Lent 2012

My Valentines post and Mary’s 1^st birthday post will be coming, but I wanted to get my Lenten commitments written out in time for Ash Wednesday tomorrow.  Last year, I felt like I was not able to participate fully in the Lenten season because I was busy carrying for a newborn.  This year we are preparing for a big move, but I am determined to make the most of this time to deepen my spiritual life and grow closer to God.  I have seen several good ideas on the blogs I follow, and hopefully we can do some in the future.  I know if I try and do too much, I will more than likely end up failing at all of them.  To increase the chance of success, I think it is best to focus on a couple simple practices.  Here are my goals for Lent 2012:

1)      Discipline- I am not going to have any sweets for the duration of Lent.  Usually this includes soda, but I am making an exception for that because we will probably  need the caffeine to keep us awake on our road trip in a few weeks!  I have a huge sweet tooth, so this is always hard for me, but I am hoping to discipline myself enough that I can continue after Lent.  I want this to be the 1^st step of my plan to start eating healthier and exercising more. 

2)      Prayer- In the past Alex and I have prayed the rosary every day. I’d like to do this again, along with some other forms of prayer. It might be a good idea to become great friends with St. Cajetan, St. Joseph and St. Jude as we pray for a job opportunity in Denver.  These powerful intercessors will bring great peace during this stressful time. 

3)      Scripture-Not sure how I want to go about this yet.  I’d love to say I will read for 30 min. every day, but that is unlikely to happen, so maybe 30 min. on Sunday, plus the Mass readings every day?  That seems more doable. 

Hope it’s a fruitful Lent!  Prayers to you all.

Healthy Eating

One of the big goals I have is to get my family to eat healthier. Alex does pretty well with this, and lost a lot of weight several months ago, but I could certainly do better, and I would love for the kids to enjoy healthy foods. It’s still a struggle to get little Alex to eat much of anything, let alone healthy foods. His diet right now usually consists of sugary cereal or frozen waffles for breakfast, lunchables or PB&J for lunch, corndogs, quesadillas or mac and cheese for dinner. He still loves fruit and anything dairy, but it is hard to get him to eat veggies (Alex has started putting spinach in his smoothies, and that is working great!). We try making mealtime fun, because he would rather be playing, and sometimes Alex sings him these cute little songs:

Yummy, yummy, yummy, got some stuff for your tummy, doesn’t it feel fine.

This will fill you up because you are a baby, this will feel you up because you are so small, this will feel you up because you are a baby, this will feel you up until your 6 feet tall.

Mary on the other hand, eats everything. We call her a little vacuum, because she runs her hand along the carpet just looking for any tiny little thing to pick up. We have to dig things out of her mouth several times and day, and really need to better at keeping the floors clean! We also have to keep the paper books out of her reach because she will eat them. I usually have to share my meals with her, cause she will crawl over and start whining for food. She doesn’t like to drink much though and we have been dealing with constipation issues for a few months. The pediatrician recommended pear juice, but she won’t even drink it from a bottle so I have to feed her the liquid on a spoon just to get some in her!

Once we move and I am at home, I am really going to focus on better meal planning and learning how to eat healthy on a budget. I started couponing over a year ago, but still have a lot to learn. I can’t wait to start cooking more, and having more time to prepare meals. Maybe I’ll even learn how to make my own bread!

Sleep

We’re still not getting much these days.  Mary continues to wake up every  1-2 hours all night long (and she doesn’t nap for more than 1-2 hours total during the day).  I really thought things would improve a bit as we started getting closer to her first birthday, but they haven’t.  In fact, several nights a week she wakes up around 12-1am and won’t go back to sleep for a few hours even when I nurse her.  She just wants to play around on the bed and acts like she is not sleepy at all.  I don’t understand how this girl is surviving on so little sleep, but she is not fussy during the day, so maybe she just doesn’t need much.  I don’t know what to do.  Once we move the rooms are going to be close together, so there is a much better chance little Alex will hear her during the night (right now our bedrooms are on opposite sides on the apartment) so I would really like to have her sleeping better by then.  But then, even if I did manage to get her sleeping better, the whole moving thing would probably mess up all our progress and we would have to start back at square one.  On the other hand, because of the frequent night nursing, I am still experiencing lactational amenorrhea, and have been enjoying the long hiatus from monthly periods and killer cramps.  Because I got pregnant with Mary the first time I ovulated post-partum, I have not had a period in almost 3.5 years!!  I think my body must be really sensitive to the hormones that suppress ovulation, because I had to almost completely stop nursing little Alex before my fertility returned.  So if we keep doing what we are doing I might have several more months of infertile time, which might be nice during this major transition where we could be without work for a short time.  I have almost zero experience with NFP, as I haven’t really had an opportunity to practice since we have been married, and am a bit nervous to start charting.  So I keep going back and forth, trying to decide the best way to move forward with her.  She NEEDS to learn how to fall asleep on her own, and it can’t be good for her to wake up so frequently.  As much as I oppose the “cry it out” method, I don’t know what else to do.  I guess there are modified versions we could try, that don’t involve just leaving the child alone and ignoring her.  I suppose we could explore some of those.  Even if I just nursed her less frequently or something, she needs to at least start sleeping in the crib.  Poor thing fell off the bed one morning after Alex got up and I didn’t hear her stirring.  Not good.  Luckily she is ok, but we can’t have that happen again.  So, we’ll see what happens.  Trusting that God will show us the best way to take care of our little insomniac!

Now for some of my fav January pics:

Isn't he an amazing architect?

Our Denver trip:

I was excited to meet my new nephew, Issac.  He is a cutie!

Visiting great-grandpa!