Addictions

I'm addicted to cooking and finding recipes. My husband says that there're worst things to be addicted to. I can't help myself of finding new recipes and trying out new treats or foods. My husband and my 1,5 year old daughter are my guinea pigs. To be honest, they eat almost anything so if they don't like something, it's really bad..

Sometimes I'm little late with the newest trends. I might think that it doesn't sound good or it's stupid. And then I try something years later and am addicted. That's how I roll :D! So my newest passion and obsession is a smoothie bowl and warm healthy "afternoon" drinks. Only this week I found a smoothie bowl addiction and every morning I wake up excited to make and eat my breakfast. And afternoon when my little princess is taking a nap I make my warm healthy afternoon drink. Today I made this absolutely yummy Golden Latte. I found it from the Vanelja blog and you can find the recipe here: http://vanelja.fi/colorful-cozy-soul-lattes/ .

The smoothie bowl that I made this week got inspiration from the I quit sugar -website, but soon that website will not exist anymore :(. That has been my biggest inspiration for living a healthier life so I'm quite sad about the newest news what I heard about that website.

I'm on my 23rd week pregnant now and my appetite has grown like crazy. I could eat all the time, and I do actually. I try to keep it healthy but sometimes I just can't help myself when I get a sweet tooth. It's horrible and after eating something crappy sugary thing I don't feel good. I'm looking forward the time when I can eat healthy again and get rid of the sugar cravings. Sometimes I thin k how lucky our daughter is when she doesn't even get that option to have anything sugary and unhealthy. Yes, you read it right, we haven't given her sugar yet. We think that it's better for her future to keep her away from sugar as long as possible. We are aware that the time will come when we can't keep her away from sugar all the time but we have decided not to have sugar at our home because it's not good for anyone. Also she eats better when we don't give her sweets and when she's not use to artificial tastes.

We are moving in a week. I'm excited about to have a bigger apartment, almost twice as big as we have now. So you can only imagine my decoration inspiration. It's going out of control. The only thing and possibly the biggest thing is money. We can't afford all my inspirational decorations. But still I'm excited. After a year sleeping on a couch without a bedroom is nice to have a bedroom for ourselves. Also is nice to have some room in general.

Confession

I have to be honest with you guys. When you start reading my blog, you might think that I'm some kind of a "superhuman" who thinks it's easy to leave sugar from your life and start the healthy habits. I have to say that when I started this sugar-free journey almost two years ago I had to be very very strict with myself. I still need to be. I'm the type of a person who loves to challenge myself and see how far I can go. So I took this challenge for myself.

Before I started I read a lot of good literature (I love books!), made notes and started to get to know different kinds of new food ingredients, mostly vegetables. I took a whole new attitude towards healthier eating thinking that I want to feel better. Also, I was little curious would there be some help for my skin. It wasn't the most convenient time making big changes to my diet when I was pregnant but I really wanted to try and plus eating healthier would be just beneficial for myself and an unborn baby, right? So I quit sugar. It was hard. So hard. To be honest, that wasn't the last time when I quit sugar. During the two years, I've been eating sugar sometimes maybe little bit too much but always came back to the healthier eating. Every time it has been easier and easier to quit sugar. And every time I have realized how bad I feel after eating a bunch of sugar and wheat. I have also realized that sugary things don't taste as good as they used to do. Every time when that happens, I'm a little disappointed, why I even needed to put that garbage to my body since it doesn't even give me a pleasure?

When I was pregnant to Isabella I had very strong sugar cravings all the time. It was ridiculous. I also suffered the pregnancy diabetes. Before I got to know that I already had stopped eating sugar, but I guess it didn't help. After Isabella was born my sugar cravings disappeared. It was funny how fast it happened. Now when I'm pregnant again I try to be very gentle for myself. I suffered almost three months the morning sickness and it was horrible. So I had to be very gentle for my body because the only things that felt good to eat was bread, bread and sometimes ice cream. So I ate. A lot of garbage. But that was the only thing that helped me to feel even slightly better.

