put a bird on it

Step 1

If there's anything that I'm disorganized most about that makes me the most crazy, it's my complete inability to conceive of and execute a weekly dinner plan. I mean, the conception isn't that difficult. It's the execution. The get home work out relax(?) laundry tidy up feed child make dinner put child to bed in whatever order or permutation of help from my awesome hubs and mom it happens to happen. 

Case in point: it is 9:10pm and there's still 10 minutes to go on the eggplant parmesan.

Which brings me to my next point: Meatless Mondays! I have played around with vegetarian and veganism for awhile now and after getting the hell scared out of me by reading The China Study have decided to make a concerted effort to get my little family to eat less meat.

I absolutely worship eggplant parmesan. I don't care who makes it or where it's from (Campisi's though...mmm talk to me slowly) I adore it. So, it being Monday I decided to try out a recipe from my mom's old dusty 1970s cookbook with a screechy baby trying to be rocked to sleep in the next room. Is it just me or does the sound of your crying child make you lose brain cells and/or concentration as well? Anyway, I can't tell if the recipe was terrible or if my brain was just operating on half speed, but it's going to be done in 5 minutes and you best believe I'll be tweaking it because it will not. best. me.

So yeah - my goal for these next few weeks is to have a plan and carry it through. Wednesday: Chicken & Artichoke Enchiladas with Black Beans! Maybe I'll even give you my beans recipe. You can woo people with these beans, I'm not even lying.

Happy Monday!

humble pie

I feel like I have been going in a million different directions lately, 

but some events over the last few weeks have helped focus me a little bit. 

While I was pregnant I scoffed at the idea of slowing down or changing much about my life. I expected to keep up the go-go-go...I went to happy hours when I was prego and exhausted, flitted around like a bloated social butterfly, did a whole lot of things I don't regret necessarily but will do differently next time around. Why do I have to always bloom late on everything? I swear. It takes me forever to grow up.

Kyle's had this mantra about not having to go to the other side of the world in order to have a full and happy life which I thought was just. silly.

And then all the running around, especially with a 2-3-4-5 month old just got kind of exhausting. So, I have a plan of attack to save my sanity and get more connected with my sweet family.

Stay tuned.

turn to the left.

I realized today whilst shopping for clothes that I don't have a specific style. I want to, even if it's one of those whatever-meets-whatever-meets-whatever, and I would like to cultivate it, but right now I think I'm in the whatever-fits-and-doesn't-look-like-I-just-rolled-outta-bed mode. If you're reading this and you're a fashionista or had to learn how to hone your style, share tips. And maybe this'll be a new little focus for the bloggy blog.

backspacer

Ugh! I keep starting and stopping on this blog post because I don't know where to start. Just write, right?

Right.

Okay. Well, if you're a mom, you know about the mommy blues. I am a pretty emotional person to begin with, and I don't know when it stopped being mommy blues and started being PPD but I started having pretty gnarly anxiety attacks, one after a visit to the OBGYN, and another just out of the blue one night: full on shaking, crying, the works. Sometimes someone will play a sad song and I'll freak out, or my brain will just magically go to that place that creates horrible scenarios, and in each one something happening to me or my loved ones. The nightmares are awesome too.

I am not someone who lives under fear. I'm not. This is therefore new territory for me. I went to the doc to get my thyroid tested and it had swung under my normal range. Their reaction was - everything's in (the standard) normal range! You're fine! Except, I wasn't. I had stopped taking my thyroid meds because I noticed that if I didn't take one, the anxiety wasn't so bad. But then I would notice a drop in milk production. Oh, the rock and the hard place.

Adeline's pediatrician is an earthy crunchy family doc and at her last visit my mom spilled my beans for me. He ended up testing my thyroid and ultimately putting me on a lower dose every other day. He also tested my progesterone, which turned out to be super low (and an indicator of PPD), so I'm taking that now. I am also seeing a therapist every week to help with everything.

I expected to feel better almost immediately, and so far I don't really. The last two days have been rough, enough that I made the decision that our little family was going to stay home instead of go to Vegas for the weekend, where my brother is getting married.

I wanted to write this because I know there are folks out there who have experienced this type thing or are in the middle of it, and I wanted to provide some solidarity, some insight, and hope that things get better. Not that they're all the way better for me quite yet but we're working on it.