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?