More great daily ideas of things for parents to do with their children…..
It has been a difficult few days. I feel like everything is going wrong. Like I have some sort of ‘curse’ on me. I know it is just my stinking thinking. I guess I have the ‘itty bitty s*itty committee’ meeting in my head and I have decided to serve them some tea and cake. I should be counting my blessings but the stress is just wearing on me. However, there has been some light at the end of the tunnel. My annual gift plans for my family, a calendar I create with the help of iPhoto and Apple, appeared to have been twarted. I was happy that Apple release it’s iLife ’11 and rushed out to purchase it. However, the newest version of iPhoto, after upgrading my iPhoto library and converting all my pictures to its newest format – did not allow the creation of calendars. What was I to do for the holidays this year. I started to look around for other places to print calendars – they all lacked the quality and the customization that I love from Apple and iPhoto. I had a lovely Apple employee say that I could use the computers in the Apple store to create and order my calendars. A customer service treat and a viable option!!! Until – drum roll please…… Apple just released (a few days ago) a new update for iLife ’11 that brings back my beloved calendars.
Ok universe!!!! It is on. Things are starting to go my way again – one calendar at a time!!!!!!
This also allows me to offer my customers calendars for their clients for 2011!!!!! The quality – the look and the feel – are really something. A great marketing idea.
I am hoping that this new and the distraction that comes along with it – will be enough to lift my spirits and chase that committee OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!!
My family and I are continuing to make healthy choices and some bad choices also. I have almost completely removed all GMO food from my diet and my sons. I am so glad that Certified Organic continues to mean GMO free. I am hoping that this does not change. It is an easier and quicker way of knowing if the item is GMO free without having to go online in the grocery store and look up brands. I am also very happy that I have been able to do a majority of my shopping at Target because they do offer a lot of certified organic items and the Archers Farms line have some certified organic items available. The packaging is slightly different and therefore easy to identify.
I have to admit that my husband has been buying ice-cream and other ‘treats’. He has not really been reading label when he goes out for ‘treats’. When I have it in the house, I do indulge also. I had not had any soda since we made this change, with the exception of GUS Soda and Izze. Hubby went to the store the other night to pick up ONE ITEM for our son. He came home with a loaf of bread, fondue and soda. Well – I could not say NO. That would be rude.
I have wanted to contact Target about the possibility of them expanding some of their Organic choices and being vigilant about keeping items in stock. A few times we have gone and they were already out of Organic, Cage-Free Eggs, Organic Milk, and a few other items. Especially organic frozen vegetables. Overall I have been impressed with their selection and overjoyed to live so close to Whole Foods for items that they do not have, items I am not sure about and for meats and chicken. Targets variety of meat and poultry is somewhat limited.
I have really been enjoying eating more vegetables and fresh food. I can not believe how different my eggs look and taste!!!! I was shocked at the difference. Even the shell feels different and you can really tell when you crack it open.
We have definitely not completed our diet changeover and have not progressed as quickly as I had hoped – but I am glad that we are still sticking with it and so far the changes we have made have become our normal way of doing this.
The school sends out this great calendar that has wonderful suggestions of daily activities that we can do with our children. I loved this idea so much that I wanted to share it….
Well the novelty of eating healthy has started to wear off – but the desire to eat well has not. A large factor for us changing our diet has been my sons health. Ironically, he has been sick with a virus this week and at this initially included him having little to no appetite. He was not really eating or drinking anything. My desire to give him healthy food soon became a desire to get anything into him. Sugar, junk, empty calories, GMO food, whatever he would allow me to feed him. He did not really eat anything that was not healthy, he just ate so very little…
and then yesterday…
My son started to feel better and ate, and ate, and ate. Healthy, not healthy, no nutritional value, he wanted FOOD. He ate bread and butter, lots of Popsicles (real fruit with no added sugar), fruit, yogurt, and so forth. I was so happy that he was eating and because we had changed a lot of the foods in the house over (same foods but healthier alternatives), all the stuff he was devouring was certified organic, GMO free, etc. It was food. Not a chemistry set. Maybe not the best of food and definitely not in balance, but it was FOOD!!!!
This has been my goal all along. For my family to eat FOOD.
It happened again! The craving for a greasy Nathan’s cheeseburger and fries struck again! This time it was easy to shake off, but we did want to get some food for all three of us and we did not want to spend a lot of money. I was stuck! I did not know where to go.
I especially wanted to avoid eating meat, at least meat that was full of hormones, antibiotics and you get the picture. Being new to this type of lifestyle, I did not know what restaurants were ‘safe’ to dine in or how to find those types of restaurants.
We ended up going somewhere and having salads. Which werw great and I enjoyed – but I would love to hear suggestions from people about how to find healthy restaurants or dine smart at other restaurants?
Would love some feedback and suggestions.
So far I have really been enjoying making the food choices we have been making. There are a few things I have enjoyed about this process so far. I feel that I am making positive choices for my family and the environment and when I am about to make a bad decision, I remind myself of what I am supporting by making that choice or purchase. I have enjoyed being more conscious about my food shopping and food decisions. I have enjoyed educating myself about reading labels and brands. I have also been quite proud of how I have dealt with mistakes I have made, poor choices and the exceptions.
