Picture Post

I haven't blogged much lately - everytime I get on the computer or anything, Natalia decides to "help" by deleting everything I've written. So I'm just doing pictures here, so enjoy!

Natalia with a balloon


We made vegan rice krispie treats.


100th Day of School lunch :).


Leilani icing I you cookies


finger painting!




I helped Natalia because she just mostly wanted to try to eat the paint


Natalia mostly just covered herself in paint :)


She chose her outfit the other day.

Yoga, Veganized Comfort Food, and Short Walks

These new yoga books are fantastic. Leilani has done two pages (a is for airplane and b is for butterfly). She does not want to do one pose a week, she wants to do a new one every day! And Natalia's been having a blast with Itsy Bitsy Yoga - yoga for newborn-24 months. She's loving the fun playtime it brings and the stretches make her feel good. I can tell, because she keeps doing them and has the happiest, most content little look on her face *smiles*. Those books were some of the best things I could have bought.

Now, on to comfort foods. I've been wanting chocolate (twix, thin mints, reese's, mac 'n cheese, cheesy potato soup, etc). So, I've been veganizing them. I found a homemade twix recipe that I'm going to work on veganizing either later this week or next week. I discovered how to make the most amazing baked mac 'n cheese, I made thin mints today (and they're amazing) and I'm going to be making the potato soup for dinner today. The bread is in the oven and the pot is in the dishwasher. I'm beyond excited. Tomorrow I'll let you know how it turned out :)

Natalia and I have been taking short (20 minute) walks around the neighborhood. Natalia LOVES sitting in the stroller (we're to the point that the Moby isn't really working anymore, she's kind of outgrown it, so I'm going to have to get the Onya carrier). Meanwhile, she's enjoying the stroller, being outdoors, seeing the trees and birds, feeling the sunlight. I'm enjoying walking around and getting some exercise, even if it's just a few minutes here and there.

So, basically, we've been having a pretty good week, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it - more walks, yoga and yummy foods.

The First of February

So today, to help me along in my no-yell challenge, I made this:

I went to Wal-Mart and found a frame on clearance, got some orange paint, glitter and ribbon. I painted the frame, glittered it up, made a bow and glued it on. Then I put some pink colored scrapbook paper and used the glass as a dry erase board and wrote "Raise your words, not voice. - It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."

After Natalia woke up, I put her in the stroller and we went for a little walk around the neighborhood. Only about twenty minutes, but it felt great and Natalia LOVED it. My new mantra is "even a small workout is better than no workout." Sometimes I feel kind of like "why should I work out, I can only do it for a few minutes" so now, I'm just gonna do those few minutes. I also bought a baby yoga book for Natalia and a Yoga ABC coloring book for Leilani - we'll do a new move each week and she'll get to color it in, too. I'm really excited. I've been wanting to teach Leilani yoga for a while and now I think I've found a good way to do it.

I had to go get a few things for Super Bowl Sunday...we'll be going over to some friends' house and obviously we'll need some vegan options. I got some vegan burger crumbles, daiya cheddar, salsa and tofu (to make my own vegan sour cream), and I'm going to try to make a dip my brother used to make all the time. It was fantastic and I can't wait to vegan-ize it. I'm also going to try veganizing one of my favorite soups sometime next week - cheesy bacon potato soup. I made a soft cashew cheese I'm going to use in place of the cream cheese, I have smoky tempeh crumbles (in place of the bacon), and soy milk powder to make the heavy cream. Anyway, back to Super Bowl Sunday - I'm also going to make chocolate chip cookie doozers. I'm pretty excited. Tomorrow, Leilani and I will be baking up a storm :).

Tonight we made one of Leilani's favorites - tacos! I use TVP (instead of buying veggie crumbles, it's so much cheaper!) and we used crunchy shells since Leilani specifically requested them. Also, Leilani's school is doing a Read-A-Thon and Leilani needs sponsors! We're going to read 20 minutes a day for the whole month of February (since, ya know, we don't ALREADY do that - averaged out, anyway) for a total of 560 minutes for the month. She's going to read at least five of those minutes, then I'll read the remaining 15 or less. Hopefully, by the end of the month, she'll be reading most of it. That's my personal goal, anyway.

