic, local, fresh and in season for the best nutrition and the best tasting food.

Vitamin Supplements: I haven't really found any research that supports my opinion, but I don't think vitamin supplements should be necessary if you eat a wide variety of whole foods. Apparently it is impossible to get all your daily vitamins without a supplement or eating fortified foods. I think that means the daily recommendations are not correct. Many argue that our food production is so pitiful that we have removed all the nutrients from our food and that is why vitamin supplementation and fortification is needed. I don't know it seems wrong to me. I do however take a fish oil and vitamin D supplement daily. I also take a prenatal vitamin when I feel like I haven't eaten very nutritious.

Favorite Toddler Books for the Month

She'll be Coming Around the Mountain - Level 1 Bank Street Ready-To-Read - Cute book with new verses to the song, and fun pictures.
Doing the Garden - Sarah Garland's books are really simple and just tell a short story of basic things moms and kids do. The illustrations are great and add to the story. It is very easy for us to relate to the mom, her two kids, and the dog.
Abiyoyo - When my mom taught preschool, her preschoolers loved it. My sister recently taught at a daycare/preschool and the kids loved it there too. Selena of course loves it as well.
The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig - Cute twist on the three little pigs.

27 months

Selena is still being a handful. She is lucky she is so dang cute. Her toddler logic is really funny. For instance:

• She told me she is a little adult. I told her that she wasn't an adult she was a kid. She said kids are little adults and big people are big adults.
  
• She was playing dress up and she put on a princess costume and then told me that she wasn't a human anymore she was a princess.
• I told her that she was too cute and she said that she was a big girl she wasn't cute anymore she was lovely.
• She likes to say, "And that's the truth."
• We were out at a restaurant and she needed to go potty and she says, "This is a nice potty"
• She likes to attempt to look under the bathroom stalls and ask what people are doing. This has been especially embarrassing for Floyd.
• I wasn't feeling well and she didn't want to go play with Floyd so I told her that she should go down and pick up her toys, and she said, "I know. (and this is always said with really cute emphasis) I'll make you some toast so that you'll feel better." So I told her that was a good idea. So she runs out of the room saying, "I'm going to make toast, not go pick up my toys."
  

If I had wrote this post four or five days ago I would have said potty training was going really well. We were consistently down to about 1 accident a day and that was usually during nap time when she was wearing a pair of thick undies with a diaper cover so no mess, 100% poop in the potty, and we even had some days with no accidents. It seemed like if we reminded her, and put her on the potty often we had good success. We went to the zoo and she wore regular underwear with no waterproof cover and was good the whole entire day. But the last few days have not been so great, lots of pee accidents and even some poop ones. She is even having accidents 5 minutes after we put her on the potty. I don't know. It is really frustrating because I think she is doing it on purpose. She says she doesn't want to wear diapers, and she doesn't want to go on the potty. Grrr.

She really seems to enjoy being obstinate and doing exactly the opposite of what you ask. She thinks time-outs are fun, "Am I done yet? Am I done yet". She has started hitting a bit. She will only take a nap about two or three times a week, but at least now she is sleeping longer at night so she is at least getting closer to the number of hours she needs to sleep in order to be a more pleasant person. But sometimes she'll crash at inconvenient times. I'm trying to institute having quiet time in her room, but am having a hard time keeping her in there. She keeps coming out and asking "is it time yet?" Basically she is a lot harder to parent and I'm wondering what happened. It seems pretty sudden. Well I guess its probably the fact that Allie is here. She does love Allie, but I guess it is hard sharing her parents.

She absolutely loves the garlic mozzarella raviolis from Costco. Its funny because she is kind of a picky eater, and doesn't usually like her food to be mixed, but she loves the raviolis. She also ate chicken the other day for the first time in a year. We were pretty surprised. We always offer her everything we are eating, but there are some things we really don't think she'll actually eat and chicken is one of them. When she was a baby she would eat anything, but she has become more picky. Another thing she really likes is ketchup. The other day I asked her if we should make homemade french fries and she got really excited and her eyes got all big and she kind of stuttered and said, "yes, yes, yes, and with ketchup?" and then proceeded to run into the kitchen and get the ketchup out of the fridge and go on about how she would help me make french fries with ketchup.

