Week of Gratitude, Day Three

Today I am grateful…

1. To have the love, support and encouragement of family and friends with my vision for my baking blog.
2. That I got to play kick to kick with my dad in our backyard.
3. For the funny text banter I had with my darling husband today 

A Week of Gratitude, Day Two

Today I am grateful….

1. To have a strong friend in my life, her strength is beyond amazing. 
2. That I live an a small community that puts on great fireworks just to bring the locals together.
3. That Miss 3 didn't get too worked up about going in to her ballet class today, had a great time dancing once she was in there, and that she told me that she finally has a friend at ballet!

A week of Gratitude, Day One

It's not that uncommon these days to hear people talking about the universe and showing gratitude, for many years now I have lived my life like this.  I believe I have a strong connection with the universe and have been able to manifest great things and opportunities into my life by believing, trusting and being thankful, but sometimes it is hard to be fully present in my gratitude.  Life gets busy and although I always have a sense of feeling grateful, it sometime is hard to focus on what exactly I am thankful for and why.  This is why I am consciously going to think about and write down three things I am grateful for everyday this coming week and then at least once a week there after. I will once again feel totally aware of everything I have and love and am grateful for, feel free to join me in this.

1. I'm grateful to have such a helpful mum who can dash around the corner to entertain my girls while I clean vomit out of the car seat after a teething toddler choked on her silva and was sick on our way to Ikea. 
2. I am grateful that said teething toddler is not in too much pain and can have restful sleep while cutting her toothy pegs. 
3. I am grateful for the love fest the girls showed me before, when they took it in turns to shower me with big wet kisses, very blessed.

What a week!

My beautiful fresh wall

What a busy week we have had here! My lovely husbands was home on his R&R so we have been spending some nice quiet quality time as a family, we had movie nights, a family date at the chocolate
 shop and lot's of relaxing.  Once he headed back to work the real fun began, I have continued on my mission to do small make overs on the house, this week I was still focusing on study and did a feature wall all by myself, everything from masking it up to painting, and I am in love with it, so is Lala who keeps going up to it and hugging our new 'beautiful grey wall'.

Very helpful engine 'Lady'

I have also been sorting out the girls clothes, packing up what doesn't fit them, and working out what things we will need to get them to complete their winter wardrobes.  I find the clothes packing up process such a time consuming and tedious task, but it was well worth it when their draws are all beautifully organised again, and I got to post a whole heap of clothes off to friends so I know a lot of the good stuff is going to be much loved again.  We have also been busy creating a low key train costume for a Thomas the Tank party the girls are off to tomorrow, it's amazing want you can do with some paper plates, paint and a stapler, not prize winning costumes, but the girls are happy, and I'm sure the birthday boy will think they look great too.

Easter decorating

 Finally we have ended the week with decorating our yearly Easter tree, created from twigs from our backyard, a bucket and some beautiful egg decorations.
Through all this I have actually managed to fit in a bit of yoga and some low FODMAP cooking too, so look out for some new recipe posts next week, but for now I'm off o enjoy the last bit of this week by watching the footy and having a snag before the weekend party and ballet rush starts!  Go Bombers!

Very happy with our Easter tree this year!

Rainbow Bug Crayons

The other day Lala and I got creative and use some crayons that weren't being use and turned them into something fun. Check out my new craft blog I have was my sisters so see the whole story.

www.sistersdoingcrafts.blogspot.com.au

Daughter dates.

It has become a little tradition that every few weeks I take my girls out on a special mummy daughter date.  Sometimes it's with just one of the girls and sometimes it's with both, and it can be as simple as going to the Target and getting a baby cino afterwards or more exciting like going to the movies.  Either way, what really makes it special for them is that is just special mummy time, we don't have to rush around running other errands and we can all just enjoy the moments that we are having together. 

Last weeks daughter date saw the girls getting dressed up as Snow White, yes they each have a Snow White costume now thanks to hand-me-downs, and head off to the Snow White screening as part of the Disney Princess Film Festival.  What a great morning we had, there was free face painting, a Princess line up where all the little girls that were dress-up got to show of there beautiful costumes, and of course popcorn!  Miss 3 loved watching one of her favourite movies up on the big screen and Miss 1 really loved the snacks that I had packed, and I loved that it all only cost me $16.  Towards the end of the film they ate there packed sandwiches for lunch and then were happy to head straight home once it finished.  In all a successful daughter date, I will definitely be keeping my eye out again for more kiddy film festivals, it was a lot of fun for all!

all dressed up ready to, even I had Snow White colours on!

my two Snows in the princess lineup.

A Weighty Issue.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most people are aware that going up to someone you don't know or you are just acquaintances with and saying 'you're looking fat' or 'have you actually lost any weight yet' or 'well you don't look like you've lost weight', is not only politically incorrect, but also highly inappropriate and just down right RUDE! I really believe that everyone knows this, so why do so many not realise that telling someone they look too thin can by just as offence?

                                                                          

 I have always been on the smaller side of things, and was grateful that I could pretty much

Thailand 2008 with my bestie. Me on the right at
healthy and happy 53 kilograms. 

eat whatever I wanted to without it having any impact on my weight.  I could literally eat a family block of chocolate every night and still the scales would not hit over 53kgs.  I loved my body,  I had a tiny waist and big double D boobs and nice full cheeks.  I have always known that this isn't the norm, and that a lot of my girlfriends consisted me 'lucky'.  I was also very aware that I could lose weight extremely fast and it would be very easy for me to get under weight.  This first happened back in 2001 while at Uni,  I got quite sick with glandular fever which developed into pneumonia and therefore wasn't eating all that much and I dropped down to a small size 6 very quickly.  

