Witness it in action :
And photographed :
(I fall in love more and more every day with his feathery wispy like hair )
March 18, 2010
March 16, 2010
Fullness
Last week me and Matt watched this amazing documentary, Food Inc, about the American Food Industry and how our food here in America is processed and where it is coming from. I highly recommend everyone to watch this movie...
And here are a couple interviews of Michael Pollan, who I love. He is one of the main documentarists in the movie, and author of several food books, that I have coming my way soon!
I had taken an interest in food back when I first started college but it became even MORE important to me to learn about food when I became a mother. I believe that so often what we eat corresponds directly to our health. I also feel that feeding our bodies is very intimate, so I have chosen to pay close attention to what exactly I am feeding myself and my family. I have been telling Matt all about how important it is for us to eat, wholesome, clean, natural, unprocessed, holistic, organic, local, and in season, foods and he was slowly taking interest, this movie though put him on the band wagon way faster than I was able to! Obviously my spiels about it are not as convincing ;) He is all about the interest of food now, and I love feeling like a team as we try to feed our family the right things. Don't get me wrong, it is difficult, not to eat out, and basically not eat what is easily available, but like this movie talks about.....
To change the American food industry, you, basically have 3 votes everyday. Each time you choose to eat you are voting. The power lays in the consumers hands. So take small steps, baby steps, do what you can, incorporate healthful eating into your life over time. I told Matt that becoming aware and learning about food is the first and most important step. To know where you want to be going with how you choose to eat is key. It is not done in an over night thing, just something you work at everyday.
So this weekend we made the first step. We visited our first local farmers market right here in Tomball to see what they offered. We bought our first grass-fed ground beef and some eggs and veggies. We also are going to try out a CSA that delivers once a week to our doorstep local, organic, farm raised fruits, veggies, meat, cheese, and eggs, through these people here.
I had been wanting for so long to do this and I never just did it. But with this movie, my husband's help and motivation, and my friend Kim's help, I finally went for it! I committed to going, I marked it in my planner and nothing was going to get in my way.
I had every intention of taking a picture of me and Griffin at the market with my close friend, Kim, and her babies but like I have said you can't do it all.
A couple weeks ago I was talking with my friend Kim, about wanting to do things but ultimately waiting for an easier time in life, and she just said, Melanie when Griffin is walking and eating on his own (which is what I was waiting on) there will be something else there making it difficult to get out the door to these farmers markets ( or whatever it is that you are post poning doing) , and she was so right, it may always be hard, so I just started doing these things and it made me so happy!
So here goes my Homemaking 101 Bootcamp!
I finally made some homemade cleaning products that I have been wanting to make for a YEAR now. I used recipes that a friend had shared on her blog and it made me soo so giddy to make them! I love cleaning with them! I look even more forward to cleaning because they are scented with essential oils and the clean, uplifting smell vs. the harsh toxic smells of store bought cleaners makes a difference to my spirit. They were super easy to make as well.
And I have got around to cooking some meals and baking some treats for us as well.
I was waiting for a time, when everything was perfectly scheduled, and our days were not overflowing with undone to-dos, but I have realized that, that may be never be and I don't have to wait for it. I can start doing the things I love right now. Even if the muffins and meals are made at weird times and not everyday I am still doing it and letting it bring me happiness.
And I have learned that I love taking pictures of food too....
Matt finds all of my picture taking of food quite hilarious :) And I for some reason find really large serving amounts quite hilarious. Like this bowl of cereal of Matt's......
And this salad of mine....
I love getting recipes from friends, other mamas, this blog, and this blog, and the internet currently.
This is one of my all time favorite recipes and has withstood the test of many friends and family. They are super easy to make and we added fresh blueberries to them.
I have tried baking a couple of muffins using agave nectar but I am still in search of more recipes where you use agave nectar, applesauce, or maple syrup for the sweetener rather than sugar, and you use whole grain flour over white...any body with some recipes?
