I am loving juicing. I feel more energized and ready for the day. I especially love juicing with ginger and cucumber in my mix.

Ginger is great in small amounts (learned that the hard way) and is known to be a great anti-inflammatory as well as a nice aide in settling your intestinal tract.

Cucumbers are gaining wide popularity for their antioxidant, anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties.  I can’t go without adding them to my juice in the mornings since they add such a bright, refreshing zing to my drink!

Here’s one of my favorite combos lately:

• 2 oranges
• 2 carrots
• 3 granny smith apples
• 1/2 cucumber
• 2 inches ginger

Drink up!

Take a look at this:

Because of that picture, I will be eliminating the 8 top allergens from my diet immediately. Jonah’s eczema started as a mild baby rash that has just gotten out of control with the more time that passes. I’ve been through this with Sadie and all of her allergies, so I have no clue why I didn’t connect the dots until today, but he obviously has some major food allergies that are being passed through my milk from what I am eating.

It hit me like a ton of bricks today when I realized the past few weeks he has been increasingly fussy instead of his normal calm, his sleeping has deteriorated drastically, and his eczema has simultaneously taken off to the point of pure pain, I’m sure. There is no doubt in my mind all of these factors collide with the same mystery cause.

I sent my friend in Arizona the picture of his back and she called me two minutes later and the tears were already flowing. Breastfeeding is the best thing you can do for your baby’s health and immunity. It kills me and pains me that I am obviously causing a bad reaction for his little body. Luckily, she’s amazing with words and has been through the battle and back with her daughter and gave me my battle plan along with a good dose of encouragement.

I will be taking out the following allergens from my diet for quite a while and will be slowly adding in one at a time until I am sure of the culprit(s):

• Milk
• Egg
• Peanuts
• Tree nuts (such as walnuts or almonds)
• Fish
• Shellfish
• Soy
• Wheat

Please pray for our little guy and that he gets relief soon. Breaks a Mama’s heart.

As a stay-at-home Mama, it can be easy to start to talk like my two year old. So, in an effort to always be learning and to be a growing individual, I have made it a goal to read a minimum of 6 books this year.

I considered a book a month for a total of 12 (yes, I can count), but let’s face it. I have two kids in diapers. Let’s not bite off more than we can chew here.

I’ve tried to vary each topic so that I’m reading something I’m either genuinely interested in learning more about or that is meeting a need of mine at this point in my life personally.

Let me know if you’ve read any of them and what you’re thoughts were.

Here are the winners:

• Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches
• One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
• Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living
• The Money Saving Mom’s Budget
• Entre Leadership
• Made to Crave

Here’s what we’re eating this week:

1. Turkey Chili

2. Wet Bean & Cheese Burritos and Salad

3. Crockpot Rosemary Garlic Chicken

4. Vegan Pesto

5. Shabbat with the clan

Likes:

• He’s ticklish. If you rub your nose and kiss him on the bottom of his ribs, you’ll get belly laughs.
• Bath time. Put the boy in water and he starts his kickin’.
• Watching Sadie play. Every time she’s around him, he gets a curious look on his face and is completely fixated.
• Girls. He loves Daddy like nobody else, but he also does this cute open mouth smile with a thrown back head tilted to the side for the ladies.
• His fist in his mouth. He won’t take a pacifier, but he tries to stick his entire fist in his mouth so he can drool all over himself. Teething so soon?! I think so.
• Diaper changes. He always starts in with the smiles when he gets a new diaper.
• Open mouth kisses. He opens his mouth wide and finds your cheek and lays on the slobber!
• Mornings. Most mornings he wakes up before me, I roll over in a daze and see this little man grinning from ear to ear grunting at me. Not a bad way to start any day.