Tomorrow, it's on to baking!

The One-Month No Yell Challange

I don't know when, or even how, but somewhere along the line I turned in to a yeller. Leilani does NOT like bedtime, so puts up a huge fit. I yell. Leilani doesn't want to brush her teeth. I yell. Leilani takes toys away from Natalia. I yell. Leilani plays instead of eating. I yell.

I think you've got the picture. I yell. A lot. I'm not proud of it and I want to change. So I'm issuing myself a month long challenge. For the whole month of February, I'm going to try not to yell. And if I do, I'll apologize and move forward. I'm also going to reward myself if - no, when - I make it. I'm going to buy myself this

from babycakes NYC to make the Fat Pants Cake - brownie, covered with vanilla frosting, then crumbled cookies. Oh yeah...that ought to keep me on track, if nothing else will.

Although, really, I think the improvement in our relationship will be good. I'm tired of yelling. I'm tired of arguing. I'm tired of it all. I need a change and I'm hopeful that this will help. It's hard putting this out online, but I'm hoping that the transparency and accountability will help me. I'm hoping that all of you, my readers, will help me. Just knowing that you're reading this is making me feel more accountable already.

I'm also going to buy the materials to make this today, so I can use it as a bit of inspiration:

I got the idea for both the no-yell challenge and the framed saying above from The Orange Rhino.

Monthly Check-In: January

Number of days I did each resolution:

Workouts: 15

Writing: 21

Color in Food: 31

Raw Foods: 31

I know I missed quite a few days of writing, but we had some major computer problems and I couldn't get the computer to do anything but turn on. The mouse pad didn't work, it took a good half hour for everything on the desktop to pull up, then after you clicked on whatever you wanted, it took another half hour for that to pull up, too. Then it didn't even work. So I printed off the pages I had and now I'm writing long hand in a notebook. We've been having lots of color in all our foods, and usually a smoothie every day (hence the raw foods *grin*).

I know I haven't blogged much, well, at all, this month, so a quick re-cap is in order - Natalia can now climb up all the stairs, she's standing for a good 10+ seconds, loves to eat, has two teeth, crawls like it's going out of style and keeps us on our toes. Leilani is reading amazingly well, is spelling lots of things phonetically (I like mome [mommy]), drawing amazing pictures (my personal favorite is of Rapunzel locked in the tower with the bad guy who locked her there, and Leilani's there with a ladder to do the rescuing instead of waiting around for a prince to come do it for her - I LOVE that!), and constantly beggin for hot lunch at school. Obviously, hot lunch isn't an option, not only does it cost about two and a half dollars a day (!), but it uses animal products. Fortunately, the school sends home the months menu at the beginning of the month, so I've started trying to make her lunch be something similar to what is being served. So far, she's loving it.

Jeremy's mom came in for a week. Leilani loved having grandma around. I have to admit, she kind of tried to use grandma - having grandma do things for her she's been doing forever. But isn't that what grandparents are for, spoiling the kids? Rachael and I did some shopping and lots of talking. Fortunately, we have the same views on diet and we both knew things the other didn't, so we expanded our knowledge :).

I'm going to finish off this post with pictures from the past month. They're all out of order, but they're there :) Enjoy!

helping Leilani do her homework while nursing Natalia

Leilani got the sharing bag again!

Leilani made dinner

in the matching aprons Rachael and Rosey made for us all.

crazy hair day at school - Leilani wanted blue hair :)

the dolls my auntie Lee got the girls for Christmas

tea party!