On Sunday we ended the weekend with a wonderful visit to mine and Matt's best friends house. They were planting fruits and veggies in their first garden and we were so blessed to be invited to help! It was so much fun, sitting outside in the beautiful weather, digging in dirt, planting seeds, talking together. Griffin LOVED digging in the dirt with his shovel and trowel that they bought him. I was so surprised too!
To Fullness in every sense of the word.
March 8, 2010
Mishaps of Motherhood...
That picture has nothing to do with this post, but I love starting with a picture and I had none that directly corrresponded with what I wanted to write about, so alas, a recent one of Griffin helping me make muffins.I cannot begin to explain how much each word of encouragement, expression of love, and just sheer acceptance and understanding meant to me that I received from friends and family in response to my previous post.
This is actually the second time I have tried to write this post. I had written a pretty lengthy one earlier and just as I was finishing up, the computer froze and I lost it :(
After I posted "my struggle" post last week, I kept finding all over the place people talking about how purposeful, important, and crucial the struggle is to who we become.
I love the way my friend Aaron put it here....
I love this line,
"Spiritual poverty recognizes that all we have and all we are is a total gift from God. We are totally dependent on God, a good and loving God, who is in charge of the universe and in charge of our lives. Are we humble enough to acknowledge our total dependence on God? Are we ready to admit that we don’t have all the answers in our own right?"
Why do I resist my dependence on him? Sigh, I don't know.
Maybe because I don't completely trust him, I'd rather trust myself, which makes no sense to me at all.
I can tell you, that like my friend Anna said, these struggles, make a need in me present for God, which is beautiful. And I know he has it all figured out...I just fear that I won't get it right, I will chose selfishness over God and love.
This past week these two blogs totally helped me.....
Both of these were links in the previous post, I just wanted to explain a little bit of why I loved them so.
Kelle just gave birth to a little girl with Down syndrome about 6 weeks ago, and her outlook on life literally pumps me up and empowers me. If you have time I highly recommend reading her blog, it is incredible.
And Jennifer, wrote a book about her and her son's, Avery, first two years together. Avery has Down syndrome and her book was the first one I ever read about Down syndrome about 2 years ago. She recently blogged about how she wished Avery's birth story would have been more like Kelle's. What I loved most about her post was actually all of the responses to it. Her story, although, different from Kelle's was just as important, is what so many women were saying. And basically all of that was just reconfirming to me, that other mothers that I admire, struggle through out mothering as well. To struggle is, well, universal, which makes it a little less scary.
Where I am at, not having all the answers, having imperfections, handling things in the wrong way, has humbled me and is breeding compassion in me for others that appear to have it "less" together, and it feels really really good to feel this compassion that comes from understanding that it is hard to just will yourself to be "there". And I want to go back and make amends to every judgmental thought or action I have ever taken part in.
When I go through a time, whether that be an hour, or a day, when I think that mothering is just too much , that it is too hard, and I don't think that I will be able to handle it all, each time I came out the other end...wanting to be a mother that much more. I think that is beautiful. I am thankful for that.
And I think that is all I have to share for tonight...I will leave with a few pictures of our littlest bobo!
We are going to buy Griffin a Ukulele soon because he absolutely loves strumming on his daddy's guitar!
March 1, 2010
To share with reckless abandon....
is something I hesitate to do, and I don't even know fully why the hesitation. I think it is good for the soul to share and let it all out. I am going to try and peel back the layers, my layers, that I often keep on to cover up some of my struggles and who I really am....
I think the hesitation comes from me "wanting to have it all together", and not wanting to show that there is a lot of stuff I don't actually have together. This past week was a mama melt down week and it actually started about two weeks ago, when I started believing deep down that everything wasn't OK, and God wasn't really in control of it all.
With me, if I start to let that belief go, the anxiety that sets in is massive.
About the time I started to believe that maybe God wasn't in control of everything I read a story of a little 2 year old girl dyeing of Cancer.