Since then my weight has alway been about the same, like I said before just sitting at about 50kgs to 53kgs for years and years.  Then I went though my pregnancy with my first baby, who is 3 now.  Throughout the whole 35 weeks of this pregnancy (I gave birth to a tiny premmie) I put on a total of 8kgs, most of which I lost again within a few weeks after giving birth.  I then went on to breastfeed for almost 8 months, I stopped at 8 months because my weight had dropped right down to 46kgs! I had put on 8kgs, but then had lost 12kg, and nothing I did seemed to help me put any weight back on.  Stopping breastfeeding was emotionally hard on both myself and my baby, neither one of us was ready to stop, but it had come down to thinking I had no other choice if I wanted to start gaining weight again.   Well in the end it didn't work, I did not gain a single kilo until I fell pregnant again 4 months later.  

An hour before my Caesar
weighting in at 58kgs 

This second pregnancy was tricky, I was trying so hard to stack on as much weight as I could, as I was thinking the more I had in stores the longer I may be able to breastfeed for, but because I had Gestational Diabetes in the first pregnancy I was also trying to be good and keep my sugar levels low.  It was like trying to push to negative magnets together, it was just never going to click .  I ended up putting on 12kgs which took me back up to the same weight I was at the end of my first pregnancy, I would have really likes to have gained more as I was pregnant for 4 weeks longer and this baby was double the size of my first, but my weight plateaued after I was diagnosed with GD again.

Feeling thin in Thailand 2013, 43kgs.

Once bubba was born I was determined to eat for Australia and not lose too much weight, this worked for a little while and I even gained a little bit early on, but then almost over night it all unraveled.  At 4 months post birth my weight dropped down to 48kgs, this got me worried, I started having anxiety attacks and I got extremely upset, all I could think about was having to stop feeding my baby earlier than I planned.  I was so down at one stage  I thought I may have had Post Natal Depression, my best friend even called my husband to see if he could fly home early from his swing.  He did and within 2 days of him being home he had dragged me off the GP.  She quickly settled my fears about PND and put it more down to anxiety and fear about my weight loss, she was fantastic and we chatted for a long time about action plans and what we would do, I really felt like she was working with me and on my team.  It was also the first time I mentioned to her that I was lactose intolerant.  She sent me to see a dietician, which was not a foreign to me after have GD twice, but the poor dietician couldn't tell anything I didn't already know or was doing, she was quite sorry and her only advice was to try and eat even more.  Over the next 3 months, my weight slowly dropped and dropped, eventually getting to 43kgs! This was right before we had a family holiday to Thailand to celebrate my sisters marriage, and there was no way known I was going to stop breastfeeding before this trip, boob is just so much easier than bottles when travelling, especially to a third world country.  This trip was the point that I started to get really down about my weight, I couldn't even fill out my new bikini top I had only bought 8 weeks prior just for this trip, and I can tell you I have never ever had this type of problem.  I hated looking at pictures as I could really see in my face how thin I had gotten.  Once home I had decided that after 8 months of feeding it was time to wean.  I was actually ok with this decision, I had reached the same point that I had first time round, and I guess I knew it was coming for a while and was ready.  The babes had a different idea and was having nothing to do with the weaning idea at all, I tried on and off for a good 2 months, before I gave in and just let her feed, after all she was starting to naturally cut down and my weight had not changed over that period. 

All while this was happening with my weight I was also dealing with tummy issues, bloating, pain and lets say not very nice trips to the toilet.  These tummy troubles peaked just after christmas last year and once again husbandito pushed me off to the GP.  This time she gave my the push I needed to really get serious about weaning, I got tough and within 5 days I had weaned bubba off the boob through the day! Plus all my test that were run came back completely normal, so I am perfectly healthy, and thanks to being a right shortarse I'm not consisted underweight, although quite close to it.  So in the end I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and since then I  have started a low FODMAP diet, you can read about my journey through this in other posts.  In the 6 weeks since I have actually started to very slowly put some weight on.  I have no idea how it all works, whether it's the cutting the breast feeding right down or whether it has to do with the new diet and my digestive system now working a bit better but it is working.

Now back to where I was going with this post…. I could not tell you how many times I have had random people, mainly shop assistants or golden oldies say things to me like "You're so thin", "do you eat", or from people I do know "You haven't put on ANY weight have you".  I usually try and be light hearted and say something like "well have you seen my huge baby, its hard work keeping her nice and
big", but sometimes I feel like I need to explain to them my whole story, so they stop judging me, and that is not like me at all, I'm not one who usually cares about what people think.  Somedays I feel like I have spent so much time and energy defending myself explaining that I do eat, I actually eat quite a lot. But I think what it really comes down to is that I'm not happy with how my body looks or feels for that matter, and that makes peoples thoughtless comments hurt all that more.  What I really need right now is to get my body love back, get my head out of caring what others think and say about my shape, I need to start embracing my small booty and wear clothes that fit and aren't loose!

This here is a promise! Love your body, its the only one you've got!!