REAL FOOD

we decided to play with the avacado so it at least got some use out of it

loves her rice cereal

Two weeks ago I started Macie on food, I know it was a couple of weeks early but she just seamed ready for it. She is doing great and eating so well. She loves rice cereal of course sweetened with momma's breast milk, bananas, and butternut squash. She did not like my homemade rice cereal and today I tried Avacado for the first time. She was not a huge fan but I don't think hated it. I am okay with that as Avacaodo's are so expensive and one of the biggest reasons I am making home made food is the crazy amount of money you save. Next is green beans, apples, and then pears. I am truly loving making her food for her, and have enjoyed feeding her and the fun expressions she gives when she tries something new.

sweet potatoe and sausage soup

My Best Friend Royall e-mailed me this soup recipe the other day as we are trying to challenge each other to eat healthier and exercise. So I decided to try my hand at making it today and it was without a doubt the most amazing soup I have ever had in my life. If you like Sweet Potatoes, Cherizzo (it's a type of sausage), onions, spinach, and real potatoes you will be in love with this soup. Mark and I love sweet potatoes we have them like twice a week in our home with meals and never have I thought to use it in a soup, well I am on the hunt now for more soups with sweet potatoes in them because this was the greatest soup I have ever made and devoured.

Thanks Royall for the amazing recipe.

Link

THE BEST OF THE FATS

all ready in her PJ's and shades

The Goods

shoveling the delicious burger in my mouth

Even the puppies came and got some burgers

Readers Warning: Royall Harker don't read this post, or do but don't be disappointed. It was fattening totally destroying my, our goals but was so worth it for the delicious food and fun time with my hubby. I promise 100% good tomorrow.


It is 8:00 on Wednesday evening and we see a commerical on TV for a McDonald's BBQ burger, a thought comes to my mind.

K: Mark let's do the best of the fast food restaurants.
M: Really, Kalinda
K: Yeah come on lets do it, hey you wanted me to come up with something fun to do tonight we have been talking about this since before we were married so lets finally do it.
M: Okay let's do it.

pop Macie in her carseat and away we go. First A&W for a teen burger and small fries, then McDonald's for a Angus smokey Barbaque burger and a small fries, then wendy's for fries, and DQ for blizzards. We decided to get fries at all of the locations as we could not remember who had the best.

The Final Results where McDonald's had the best of everything, the burger was amazing, all the fries were kind of cold, but Wendy's were gross, A&W's were okay and McDonald's were delicious, salty, crunchy yet soft and potatoey on the inside. If only there McFlurry's were as good as DQ we could get all of our unhealthy crap at one stop.  Even though I feel 5 lbs heavier and can totally stick my gut out like I am 4 months pregnant sometimes that spontaneity is needed in life. It was a blast and totally worth every bite of that delicious burger, salty fries and oh so yummy Mint Oreo Blizzard.

SPLISHIN AND A SPLASHIN

having so much fun she wouldn't even look at me so I could take a picture

splashing water all over herself.

I think many summer days will look like this around here. Macie loves the water and loves playing in her pool, and weather like today is perfect, not too hot and no breeze.

CUTE PHOTOS DUMP

naked baby

love this picture

rockin the shades

Sitting all on her own

love little baby polo shirts

love this little baby

OBSERVING

Tonight I decided to change things up a bit and put Macie to bed a little bit earlier then usual, she is such a good sleeper and usually goes to bed at 9 wakes up around 4 or 5 for a feed then back to bed until about 7:30, which is perfect for me as I usually  head to bed around 10:00 get 5 or 6 hours of sleep wake up fed her then back to bed for another 2 to 3 hours. It is the perfect amount of sleep for me and I hardly ever need to nap during the day which makes it nice to have the time to get other things done when Macie naps. Anyways so tonight I decided to up her bedtime to 8:00 as the past couple of days she has been sleeping longer, this morning she was not awake again until about 9:30 which throws off so much of my day and her day as usually her first nap starts around that time. So today she only had one long nap instead of two naps. So we had an earlier bath tonight and a long feed at 7:00 then snuggled for a bit until 8:00 came around. Then I took her upstairs to her bed, layed her in it, sang her a song, kissed her on the forhead, then turned off the light and headed out of her bedroom while almost closing the door behind me. I thought it would be fun to watch her fall asleep as I knew it might take a little longer tonight to fall asleep with going to bed 1 hr earlier. I had the door open just a crack and watched my little sweetheart not make a single peep but move from stomach to back about 10 times, all over the bed with her head sometimes at the front of the bed, sometimes at the side and sometimes in the middle. Her arms sometimes hanged out of the crib and were sometimes tucked under her tummy. She was honestly all over the place it was so cute and so funny, she was also looking all over the place, but luckily did not spot me observing her. The best part though was how she did not make a sound the whole entire time. Finally after 10 minutes of watching her I had to go and get my work out in. After I was done I came upstairs to get some water when she started crying, I go in to see what was wrong and she was totally turned the opposite way with no covers and her arms stuck in a funny position, I picked her up gave her a sweet hug then placed her back in bed, she fell right back to sleep and is hopefully out for the night. It was so fun to watch her and I was so amazed at how she could so peacefully, yet not peacefully put herself to sleep.