After our (unsuccessful) Thailand trip all of a sudden I felt that I need to start eating healthy. I was so bored with eating meat and chicken so I started to look for vegetarian recipes. For long time I've been wanting to cook vegetarian food but I haven't had the courage to even start looking for any good recipes. I have always thought that eating vegetarian is boring and you just have empty and unsatisfied feeling afterwards. I was so wrong. My husband has been asking me for long time when we start eating vegetarian and it could be cheaper too. I have always avoided that topic because it made me feel uncomfortable. Funny isn't it? I guess it was because cooking vegetarian was way out of my comfort zone. But this time my curiosity was stronger and I found amazing recipes from Deliciously Ella -blog and I was sold. I've been cooking now almost two weeks only vegetarian foods and it's amazing! The foods are so simple to make and tastes so good. I would have never believed that I could fall for vegetarian! And guess what? They are filling and don't let me feel empty. I haven't craved any meat! I don't know how long I can cook like this but I feel good and also my skin looks already better.

Lately I have been reading about different cultures' health habits. It's so interesting. So far I've read how people eat in Japan and why they are the healthiest people in the world. Currently I'm reading why French women don't gain weight even though they eat bread, chocolate, wine etc. So far I've learnt that it's all about balancing, appreciating everything what you put to your mouth and sitting still while you're eating. So simple, but nowadays how many can do that? So I started, I stopped reading while I'm eating. I enjoy the tastes of the food I eat and sitting on the table and found out that it's not boring. It's actually fun to taste all the tastes, every little bite you take you feel it. It's like a little meditation moment. At the same time it makes me to appreciate the food very different way than before. I love the new ways of learning how to be fully present. I've noticed it about everything.  We have a habit with my husband that very evening before Isabella goes to bed we spend a little family time. We all enjoy it so much. We play funny games with her, sing songs, build blogs or read books with her. You can really see how it makes Isabella more happy when she can be the centre of the attention and we can both spend quality time with her. I really hope that we can continue that habit for many many years.

My husband made a vegetable soup only using a blender!

I have noticed that I have a very different approach for my current pregnancy than I had last time. I'm more relaxed and calm than ever before. I'm glad I have a chance to do it one more time because last time I was very stressed, bored and uncomfortable all the time. Now I want to listen to my body and be gentle to myself. My mind is more calm and I don't get frustrated that easy. It feels great. I also want to feel the baby year with this baby different way than with Isabella. With her I was so stressed all the time when I wanted to be perfect mom and do everything different way than any other mom in this neighborhood, and I failed. Now I just want to take it easy and as relaxed as I can take it with our little toddler included. I want to feel that "baby bubble" that people talk about all the time. I have to say that I didn't experience that with Isabella. I was so stressed and worried all the time. But now I'm more aware of the things what can happen and have more knowledge about the tricks what works and what are worth of trying. And also now I know that phases don't last forever.

                                                             Have a peaceful week!
 

A dream which turned out to be a nightmare

My husband and I had a dream. We were dreaming to go for some warm, sunny place where we could relax and enjoy good food and have fun. We were dreaming to go to Asia where we really haven't been before. The only tropical place we both had been was Hawaii, but it was not really a vacation. So now we wanted to try Thailand. I was thinking that country to be a heaven because of the beautiful pictures I've seen and the delicious food I've tried. And also I was thinking that it has to be safe and amazing country since it's one of the most visited vacation places according to Finns.

The last fall was the worst for us. We both were so depressed and we literally were laying on the floor every day while our daughter was playing around us. We were so depressed that we didn't feel like doing anything or being social at all. I was just working and my husband was going to school and when we were at home, we laid on the floor doing nothing. The weather was horrible. It was raining literally every single day and it was so dark that we didn't feel like going anywhere else than to grocery store. It was probably the hardest fall ever for me adding to that I suffered for pregnancy nauseousness. Then I decided that I won't do it again. I simply can't handle it another time. 

Oh well, somehow we survived that long season and when my winter vacation became closer we decided to explore Thailand without any plan. That wasn't a very good idea. Before we left I talked with many of my co-workers who have been to Thailand and they all just told me how easy, cheap and beautiful and amazing country it is. No one told me anything what things you should be aware of.  So we went to Krabi. We were little nervous how our sweet girl will behave this time on the airplane now when she's 6 months older than last time we flew with her. It went okay until I tried to get her to fall asleep. After a couple of hours, I somehow succeeded and she was sleeping on the floor on my leg space. Of course, I couldn't sleep because I was afraid that she will wake up. And she woke up when there was still 4 hours left and she didn't calm down. Everyone on the plane could hear her and woke up because of our noisy daughter. It was a nightmare. People looked at me with very bad eye and I just decided to smile at them and ignore those looks, because what else I could have done? 