Dislikes:

• Car seat. We are still screaming a good part of the time in the car. There’s no rhyme or reason to it and no amount of toys dangling for him to look at or persuasiveness on Sadie’s part to be quiet help him. He gets himself so worked up that by the time we get to our destination he has wet clothes from sweating and has scratched himself on the face. So maybe putting him in naked and with gloves on would be a good idea!
• Not being worn. The boy is going through a phase (please remind me this is a phase) where he wants to be held when he sleeps. He prefers to hear a heartbeat and for you not to be sitting down. Most of the time if you put him down in the other room and leave to go do something, he senses it and wakes up within 10 minutes. This just means we will have buff arms and can easily finish a full marathon by the time he learns how to walk.
• His eczema. It seems to be getting worse than the previous weeks, so I’m officially cutting out dairy to see if it helps him any. We can tell it bothers him and it probably contributing to the increased fussiness he’s had. Of course, going dairy-free probably will because it’s just my kinda luck!

Milestones to note:

• Great head control.
• Starting to grasp for things.
• Rolls over from tummy to back and more recently back to tummy.
• Can sit up assisted for short intervals.
• Sleeping through the night with a waking around 3:00 am to eat and then every couple days has a rougher night for reasons we haven’t figured out yet.

Most recently, my other brother Matt, and his wife, Marilee have followed the Lord’s leading and open doors to start the process to invite their fourth child into their home from Ethiopia. I won’t go any further in explanation than that because their adoption website is so moving and inspiring.

Please go check out their story and consider giving to their cause. We can’t wait to add another beautiful niece to the family that God has specifically hand-picked for them already.

One area is taking care of myself better by being more selfish.

I lack when it comes to eating right in the last 3 months. Don’t get me wrong. I have a ton of healthy options stocked in our kitchen and we make it a priority not to eat junk (other than when I’m pregnant and crave it).

But since Jonah has been born, I have found myself either not eating at all,  or inhaling food in mass volumes simply because I don’t know when the next opportunity to eat will come or because I have to eat fast when I’m needed.

The most irritating thing to me is that it’s been hard for me to fit in my fruits and veggies when I haven’t prepped them ahead of time so I can just grab on the go.

Here’s where my life-saver has come in and where my goal will be accomplished:

This beauty, the Breville Compact Juice Fountain, is my five minutes of selfishness in the mornings where I juice myself a nutritious breakfast that sets me up for a good day. I’ve only had it a couple of days, but already see the difference in how it makes me feel throughout. I don’t have a blaring headache by 10:00 am, I don’t feel hungry in the afternoon, and I love the fact that I can drink several servings and fresh fruits and veggies in one shot.

As I find yummy concoctions, I’ll post recipes and little tidbits on the benefits on each ingredient.

Part of the joy I get out of menu planning, other than the money it inevitably saves us, is that I get to pour over my recipe books, my favorite blogs, and the all-consuming Pinterest. Menu planning has unashamedly become a hobby that I get to use some of my oozing creativity and love of cooking with!

It frustrated me to no end that I was having to hurry myself through the process from start to finish. I didn’t have the time to peruse the sales. I didn’t have time to find new and interesting recipes to try out, and I was getting sloppy with our budget since I was in desperation just to get food on the table before the people in my home had desperately low blood sugar levels!

With monthly menu planning, I only have to force myself to think about it one time a month and I’m set. Here’s how I organize it:

• Name the meal (e.g. Black Bean Quesadillas)
• Number the meal (e.g. 1. Black Bean Quesadillas)
• Make a list of needed ingredients that correspond with the meal number (e.g. Whole Wheat Tortillas (1), Black Beans (1), Cheese (1))

Weekly, I simply look at my month list of meals and pick what sounds good and then look at my ingredient list to take note of what needs to be bought.

No more cramming. No more last minute runs or eating out. Problem solved. It only took me almost 3 months with a new baby to figure out.

Here’s what we’re eating this week:

1. Tarragon Chicken, Rice Pilaf & Honey Almond Green Beans
2. Lasagna
3. Beer Mac & Cheese
4. Three Bean Chili & Cornbread
5. Brinner (Breakfast for Dinner)
6. Shabbat with the clan

Photo Credit