Playground Fun

Hopping Along with Mingle Monday! Go hop along with us!

Hello Minglers! You can read up about us in my *about me* tab! You can also read through my most recent post about who we are here!

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Hope everyone is having a good Labor Day!

Come play at the playground with us...

Where did my Type A go?

I have always had a very Type A personality.

I was a perfectionist, and couldn't rest until things were done right.

I couldn't leave a job half done.

My room was always spotless. Everything had a place, and if it didn't have a place, it wouldn't get to stay.

I never liked clutter, and when my husband and I first got married we had a huge discussion about whether or not the toaster would get to stay on the counter. I didn't want anything on my counter. I liked clean surfaces. My mother keeps the toaster in a lower cabinet and it gets brought out when someone needs to use it. That makes perfect sense to me, but sounded like too much work to my husband. (He won the toaster debate).

I read and research everything before doing it or buying it.

I plan everything to the last detail and hate to veer from that plan.

I worried about everything and over thought everything.

Every illness was deadly.

I was always expecting the worse (and in some cases we got the worse of things, see my *about me* tab).

I was totally expecting this to make me an unreasonable parent. I thought that I would drive our pediatrician crazy with calls, and that people would think I was being too overly cautious (and obsessive) about everything.

I would (and still do) pray constantly that the Lord would give me peace and strength as a parent so I wouldn't drive myself into the looney bin.

I feel like the Lord has answered those prayers.

I almost never call the doctor. I know the important things to look out for, and unless I see those I take the "this too shall pass" attitude.

I don't clean the toys up everyday. Why spend 20 minutes 7 days a week cleaning the toys when they will be a mess again 2 minutes after they wake up anyways. That is over 2 hours a week of cleaning the toys. I will pick them up 2-3 times a week, which gives me back over an hour of time a week. I have learned to be able to live with the scattered toys.

My kitchen often has a dirty dish, pot, and series of sippy cups on the counter. It no longer eats away at me that those things are sitting in there waiting for me. I have other things going on to worry about a messy kitchen. My microwave had splatter in it for I don't even know how long. That would never fly with my former self.

I love to go with the flow now. With napping and toddler moods, when plans are brought up I almost always respond with "we will see how it goes". I found that last minute plans are not evil.

Now don't get my wrong, the Type A still exists where it matters, like the research and treading carefully with new decisions, but it no longer holds me back from living in the moment.The Lord has given me great freedom from that, otherwise I think I would be climbing the walls crazy all the time and not too much fun to be around. I would also be exhausted from scrubbing floors all night long, and worrying over every detail of every moment.

I love the power of prayer and the power of the Lord and all he can do in our lives. Pure freedom!

Farmers Market Freak Show

A cute picture to start the post off. Whenever I try to get a picture of them on their rockers (which they were sitting there together all on their own) Bryson feels the need to run away. One of these days I will catch him!

Yesterday I decided to swing over to the farmers market for some fresh veggies and some fresh local seafood. I thought a yummy seafood scampi would be a nice treat for dinner (and it was! kids loved it!).

I had the ergo carrier and the kid's leashes in the car. I know what you are thinking. "Leashes? On your children? How barbaric!" Well, we are all into the baby wearing, but my children sometimes like a little "freedom" to walk on their own. Plus is was 100 degrees outside (ok, not really, it was 98) and the Ergo can be quite sweaty.

So we went with the leashes. While my kids are great at holding my hand, Bryson is a runner. The second you let go, he is off. Doesn't matter where he is going, as long as he is moving.

I didn't want to spend an hour chasing him around a crowded farmers market.

So the leashes went on and we walked.very.slowly to the market from the parking spot, which was only about 30 feet away.

I first wanted to stop at the organic stand so I could grab a few things, then I would stop and get the kid's their treat of homemade raw ginger cookies, and then I would get the fish and shrimp last.

The organic stand was our first problem. I have 2 leashes with 2 children going in different directions.

I realized I didn't think this all the way through.

With the leashes on my wrist I could at least use my hands to grab produce, but not when my hands were being pulled from either side. And children on a leash are not like dogs on a leash, you can't just yank them back to bring them closer to you.

I then noticed why Bryson was trying so hard to get away (and now screaming at the top of his lungs). He spotted the cookie lady.