So when we arrived we didn't have any place where to go and had no clue where we should even go. Somehow we found for our first night a decent hotel room. We stayed positive and were waiting for the amazing time in Thailand we had in our minds. For the next day, my husband found an island called Railey. We took a boat and went there. There were no cars and only beach. It looked amazing, just what we wanted! So we stayed there and enjoyed. We decided to stay on that island for the rest of our time because we didn't want to stress about where to go next. We ended up in a nice hotel with a swimming pool. After a couple of days, my husband started to feel nauseous and we found out that he had a food poisoning. So he was out for the next day. It was horrible. When he started to get better I started to get same symptoms and I was out. Then I decided that I don't want to stay here anymore. I want to go home, now! The only problem we had was that there were only 2 flights per week going back to Finland and we were using my standby tickets without a seat. So we could only fly if there was room on the plane. There wasn't for two days. It was overbooked. I started to panic and then we were thinking that we could fly to Singapore from Krabi and then home. So we did that. We left the next day and I felt little better already. 

Enjoying the heat!

I fell in love with Singapore immediately. Only things I knew about the country were that it's super clean, chewing gum is not allowed and it's super expensive. Well, coming from Finland the prices weren't that bad. We were planning to stay in Singapore only one night and then fly back home but I started to feel bad again. The next day I threw up on the street and was afraid that someone will give me a ticket for that. That didn't happen. I just figured that I should go to the hospital since I'm pregnant and the vomiting and diarrhea have lasted for too long. So I went to the cleanest hospital I've ever seen. They took blood tests and ultrasound. After five hours being there, I got a permission to fly home and we sure did! The flight back was so much better with Isabella, she slept almost the whole flight, so did we. 

After all that we decided not to travel for a long time. It was way too much. Also traveling with a toddler is not the easiest. Isabella wants to walk now all the time and wants to do everything on her own and she can't do that much yet. She loves the water but she doesn't want us to hold her so it's kind of difficult situation. It was one of the worst vacations we have had so far. We had good times there but it was more pain than pleasure. Also if you think you can relax with a toddler, forget about it. 

Isabella loved coconut water!

So, another lesson learned. Stay home, hahah! Btw, I was five days still sick after we came back home and I had to go to the doctor in Finland again, but nothing was found. Just a typical tourist bacteria like the doctor said. You can bet that next trip we plan well ahead and when our youngest child is 3 years old. We can visit the US before that but nowhere else. 

 

Traveling with a toddler, do I need to say more?

The Importance Of Simplicity

I don't get often sick. Now it happened. I was challenging myself this fall that I will eat super healthy and only the healthiest vegetables and spices I can find and will that help? My job is challenging. We work long days with hundreds of people who have all kind of bacterias and viruses that we don't know. We work very close with them and spend time with them many hours in a place where the air is same all the time. So that would be a miracle if I didn't get sick in some point the time when there is over 200 viruses going on. That's what my doctor just told me that it's almost impossible to recognize the viruses right now when there is so many at the same time.

Oh well, I guess I'm not a super human even though I really wanted to be. I guess the body puts it to rest when it has worked too much. That happened to me. I have to tell that lately I haven't been able to rest much. But now I have had so much time to rest because I haven't been able to do house chores and it feels amazing. Even though my head is spinning a lot, still I feel so calm and relaxed because I have a permit to relax. Isn't it funny?

At some point I was looking forward to go for layovers because I didn't need to do anything there, I could just relax at the hotel room, watch some shows, read books and exercise. I didn't realize that until my husband said to me that he was sad that I had to go again and I was excited to go to work because I knew that after work I could go to hotel and just relax. Then I realized that I have made my own home an uncomfortable place. Why's that? Because I feel that I have to constantly clean, organize, cook or do laundry, non stop. No one asks for me to do that but I feel that I just have to because otherwise nothing works. We don't have food, we have a messy house and we run out of clean clothes. Sometimes I have felt that doing house chores is more work than being actually at work. I don't want to live like that.  Now when I have been sick, I have done very minimal, like I should. I just realized that all that is just in my head. I feel that I have to be the best wife and mother. I want to be a super woman, I want to be the most efficient as possible but I exhaust myself with that. I can't be all of that and I don't even want that. I want to do just the things that I like doing and try to delegate. Yes, I realized the other day that my husband can cook, he made green eggs it was delicious and I ate the left overs the next day and it was yummy.

Now I have been thinking that I don't want to stress about things that I really don't need to. The laundry will never end, the cooking never stops, the messiness will always be there I just need to learn to balance.