There really isn't anything she is into at the moment. I keep trying to find something, but I've kind of run out of ideas. We've done drawing, play-dough, puzzles, cutting, painting, blocks, alphabet, numbers, shapes. It seems like books and TV (ugh) are the only thing that consistently hold her interest. She actually seems to trying to figure out how to read. We sometimes do the clips on Starfall's website, when I want to be on the computer and she wants to be entertained. So she knows the sounds of some letters and pretends, sometimes kind of successfully, to sound out words. She's a precocious little one.

2 Months Old

Here is an update on our little Allie-gator.

• She weighed 10lbs 1 oz last week.
  
• We found a binky she likes.
• She's been working on her hand control and is good at knocking the binky out of her mouth, and she tries really hard to nudge it back in.
• She coos a lot and is good at saying "goo."
• She's smiley.
• Loves to be naked.
• Loves baths.
• Loves her family.
• She will fall asleep in the swing sometimes, but still prefers to be put in the baby carrier, and walked up and downstairs to fall asleep. For one or two naps a day she will let you set her down and she'll stay asleep for a while.
• She does not like to be in the baby carrier while awake. Which is kind of inconvenient.
  
• Has joined the rest of the family and joined the go-to-bed late club. Apparently our kids haven't gotten the memo that kids go to bed early.
• She tends to be fussy in the evening.
• She likes holding my hand while she falls asleep.
  
• She has slept through the night a few times.
  
• She does not like the library. She cries every time we go.
• She is very gassy. She often tricks us into thinking she has a dirty diaper and thinks its hilarious.
• She is very wiggly.
• She snorts a lot when she cries.
  
• She does pretty good in the car as long as she has a clean diaper and isn't hungry.
• She had some bad baby acne, but it is gone now.
  
• She has pretty bad cradle cap. I scrubbed her head for 30 minutes and got rid of most of it, and a couple days later it came back.
  
• We love her and love seeing how she grows.
  

Toddler Book Recommendations

Favorite books we've read in the last month.

The Terrific Twos

So I was really trying to be optimistic about the behavior of my two year old, but despite my best efforts Selena has been a bit more difficult. I feel like such a smart parent when I am able to trick her into doing what I want, but it has been harder to do lately. I'm not sure if its the stage she is in, or if its just that I'm tired and trying to do too many things at once. But sometimes I just want her to do what I ask without having to think about how to phrase the request in a way that will conform to her two-year-old whims. The biggest problem, again, is the running away. She had been doing really well and we had made multiple library visits and did not have any running away, but since Allie has arrived she once again is taking off. It is really frustrating.

Sleep has also been a problem, or actually is the root of a lot of her behavior challenges. She has always been difficult to get to sleep, and that hasn't gotten any worse but she has been waking up early and refusing naps, or only taking a short one. Occasionally refusing naps isn't new either, but she usually would only do that when she had slept in that day. But now she is waking up early and refusing a nap and trying to live off of 8 - 10 hours of sleep a day, which is not enough for her and she is very whiny and obstinate on those days. And since she is so hard to get to go to sleep I really don't know what to do when she wakes up early. Her behavior is so much better the days she does gets enough sleep. However I am partly to blame because we did try a week of skipping naps because then she would go to bed earlier and faster. My hope was that she would still wake up at the same time and thus get the same number of hours of sleep for the day, but she foiled my plans by getting up early and being super grumpy by the end of the day. So now we're back to naps and I've been trying to stay consistent on nap and bed times but she is so resistant to a schedule.