I went food shopping the other day. I spent time reading labels, researching products on my phone, comparing products and really thinking about what I was putting in the shopping cart. One of the things on my list was juice for my husband. Juice is always shockingly less healthy than I think it is. It can be filled with little juice and lots of sugar. It can also be a costly item. For whatever reason, I paid less attention to the juice and bought the V8 Fusion because I thought it was healthy. Later that night, my husband went to get his juice and was amused that the top ingredient on his healthy juice was High Fructose Corn Syrup. Lesson learned – just because it looks healthy or I think it is healthy – has little bearing or whether it is healthy or not.
I have had some additional challenges when it comes to dietary changes because I have food allergies. I am allergic to nuts/seeds and seafood – so I have slightly less choices in what I can do. What we are starting with, it doing what we normally do, but do it more intelligently and using healthier alternatives. Tonight we went to Target, got the same things we normally get – but instead of a less healthy yogurt, I went with StonyField Farm Organic yogurt, organic fruits and vegetables, certified organic (no hormones, no antibiotics, etc) Turkey burgers, ground beef and chicken, Annie’s Bunnies instead of Macaroni and Cheese and Goldfish. Same but different and better….
On Wednesday, after a lot of thought, I started posting information about some of the problems that I was having with the food industry, factory farming, GMO food, and the future of our food. Then I cut up some organic oranges, apples, carrots and poured a large container of ice water and waited downstairs for my husband and son to pick me up. I gave them their after school and work snacks as we drove off to our next appointment. When we were done, we were driving home and deciding what we wanted for dinner.
There was a Nathan’s in that area and ever so often, when we were down in that area, we would go to Nathan’s. I wanted a Nathan’s hamburger!!! Despite spending about an hour reading about some of the horrors associated with that burger, posting on Facebook about the how to educate yourself about that system, and how to use politics to have your voice heard – I wanted a hamburger. I am glad that on this occasion, I did not give in to the desire. I kept thinking about what was really in ‘that burger’.
I have no desire to be a vegetarian. I believe that it is natural for people to eat meat, but the meat we are eating is no longer natural. I had to remind myself of how many cows were probably mixed together to get that hamburger patty. What was in the patty other than meat, and most importantly to me – the fact that this whole system is in place because I am consuming the end product. If I remove the demand – the supply will stop.
We are thinking about and discussing the small changes that we can make to our diets without being crazy and without having to starve or not pay bills because it is too expensive. Ideally, I would love to go to Farmer’s Markets and other local stores to support local farmers who are growing/producing organic and non-gmo foods, however I know myself enough to know that this only works in my head. I can not imagine myself really having the discipline to shop in multiple locations or have to drive out of my way to do my food shopping. Maybe eventually I can get to this point, but I am not there yet. So what small changes could we do first???
We have decided to start to educate ourselves more about food labels and ingredients. We have decided to avoid products with GMO ingredients (mostly corn, soy, canola oil, and cottonseed oil). GMO means genetically modified. Genetically modified food are not necessarily harmful, however they are not necessarily safe either. There have been no long-term studies to know if/what the long term effects of these genetically modified foods are on our bodies or on our children (genetically passed on). I also have a problem with how the GMO produce (and eventually fish and meat) are being used in soooo many products (i.e. Aspartame, Baking Powder, Malitol, Malt, Equal, etc) and that I do not agree with the practices of the people who are selling and promoting many GMO products in the industry.
We can also start to use Organic and certified Organic products. This way we are removing dangerous hormones from our diet, not taking in unnecessary antibiotics, and we are not supporting (hopefully) a system that treats people and animals very poorly, are adding dangerous chemicals and bacteria into the environment, and also using poor practices environmentally.
These are small steps for our starting place. We have gone to a few different grocery stores to purchase items and have found that we can spend a lot of money if we are not careful, but we can also keep the expenses down and spend almost the same as we usually spend on our groceries (if not a little less) depending upon the stores we purchased our shopping in. I think we can make these small and permanent changes….. but I will keep you updated!!!!!!!!
My family and I just recently watched Food, Inc., a documentary about the food that we are eating and the source of those foods. I thought the documentary would be interesting to watch and might have some points in it that I did not know, but overall would tell me about all the things that I already knew… that all the food I put in my mouth is poison and I am going to die from an eating related disease. Ok, I am being a little sarcastic. The reality is, I have heard for years about genetically modified foods, factory farms, how certain foods cause cancers, and so forth and so forth. I found it overwhelming and easier to ignore what I was hearing because I did not really want to change how I ate and it felt like these were people with extreme views, spreading fear to spread their agenda, and it did not really matter what I ate, it was ALL bad. Food, Inc and a couple of other documentaries I have watched recently, helped me to understand, in a more practical and realistic format, that I can make smarter and healthier choices for myself and my family. It also helped me to understand the implications of the food that we are eating from the more obvious health implications to the bigger picture, how this also impacts the economy, agriculture, human rights, treatment of animals, and so on and so forth.
I realized that with my husbands support, we could make changes that could impact our sons health for years to come. This is what spoke the strongest to me. I want to do the best by my son and although it is not always clear what that is but I believe that in this case, good nutrition is a smart choice for all of us. My husband and I had a lot of discussion about what changes we could make that were small and we could make permanently.
TweeterMum
Tweetermum was born when a therapist had her first child and became a stay-at-home Mum. While learning to parent and adjusting to a new life - this blog also came into being. I have an outlet to express myself and share some of my fears, joys, and growing pains as I grow with my son, Caleb.
