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.

The Word You Want to Hear

19.3.2017

It's funny that nowadays when you can share everything you want in social media, you most often post things you have accomplished. Everyone likes compliments and it feels even better when you have done something and someone notices that and is grateful for it without you bragging about it. I do that very often to my husband. I love house chores and I feel very productive and proud of myself when I have cooked, cleaned, baked and done laundry within those 5 hours while my husband is at school. Then when he comes home I tell him what I have accomplished and he is proud of me and says thank you for doing all of that. I feel so much better, I feel that I have really done something very productive. Just a simple word "thank you" makes me feel so good.

Today I was feeling very energetic and started to cook and baked like crazy. Then I had so many things on my mind and felt like bragging to my husband what I'm doing and what I still want to do. But all of a sudden I felt exhausted and realized what I was doing. Whenever I have a need to list to someone how much work I have done and what exactly I've done it feels like bragging and whenever I stay quiet about my accomplishments it feels so much better when someone notices it without telling them.

So today I stopped myself when I went crazy with my thoughts. I was thinking to do so much and luckily I sat down and took a deep breath and relaxed. I still have this feeling that I need to do so much while Isabella is napping. I never know how long she sleeps during the day and whenever I have put her for a nap start thinking what I want to do when I have alone time. Every single day I have to remind myself that I need to calm down and do the things what I really want to do and some of the stuff I can do while Isabella is awake. Very often I find myself disappointed when I have taught how much I want to do and then I haven't done anything or enough. It's stupid.. But I realized that whenever I like doing something I don't need to brag about it, but if I need an encouragement I have to tell what I have been doing.

I love sharing recipes. When I was crazy about sugar I was baking all the time. Every time when someone came over I started to stress what could I bake. I had to think something that I haven't offered to that guest yet and needed to find an amazing recipe. Almost every time my guests were impressed by my baking skills and very often they left home with a recipe with them. I enjoyed that but at the same time, it was quite stressful. I made it stressful. When I started my new diet I noticed that I stopped stressing out whenever someone came to visit. It was such a relief! Now I bake less but cook more and it's fun! Now I just want to share all my recipes with my friends because the food I cook is awesome and it's healthy. The best thing is that I don't stress about it anymore. Besides, I started to plan ahead our meals for the coming week and that took one big stress away from me. My sister in law came to visit us and she got excited about the food I cooked. I promised her that I will share the recipes with her. Since I use mostly recipes from www.iquitsugar.com  or Sarah Wilson's books in English, so I started translating them into Finnish for her. I am a fan of Sarah Wilson 😁. She makes cooking fun and simple. One day I want to come up with my own sugar-free recipes, but I guess first I need more knowledge about all the different kinds of ingredients and how to combine them.

Our baby girl is growing so fast. All of a sudden she just became such a big girl. She learned to crawl two days ago and now she is very adventurous little human. She loves mirrors and her pictures. She loves her mom and dad the most that is for sure. She also loves guests. She loves when people come over. I hope that lasts. I'm trying to make her social but you never know what kind she will be when she grows. I love spending time with her. My favorite game with her is when I dress her up. Sometimes when I need to keep her awake I start dressing her up with all the dresses she has and making her look like a princess. Then we go to see a mirror and I say how beautiful she is and she can't stop smiling. I know what do you think, it's probably more fun for me than it's for her.. I loved playing with barbies and dolls when I was a kid and now I have a real live doll 😅! My husband always laughs and says to Isabella: "Is mommy playing that you are a doll again?". Then I take pictures of her of course.


Ps. If you are interested in cooking sugar-free or just like to try the recipes what I make, let me know so I can share those with you.