I just came from the doctor today and she gave me two more days of sick leave. I was sad because I wanted to go back to work, but I'm still too weak to work. I have to start to honor my body and mind. To be honest, I've been enjoying my time at home. I have rested, watched TV shows more than ever before and read book. I've been more relaxed than I can remember and slept so good for long time.

Keep it simple, don't try to over achieve yourself every day, it will exhaust you sooner than you think. If you can't relax, your body teaches you to relax, it knowns when it's too much.

The reality of life

As much as I love to be a mom I can't deny that it is a challenging job. Right now I'm suffering insomnia, it's the hardest thing you can get when you have a small child and a irregular job. As much as I love to be a flight attendant I have come to realization that it might be too much for me and for our family. Not having a network, my husband trying to study and me trying to catch up the sleep, it's very difficult. I have had difficulties falling a sleep after night shifts and it's not healthy for long term. I have had a dream to become a flight attendant since I was a kid, for three years I have been able to make my dream come true. I have also tried to reach up even higher to the sky to get a better flight attendant job in a biggest Finnish airline but I have to admit that it might be too much for me. When I started my job asa flight attendant I thought that would be the job that I do for the rest of my life, not necesserily in the same company but I thought that I finally found my calling. Now I think I have to let my dream go.

I've always reached up the sky and done everything to make my dreams come true. I have to say that I have done pretty cool stuff because I have let myself to dream and make them true. Now I have realized that sometimes you just have to let your dreams go if they are not bringing the best in to your life and if they are harmful for yourself or for your family.  Not to think bitter about it but reaching up other opportunities in your life and start dreaming again.

But it's not easy to let your dream go. It's like being an athlete and to get injured and know that you're not able to compete anymore.

Being a flight attendant has been the coolest job I have ever had. It is sometimes hard to describe. Everyday when you go to work you have no idea who you work with, do you know them or not, and what's going to happen in the whole day. You might get a phone call that the flight that you're supposed to go today is cancelled so you get a day off. Or during the flight can happen oh so many things that brings your day so many emotions. Sometimes you are rerouted to another destination if there's something wrong about the airplane or if the weather is not good to land to the planned destination. In that job you have to be able to multitask and if you're not good at problem solving, you'll learn pretty fast, because there's no other option. Being a flight attendant is so much more than serving beverages and looking pretty. Oh, that would be the easiest thing if it was all about that. Let me say, that it's 10 % that what the passengers see us doing. Our job is to be nurses, fire fighters, psychologists, polices, you name it. So far in my career nothing too crazy has happened but so many random things that only can happen in the air. So many times I have thought what if something happens and I probably freeze and don't know how to act, but the things what have happened in my flights I have surprised myself that every time I have reacted super fast and known what to do. And learnt from that what to do differently if that happens next time.  Every job has its ups and downs, my job has the irregularity and long days.  

My other job, being a mom is challenging too. Now when the baby time is over starts to be a toddler and I have no idea what to do. I thought life would get easier with your own child when you already know her and have survived the challenging newborn face, but now the things are going so much more complicated. Like one of my friend said that after a  while you start realizing that you have to start raising the child too, it's not enough anymore to just taking care of the child and responding the child's needs. It's harder than I thought it would be. To be honest, I'm lost sometimes. How many great ideas I had when I was reading all the good books about terrible two's and how I know what to do. And I've heard, it doesn't get any easier. Sometimes I feel that I'm scared of the moments when Isabella is having her melt downs and crying like crazy on the floor if she doesn't get her will. Every time when that happens, I freeze.

But spending time with her is priceless. She is learning so much right now. Only thing that I have to remind myself so often that house chores can wait, Isabella is only ones a child. I remember when I was a child and my mom was always at home with me but never present. If I asked her to play with me, she wasn't present, very often she was doing something else at the same time. Every time when I'm playing with Isabella I notice myself doing the same than my own mom did and I get so mad at myself and stop folding the laundry or what ever am I doing. My husband is awesome, he is always concentrating to Isabella when he is playing with her. He is the most wonderful dad I've ever seen. He is really present and never gets tired of playing with her or reading books to her. He's excited to teach to Isabella all kinds of things and I'm so proud of that. Every time she I see him with Isabella I admire him and trying to do the same.

There are so many things in this life to learn but your children are the best teachers. You learn so many things from them.