On a positive note potty training is going pretty well. She had three days in a row where she had hardly any accidents and I was tentatively excited that we were done with diapers, but then the next day she had a lot of accidents. Since then we've had some really good days and some not so good days. I'm hoping that she'll have it all worked out in a month. Once again sleep has been affecting the potty training. On the days where she hasn't slept she doesn't do well making it to the potty. But we've been keeping her in undies pretty much all the time except for at night. We've been using Gerber training pants with a pull on diaper cover over them when we go out or for naps. She's had some accidents when we go to the neighborhood park, but hasn't had any when we are in a public place.

She has learned to open doors which is a pretty inconvenient milestone. I am blaming this on part of the sleep problem. I think she wakes up during her nap and when normally she might whine a bit and go back to sleep, now she sees the doorknob and decides to leave her bedroom. She has also managed to let Dyna out in the front yard.

After doing really well with her new sister, she went through a couple weeks of pretty strong jealously. She would tell me not to feed Allie, to put her down, that she wanted to snuggle mom without Allie, etc, etc. But she seems to be doing a little better now and when she is in a good mood she is very helpful in trying to entertain Allie to keep her from crying. She does this by dancing, reading her a book, giving her toys, or a binky. It is really cute. However she does have a very inconvenient desire to wake Allie every time she is sleeping. I try to explain to her that if Allie is sleeping then I can play with her more easily, but if she wakes Allie up then I'm going to have to pick Allie up and won't be able to play with her, but she doesn't seem to get it.

She is addicted to swings. A nice neighbor friend gave me a key to the private park just outside our cul-de-sac so we've been making daily trips to the park to swing on the swing. This has been very nice. I've always been so annoyed that we couldn't visit the park and that it was very rude to lock people out of it. We also made a trip to a spray park, but Selena only went in the water for about 5 minutes then headed off to the playground to swing on the swings for an hour.

Drawing is cool again. She is back to making her stick people and she draws pictures for everyone in the family. She has little stories for the pictures. It is really cute.

We didn't do much for the 4th of July. We went over to some friends for a bbq. We got a kids pack of fireworks and set them off for Selena. She liked the smoke bombs, but then hid in the car for the rest of them.

6 weeks postpartum

I am six weeks postpartum. I think medically I'm not considered postpartum anymore, but I just read some book that said if you are still changing diapers and waking up in the middle of the night you are postpartum. So I was still postpartum from Selena and 9 months pregnant. :)

Unfortunately I still don't feel completely recovered. For me the c-section was a much harder recovery than my first daughter's birth, but considering how big of a surgery it is, it is amazing how quickly I have bounced back. I know lots of women have a lot of pain as a result, and require medications, but I was very fortunate and never experienced any pain. I took the prescribed ibuprofen for a week, but never needed the Percocet. The hospital gave me a support belt to wear and I am so glad they did and I highly recommend it, especially if you are like me and don't like taking medications. I wore it for about 5 weeks. If I took it off I did get a bit uncomfortable but when I put it back on I felt better. I think it really helped me be comfortable and aided in the healing process.

My scar is still a bit raised but it is getting flatter. If I poke about 2 inches around the scar it kind of feels bruised. If I poke closer to the scar it is numb. I've heard that it can take years to get full feeling back, so that is kind of weird.

I started running 5 weeks after Selena was born. I think I'm going to try at 8 weeks this time, but am not sure how it will go. I still feel some tugging on my scar if I over exert myself. I'm hoping that in a couple weeks that will go away. I'll probably wear the support belt. But I also feel that my stabilizing muscles in my abs, hips, and knees are weaker than they were after my first so I'm kind of worried about injuries. I was in much better shape during my first pregnancy than I was with this one. I'm going to have to take it pretty slow.

Emotionally it has been hard having two, and when two children are crying the postpartum hormones don't help. I've had a few meltdowns. My midwife is a big advocate of using magical fish oil to help regulate hormones and mood and I have noticed that the breakdowns I have had are on days that I have forgotten to take my fish oil for a couple days. So if I start feeling on the edge I start taking the fish oil and it does seem to help.