Leilani fell asleep on the way to the airport, so grandma kissed her while she was asleep :)

I put Natalia down for the night and went to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. When I came back, I found her like this.

eating breakfast "together" this morning

Natalia's sensory play - a ziploc bag inside another ziploc bag, filled with shaving cream and some food coloring. Natalia's been loving it.

a bit fuzzy, but you can sort of see her two bottom teeth

Winter Break

We didn't do too much over Winter Break, I bought stuff to do crafts, but we never got the time. Leilani and Jeremy did a lot of working on the bed, I did a bit of cross-stitching, and Natalia became a fantastic crawler. There's NO stopping her now. She goes anywhere and everywhere. Watching her is a full time job!

Leilani's favorite thing is going out with Jeremy and working on the bed. Jeremy's had to work a few times the past few weeks, and as soon as he gets home, she's begging to go out and "chomp wood". The other day they were working on the hearts in the shutters. Nearly all the cutting is done, then Jeremy will assemble to make sure it all goes together as it should, disassemble, paint, then reassemble.

We've discovered a few new shows, so we're *finally* off Dora, Diego and Wonder Pets. Thank goodness. I don't think I could have stomached another episode of those. Now she watches Super Why!, My Little Pony, Pound Puppies, and her newest find - Horseland.

Natalia has stood for a few seconds at a time, and taken a few steps while holding onto the couch. I can't believe she's eight months old already! She's crawling all over the place non-stop, anything she sees that she wants, she makes it over there in seconds flat. She's also not distractable anymore - if you try to switch out something she shouldn't have for a toy, she gets awfully mad and lets you know it.

New Years Eve, I was the only one who stayed up, not by my choice, I assure you. Leilani made it to 11:45, and Natalia made it to 11:59 (that's why I was awake, she was nursing). Jeremy conked out before any of us *grin*. We had homemade vegan pizza rolls, white pizza dip, whoopie pies and fudge

I made some nuggets and hot "wings"....I made cutlets, then cubed them, breaded them, then on some of them I brushed hot sauce. I made some vegan ranch dressing to dip them in, too. It was super delish, if I do say so myself.

Jeremy flew out to go to his grandmas funeral, and the girls and I stayed home. We went to the store to get groceries, then spent the weekend hanging out at home. Movies, dishes, playing together, cuddles, it was nice and relaxing. On Friday I did laundry and Natalia throrougly enjoyed watching the clothes tumble round and round. I think it was a bit over-stimulating, but it was so adorable, her amazement at the colors whirling around, unable to touch the water she saw. She stood there for a good 5 minutes, just watching, until she got tired and plopped down onto the floor.

Leilani has a new favorite hobby - vacuuming. Since I told her no vacuuming could be donw until the living room was cleaned, she now randomly picks all of Natalia's toys up so she can vacuum.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we cuddled a LOT. As we sat on the couch, all together under a blanket, Leilani leaned over and kissed Natalia on the cheek. So Natalia leaned over with an open mouth and touched Leilani on the cheek. So the girls had this adorable little "kissing game" going. Leilani would kiss Natalia on the cheek, so Natalia would "kiss" Leilani on the cheek. Then this morning we all cuddled in bed for a good twenty minutes, playing and talking, when Natalia leaned over me to Leilani and kissed her. It was so sweet. Leilani's been pretty spectacular this weekend - we've had much less yelling and toy pulling than usual. Instead of disciplining Leilani (timeout or consequence) I just started loving on her, so she started loving on Natalia. We had a bump this afternoon, when Leilani got mad at Natalia so took away a toy and I had to explain that Natalia's only 8 months and doesn't understand, now she's just sad you took away her toy. Leilani gave the toy back and we all moved back to our happy place. We're all much happier when we just be nice to each other, obviously.

Resolutions

I'm doing something I've never done before - making some New Years Resolutions. I'm keeping it fairly simple, so I don't overload myself, and I'm putting them up here to keep myself accountable.

-I'm going to write every day, so that by the end of the year, I'll have a novel finished.

-I'm going to put more color into out diet and move towards a high-raw diet (50% or more food consumed is raw)

-I'm going to exercise three times a week (at least)

And that's it. Every month I'll let you know how I'm doing, and at the end of the year, we'll see how well I did :)