Back to the reality

It's 5 am and I've been awake for almost 2,5 hours... Yeah, I woke up when my baby girl woke up and I had to calm her down back to sleep. She fell asleep, I did not. I tried so hard but after two hours laying on the bed trying to fall asleep I decided to do something else. I suffer insomnia. I have always had problems with sleeping. Since I can remember, I have always had a difficult time to fall asleep and go back to sleep. I still have this rhythm waking up with Isabella to feed her, even though I haven't needed to do that for almost 5 months. Any tips?

My insomnia right now has a very simple reason: jet lag. 10 hours time difference is a lot. They say that it is always easier to go to the west and harder to the east. I agree. And they also say that it takes as many days to recover from jet lag as many hours is the time difference. I agree that too.

So, we are back home and it's so good! We truly love our small home. We have made it exactly how we have wanted and it's awesome. It's so good to be back home. We were gone a month and it feels so long.

Our eating habits were totally different, read: worse. I didn't feel good at all, neither my husband. So I'm excited to go back to our sugar-free and wheat free diet again. Before I tried this "new" diet a year ago I didn't think that my body felt bad, but going back to the old diet I noticed the change immediately. I felt so much weaker, more tired and my guts weren't working. That motivates me to go back to the healthier diet again. It takes time to get the body to cleanse all the bad food I have eaten and it's not easy, but it's so worth it.

The funny thing I noticed during our trip, I didn't crave any sugar. And if I ate something sweet, I didn't enjoy it. I was so happy about that. I was a sugar addict and now my taste buds have changed! That's amazing. It has been a long road and it hasn't been easy but it's so worth it. I love the way I have changed. I'm thinking differently about nutrition than ever before. I also know so much more about nutrition than ever before and I am so excited to learn more and more. Recently we watched with my husband a documentary called "Food Inc." It was eye opening and put me thinking how much meat I should eat and what kind. Obviously, it was made in the USA and I don't believe the food industry is similar to Finland, but it made me think that I should start thinking about where I buy my meat and what kind. We can't afford only organic food, but if we ate mostly vegetarian and twice a week good quality meat, that could work.

I'm excited to go back to our own routines and start living healthier again. I also tried lots of yoga during the vacation and I feel amazing! It really helps my back pain and I also love the energizing feeling what I get from it. I love feeling stronger and I feel that I'm capable of doing so much more now. I highly recommend adding 10-15 minutes yoga for your day, it's amazing!

A healthy option for a cake: watermelon cake!

Meat pizza (the crust is made from meat).

Zucchini ham gluten free bread.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

3.4.2017

It's amazing how much love you can have for such a small creature. Every day I feel so blessed by my own daughter. She gave me the ability to love in a way that I wouldn't have ever imagined. She is the most amazing thing in the whole world. Every day I look at her thinking "how wonderful little creature she is". Now she has discovered her tongue and she's showing that all the time and licking everything. It's pretty cute.

Even though she can be annoying sometimes and I'm often tired because of her, still every day she gives me so much joy and happiness. I could kiss her all day long and still feel that I haven't kissed her enough. She is so kissable! I could hug her and squeeze her so much but I have to be careful not to break her 😅.

Now when Isabella is already 7 months old, it's hard to remember the time when she was born. I have been going through her smallest clothes and realized how much clothes she had. I remember being stressed because I didn't have time to use all the clothes she had. Now I would know better how much and what kind of clothes would be good.

It's crazy how fast babies grow. A few months ago she couldn't do much and I was frustrated with her because she was getting tired laying on the floor. We had to carry her all the time. Now she is the totally different girl. She is the happiest baby in the world. She smiles all the time and giggles when I do something funny. The best moments I have with her when we laugh together. I laugh because she laughs and she laughs because I laugh. I love spending time with her. When she's fussy, I hold her and we go to the mirror and watch each other and make faces or I put her on the floor and sing to her and she enjoys so much. I can't wait to see what kind of personality she will have later. She is already showing a quite strong temper and I know that I might have a hard time with her. Oh boy..! At least we grow along with her.

It is amazing to realize how you can control your own child, most of the times... I mean when you realize what works and what doesn't. I have learned with Isabella, that I have to use a lot of humor with her. It also calms me down when I start singing something silly while she cries when I feed her. All of a sudden she stops crying and listens to my funny songs and finishes her food. Or if she's being fussy on the floor I might go play with her or start making funny rhythms and she gets so happy. My husband has started to do same because it works. Some outsider would think we are insane if he saw us 😂.  Well, we are just little bit different parents. It's exciting to see how our daughter will be like.