We just checked Griffin for cancer, a screening, that happens once a year, or more if we suspect anything. About 1 % of the Down's syndrome population gets Leukemia. That is 15 to 20 times higher than in the general population. So combining reading this little girl's story and seeing how absolutely horrible that is, and knowing that Griffin is more at risk for cancer, and my soul making a shift toward belief in universal chaos, sent me on a downward spiral of hopelessness, fear, worry, anxiety, depression, and other blah's.
Griffin did end up getting sick, very sick this past week. So sick that we were at the Pedi's office Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Doing blood work, checking his oxygen levels, going in to the hospital for x-rays. The week was so up and down going along with his sickness. He would get better and then worse and then better and then worse...AHHH! It might be kind of comical if I could see all of my emotional swings play back for me....I went from feeling like I could not handle this, and actually telling Matt "I was leaving, running away from it all", to telling myself and God, that I was sorry for handling the situation so horribly and that I wanted another chance, "bring it" I would say to myself, "I will do better next time", to "oh no!, did I say "bring it" you must of misunderstood me, I didn't mean this soon!"
I know that if I can hang on to the beliefs that
1.) everything is OK
2.) that there is always something good to be found
3.) that life is hard and that is OK
And the big hum dinger....
4.) everything is not going to go my way! I am not the one in control!
That is the big one. You would think that I was an 8 year old child with the fits I can throw (most of them internally, thankfully), nope! I am a 24 year old adult...just an ill-equipped one sometimes.
If I could let go of how I want my life to look and what I want to get done, and how I want things to turn out, then I would be much happier. I could maybe fall in love with life, rather than despising it, because it doesn't go my way most of the time.
If I could be more malleable, more able to be stretched, and adjusted and adjusting to what is. Rather than resisting all of this...sigh.
The moment Griffin was born and we found out he had Down syndrome, I did not have a hesitance to it or him. I embraced him instantly, I thought there was nothing wrong with him or with Down syndrome. That extra chromosome was most definitely how he was created to be, and I believed that he was perfectly created. I knew that Down's kids were different and I didn't ever see anything wrong with being different, it never mattered to me that he would look different, or maybe talk different, or learn differently, or develop differently, or not have as high of an IQ as others, I really never cared about those things.
So my resistance to accepting him and Down syndrome didn't surface until much later and by surprise.
What I didn't realize at birth was that life would be harder, and like I said earlier, I loathe the difficult. I am a weeny, a wimp, a coward. Oh how I yearn to be brave and strong.
I didn't realize that there would be so much more to worry about.
I didn't realize that all of the extra stuff you have to do, therapies, all sorts of different doctors appointments, ECI appointments, paperwork to keep up with, government programs to enroll in, support groups to attend, and endless and endless amounts of other things that "normal" children don't usually come with would conflict so greatly with what selfishly "I", the great big ME, wants to do on a daily basis.
Though sometimes I think I would have that exact same struggle, Down syndrome or not. Kids often get in the way of what parents want to do right?
I hate that sentence...I hate that as adults so many of us( well at least me) look at our children like that. When really they are the way, in a sense, with out them, we wouldn't even be trying to get the things done that we think they are getting in the way of.
I think that parenting is difficult, Down syndrome or not, but if I could surrender to those difficulties and not fight them, with what I think should be happening, I would start to see that despite it being hard it is so beautiful and wonderful and maybe even fun.
I yearn to embrace Griffin always as a precious gift, because he is. And I wouldn't be a momma with out him. I love him. And I just want to be better to him in the hard times.
I am embarrassed if my struggles seem juvenile or horrible, but honestly it is where I am family and friends.
And I have been praying something like this prayer that my my dear friend wrote on her blog today, but I just love the way she wrote it
"Make me new. Make my weary, impatient, selfish heart new."
Thanks Jenny, I will be whispering that to myself now.
And some links that have lifted me up and inspired me lately...
Thanks for reading :)
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