METIS CROSSING

some delicious bannock

Mark's amazing Dream Catcher

Dalton, Me, Mark, Big Mark, and Aunt Rhonda

the shrooms in Vilna

the huge man in Elk Point Peter Fidler stands 34 feet tall

at the start of the day ready for a big long trip

Today we decided to pack up our truck and head to an Alberta Historical Site "Metis Crossing". We meet Mark's Aunt Rhonda, her husband Mark and there soon Dalton there as well. It was there first time meeting Macie and they were of course smitten right away with that adorable smile of hers. We had so much fun the day started with a tour of Metis Crossing and learning about Buffalo, Red River Carts, how the Metis loved the violin and watched a young men do a traditional Metis Dance. While I feed Macie everybody else went on a medicine walk and learned what plants we can use in nature to help heal our bodies. Next we made some delicious bannock on a stick by the fire, then finished our Metis Crossing experience by making dream catchers and friendship bracelets. It was such an enjoyable experience and Macie was such a  good girl seeing as the wind was so crazy. We finished our trip by having a delicious picnic that Aunt Rhonda made. On the way home we stopped at a couple of towns that had cool monuments. In smoky Lake we got pictures by some huge pumpkins. In Elk Point we got a picture with a huge man carved out of trees, in Vilna we stopped and Mark got his picture taken by some huge mushrooms and in St. Paul we visited the UFO landing sight.  Such a great day and we hope to take Macie on more of these fun day trips.

12 hours

Last night my little girl slept for 12 hours without waking up once. glory glory hallelujiah. The longest she has done before this is 9 1/2. She usually does 8 wakes up eats then is back in bed for another 3 hours. Thank you Macie for such a good sleep last night. We shall see if this is a permanent thing or not.

F.H.E

Tonights F.H.E. we decided to have a quick song and lesson and then take Macie in the Hot Tub for the first time, she loved it and had a blast.

Motherhood

I remember when I was about 14 weeks pregnant with Macie and everything was looking good, the comments and thoughts from people came daily.

- your life will never be the same
- say goodbye to your life
- you will never get a good nights sleep again
- oh the money and time you will spend on diapers
- you will have no time to yourself anymore
- be prepared for a screaming, crying, child that spits up all the time
- don't spend money on cute clothes, they just spit up on them, poop and them and grow out of them so quickly

I have never been given so much advice in my life while I was pregnant and even know as a mom

- don't let them cry themselves to sleep, they need to be comforted
- let them cry themselves to sleep
- bundle them up like crazy whenever you go out
- don't over heat them by bundling them up to much
- don't cross your legs it hurts the baby
- don't eat this that and the next thing
- don't work out or push yourself to hard
- start feeding her pablum at 3 months
- baby can not eat food until 6 months
- why do you breastfeed for so long
- she only eats for 20 minutes, she should be eating longer then that when she feeds

I could go on and on and on and on and on with the amount of mix messages I got and negative comments people gave me about being a mom, but with hoping to not be offensive to anyone I would love to share my thoughts on being a mother.

Being a mother to Macie is the most wonderful, amazing, incredible, exciting, enjoyable experience of my life. There is nothing about it that is hard, overwhelming, stressful, annoying, or makes me mad. When she wakes up at 5:00 in the morning my heart starts pounding out of the excitement I feel to start another day with my girl. She eats and quickly falls back asleep for another 3 hours, when she awakes from that sleep to start her morning I leap out of bed to go in and get her as it is received with the biggest smiles and greatest hugs. We then usual get dressed, eat our breakfast and play in her room. I think this is just as exciting for me as it is for her, the smiles and giggles I get as we sing songs, make funny faces, and I give her soft gentle tickles and lots of wet kisses is priceless. Diaper changing throughout the day is never annoying as it means I get to blow on her tummy and wiggle her legs and get more smiles and giggles that melt my heart.  There was one point when breastfeeding annoyed me, but as I get closer and closer to going back to work everyday I am starting to cherish those sweet tender moments I have with her. Macie is definitely not perfect and she has her moments when she is fussy, spitting up, not eating well and waking up every 2 hours at night time. However I find when those moments happen all it does is make me appreciate Macie even more that these occurances are very rare that 90% of the time this little girl of mine is pretty wonderful. When Mark and I were having our struggles at getting pregnant I once had someone say to me just enjoy this time, be grateful you are not tied down, I am so jealous of you, you get to do what you want, have money for vacations and clothes and fun, have time to go to movies, workout and enjoy life. It is true we did get to do those things and I did try to enjoy my life the best I could and tried my best to not be down about not being a mother, but to that person you are a fool, there is no greater thing in the world, no experience that makes me feel closer to my Savior, and nothing that brings me more joy then being a Mother to Macie. It is worth the lose skin that might never go away around my stomach, the sleeps I have lost over the last 4 1/2 months and the future sleep I will lose, if I never get to see another movie again in my life I could care less, and if this half marathon of mine does not happen oh well. I would not trade being a mother for anything in this world. I LOVE it and I LOVE her and will never be able to thank my Savior enough for allowing me to be a Mother to one of his most precious daughters. There truly is no greater calling.

So Happy Mothers Day to Me and every other Mom out there