I had about 2 seconds to pay for the 2 things I could manage to grab before people started to really stare. And I mean the people from the other booths, because everyone at this stand was already staring and starting to back away. I think they thought his head would start spinning at any moment.

Finally we were over at the cookie lady and the kids were signing "cookie please" a million times a minute. I couldn't hand them over fast enough.

Fortunately, the fish stand was right across the way and I was able to usher the children over to the large crowd/line.

Then I horrified a large group of people.

Bryson wrapped himself in his leash and fell to the ground, and dropped his cookie.

I picked him up.

I picked the cookie up.

I blew on the cookie (you know, since all germs are able to be blown off things), and gave it back to him.

He then continued to eat it.

The gasps echoed across the market.

I could hear the people around me saying to each other "did you just see that?", "can you believe she did that?", "that's just not right."

Was it a proud moment?

No.

Was it necessary?

Yes.

We grabbed our fish and started the painfully slow walk back to the car. 

Controversial Blogging

Since I have been meeting so many new friends in the bloggy world, I have started thinking more about the content of which I blog about. I have always been honest about things I write about, but I have also tended to be more selective in fear of offending people. (I have apparently offended people in past, regardless of how careful I was being.) I will also admit, however, that here and there I will throw caution to the wind and say what is on my mind (with the "it's my blog" attitude), and deal with the negative responses.

I am not sure how I feel about all this. Should I be editing myself in order to make the general audience happy? Should I use the blog to air out my everyday frustrations and be honest about what is going on inside my head? Should I keep it light hearted? Should I go with raw feelings?

This is hard.

Some of the topics I have avoided talking about, because they could give the wrong impression:

• Being a stay at home mom. This is one of the hardest. I don't want to talk about how hard it is, because there are working moms who work hard at her career and at home. I don't want to mention how wonderful a gift it is that my husband works so hard for our family so that I can stay at home, because then people would get offended thinking I don't think their husbands work hard enough (which IS NOT TRUE). I am afraid of saying how happy it makes me to be able to be home with the kids, because then someone will think I am telling them they should be unhappy, or that they shouldn't be happy with their career.
• Food. I do talk a lot about food, but not in the true sense of how I feel inside. I mention my side of things and how we choose to live, but I never share my true feelings about the general population and how they feed their children. I can be very judgmental about food, but I keep that to myself because I don't want anyone to think that I think they are terrible parents because they let their children eat X, Y, and Z. I also don't want to be judged (which I often am) because my children don't eat X, Y, and Z.
• Money. We are not wealthy, we are not poor, but we do live very tightly. I talk about getting hand me downs and how we couldn't live without them, but we also have some nice things as well. My husband and I have strong opinions on how money should be spent and saved, which is very different from the majority of people.
• TV. We have some very strong opinions about TV, which is a very hot topic, so I avoid it all together. 

There are many posts that don't get published, and many paragraphs that get deleted, in fear of someone getting upset.

What is a blogging momma to do? What do you do? What is your philosophy? 

The Kids are Calling Me Out!

Hello, Tuesday Hop friends! Welcome! I can't wait to follow you back!

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I swear, I was an AWESOME mother before I had children!

I spent 6 years raising other people's children, and was pretty darn good at it. I brought professional nanny-ing to a whole new level.

I thought I would have mothering in the bag!

Then came twins...

For the most part, they are grade A babies, and I have very little to complain about.

They are great sleepers (6pm-8:30/9am and then a 2-2.5 hour nap)!

They are generally very well behaved.

But recently.... they have started to whine.

The whining.

Oh dear! I have never been a fan of the whiney kids you see out and about.

Now I am afraid my kids are turning into the whiney kids that frighten other people into never wanting children.

HELP! How do I stop the whining before it gets too bad? How can I teach 17 month old children that whining is not OK?

I am afraid... I am very, very afraid!

Monday Blog Hop

Hopping Along with Mingle Monday! Go hop along with us!

Hello Minglers! You can read up about us in my *about me* tab! You can also read through my most recent post about who we are here!

Blog Award

I got my first blog award from Mel over at A Funny Little Peanut! Very exciting indeed!

The rules of the award are as follows:

1.) THANK the blogger who awarded it to you.


Thanks Mel! You are one of my newest favorite people!


2.) Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation and experience using five words.


*Honest *Ranting *Sharing *Spilling *Controversial 


3.) Pass it on to other blogs you feel have real substance.

• The Never Ending Story: Having a Twintastic Time
• My Life As Described as Twin Trials and Triumphs
• This Crazy Life

I Hate Food Science

I have a deep dislike for food science. It has ruined eating, in my opinion.

Because of food science, we now have what I like to call "food-like substances." I hate these. I hate the tricks that the food science, and labeling companies play on us. I also hate how they can use words like "natural" and "wholesome" when the product is none of those things.

I have recently been enlightened on the fact that soy is actually very unhealthy, contrary to what many of us had been made to believe. Those horrid labeling people!!

I try and feed my family as healthy as I can on a very small budget.

I shop at Whole Foods and our local farmer's market. Shopping there is not easy on a teeny tiny budget, but I manage.

How?

I am in the kitchen... a lot.

I make a lot of things from scratch.

I use raw ingredients, and then I know exactly what my family is eating.

Bread is one of the things that I make for our family on a weekly basis, as well as yogurt. I can count the number of loaves of bread I have bought in the past 2 years on 1 hand. We also go through about a half gallon+ of yogurt a week. I am glad I can make that for the coast of our half gallon of milk (which we get delivered by the milk man, in the glass jars and everything).

I have recently become frustrated with food science and a certain sweetener situation.

I am a huge follower of weelicious.com. I LOVE Catherine and all her ideas and recipes. She has some wonderful ways to make healthy, yummy foods.

However, she uses a sweetener in a lot of her baked goods and snack foods called *agave nectar*. I assumed that since Catherine was promoting it and praising it, that is was a healthy alternative to sugar. My friend Amy recently sent me a note asking my opinion on the agave and said that she read some information that said that it is actually worse then high fructose corn syrup, and is process the same exact way. Right away I started researching it and found lots of bad things about it. And more here.

I.was.crushed!

Here I was trusting what Catherine had to say about it without looking into it myself. I felt like a failure of a mother by not doing the research before feeding my children something with this processed sweetener in it.

I e-mailed Catherine and asked her why she promoted something that was so processed and considered worse then high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). I asked her if she approved of HFCS, and if not, then why does she promote something that is in the same category. I expressed my frustration with being made to believe it was a healthy alternative, when in fact it isn't.

I received 2 e-mails from her within an hour of the first e-mail I sent. I was very impressed with her attention!

She said that she does not ever use HFCS, but then said that the jury is still out on the agave. She pointed out that she does mention that honey can be used instead of the agave in her recipes, but doesn't recommend one over the other. She says she still likes the agave over traditional sugar.

I am not sure I agree, and have learned that I can not follow people blindly when it comes to making decisions about my families health and well-being.

I am very passionate about being healthy and making good choices for our family when food is concerned. I do  know how to let down and have some freedom here and there during special circumstances (like at my mom's recent birthday party when I let the kids eat store bought cookies), but the majority of the time I am very vigilant about what is consumed.

Why eat a cookie with HFCS and other difficult to pronounce chemicals when I can take 20 minutes to whip up a batch of cookies at home that are healthier, and have little to no sugar in them (and often some veggies)? The answer seems easy to me.

**For the record, I still love Weelicious. Catherine was great at answering my question (even if I don't agree), and she still has amazing healthy ideas and recipes that we love. I use her recipes at least 4-5 times a week. I will continue to use her snack recipes, but I will choose to use the honey instead of the agave from the ingredient list.

Love it!

I am a huge fan of breastfeeding, and I think this is great!!

I need some cheese...

to go with all this whining! (Don't let these cute faces fool you, they can be painfully fussy!)



Both my children have been riding the fussy bus this week.



It has been raining, so that hasn't really helped. But OH MY GOODNESS! It is painful!



HELP! What do you do when the whining gets out of control?



I don't know if they are bored, teething, gassy, or just plain annoying.



I will admit that we haven't been on many outings because I am trying to get the house in order after being away last week. Picture me under 5 loads of clean laundry trying to find places to stack them where the children will not knock them down or unfold anything.



Is it too much to ask to be home for 2 days without having a melt down every 5 minutes?



It is days like these that make me wish I could just turn on the TV.