Dur­ing the time I was eat­ing dairy free, I found out just how impor­tant meal plan­ning was.  If I planned my meals, most of the time I was sat­is­fied, healthy, and con­tent as far as food was con­cerned.  When I didn’t and tried to wing it, I ended up unhappy, hun­gry, and gen­er­ally miss­ing some sort of hid­den dairy.  That also meant I ended up with an unhappy baby.  It was not worth it.

Since I wrote about eat­ing dairy free, I have been notic­ing that many of the search results that lead to peo­ple find­ing my blogs are those related to dairy free eat­ing while breast­feed­ing.  Because of that, I decided to com­pile some food and meal ideas here in one post.  So, here it is a sam­ple meal plan of what we might have eaten in a week while I was dairy free:

Sun­day:

• Break­fast — Steel cut oats with apple and cin­na­mon and a lit­tle brown sugar (You could use a sprin­kle of brown sugar and some almond milk or rice milk, too, if you want.)
• Lunch — Tor­tilla wrap with peanut but­ter, honey, and banana
• Sup­per — Spaghetti (Every­one else ate cheese, I did not)

Mon­day:

• Break­fast — Smoothie (Rice milk, banana, frozen of fresh fruit, honey if you like it a bit sweeter, and if you are look­ing to add pro­tein; tofu)
• Lunch — Black bean soup
• Sup­per — Stir fry (Before I stopped eat­ing meat, we would throw chicken, broc­coli, beans, peas, car­rots, and cau­li­flower into our wok.  Now, we would skip the chicken and use chick­peas instead.)  Some­times I used this recipe, but some­times I just used Kikko­man Soy Sauce to fla­vor it.

Tues­day:

• Break­fast– Peanut but­ter and jelly toast (Made with home­made bread — If you’re very care­ful you can find bread at the store with no dairy.  Another option would be to look for bread at your local bak­ery or nat­ural food store.)
• Lunch — Taco salad (No cheese or sour cream) — Let­tuce, taco meat (if you eat meat), toma­toes, black beans, salsa
• Sup­per — Beef Stuffed Peppers

Wednes­day:

• Break­fast — Scram­bled eggs with salsa
• Lunch -   Spinach Straw­berry Salad
• Sup­per — Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup

Thurs­day:

• Break­fast– Morn­ing Glory Muffins I didn’t have apple but­ter, so I used apple­sauce.  I’m not sure if that’s a great sub­sti­tu­tion or not, but the muffins turned out well.
• Lunch — Lentils and rice with fried onions
• Sup­per — Hum­mus pizza (with no cheese in my part, but chopped toma­toes over the top to keep the other veg­eta­bles moist)

Fri­day:

• Break­fast– Smoothie (Almond or rice milk, banana, honey, and peanut butter)
• Lunch — Span­ish rice
• Sup­per — Corn flake chicken — Chicken dipped in rice milk and cov­ered in crushed corn flakes

Sat­ur­day:

• Bunch — French toast (use almond or rice milk instead of cow’s milk) and eggs, sausage, or bacon
• Sup­per — BBQ Chicken in the crockpot

Snacks:

Fruit Salsa with cin­na­mon chips

Nuts

Dried fruit

Nuts and dried fruit together to make trail mix

Hum­mus (I used chick­peas instead of black beans) for crack­ers or vegetables

Fresh fruit or vegetables

Apples (or apple sauce) with cinnamon

Desserts: (The desserts required some substitutions)

Hershey’s Choco­late Cake — Sub­sti­tute almond or rice milk for the cow’s milk in the cake and frost­ing.  For the frost­ing, you can use a soy mar­garine.  If you pre­fer not to do that, you can melt dairy free choco­late chips in a dou­ble boiler and use that to driz­zle over the cake.

Apple Cake

Triple Berry Sorbet

I hope this helps, and check out my other posts on breast­feed­ing while eat­ing dairy free.  Also, if you have ques­tions, leave me a com­ment.  It’s hard get­ting started, but it’s easy once you get going.  It’s also so worth it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post talk­ing about turn­ing thirty and feel­ing a lit­tle bit unsure of what that meant.  When I was 25, I felt sim­i­larly.  I was no longer a stu­dent, and I was mov­ing out into the real world.  Now that I’m 30, I am actu­ally moved out of my first house and back into an apart­ment.  We do, how­ever, own both of our vehi­cles out­right and have very lit­tle other debt.  I am now eat­ing as well or bet­ter than any time in the past.  I feel more com­fort­able in my par­ent­ing beliefs and prac­tices than I have any time before.  I think part of the rea­son that I felt like I was going to have issues with being 30 is that it seems like you are no longer “young.”  I’m no longer in my care free 20’s.  I’m now a real adult.  I have real respon­si­bil­i­ties, and I am get­ting older!  Also, I have heard sev­eral peo­ple say, “I want to be done hav­ing kids by the time I turn 30.”  I never wanted that.  But, some­how, as I got closer to 30, I started to feel more pres­sure to hurry up and be done hav­ing kids even if it was going to be a bit past 30.

I had also been look­ing around our apart­ment lately and think­ing about all the things I had either started and not fin­ished or intended to do but had not done.  I decided that one thing that would help me to feel bet­ter about this year was to be able to look back on it and feel good about what I’ve used my time to do.  So, here it is, my list of goals for my 30th year.

My 30th year goals

Decem­ber — Kit­ting — I recently learned to knit.  I took a com­mu­nity edu­ca­tion class.  Orig­i­nally, I’d hoped to learn to knit a sweater by Christ­mas time for either my mom or Jason’s mom.  Unfor­tu­nately, that seems to be too hard and too time con­sum­ing for me right now.  My goal is to make a dif­fer­ent Christ­mas gift.  I’ll (hope­fully) post pic­tures after the hol­i­days are over!

Jan­u­ary — Fin­ish K’s quilt -  When I was preg­nant with K, I started a Noah’s ark quilt.  I got most of it fin­ished dur­ing the sum­mer and fall before he was born.  He was born about 4 weeks early, and after that my progress on the quilt stalled for the next 4 years!

Feb­ru­ary — Going to bed by 10:30 and get­ting up by 6:30 — I would like to take a month to prac­tice get­ting to bed ear­lier and get­ting up about 30 min­utes ear­lier than I need to be up and going.  I’d like to take that time to do a reg­u­lar quiet time and pray for the upcom­ing day.

March — Read -  I love to read.  I love to read.  I love to read.  In the midst of every­thing else I have to do or get done, I often feel as though I miss sit­ting down and get­ting lost in a book for hours.  I love dis­cov­er­ing new authors and rush­ing to the library to get the next book in a series or a new book by that author.  Because so many of my goals for this year will take time away from read­ing, I wanted to make sure I take time to focus on some­thing I enjoy so much.

April — Exer­cise –Right now, I exer­cise irreg­u­larly (usu­ally the min­i­mum of 3 times a week) at Curves.  It’s fine, and it’s nice to get a full body work out in just 30 min­utes.  I’m hop­ing to use this month to incor­po­rate more car­dio into the work­out.  Hope­fully it will coin­cide with spring???  Dare I make that wish?    Ide­ally, my goal is to work­out at Curves 3 times a week and do car­dio 2–3 times a week.  If I end up doing the 5k in May, I’ll need to be run­ning that often anyway.

May — Run a 5K — I know!  Those of you who have read this blog for a while know about my strug­gles with asthma, run­ning, cough­ing, and the frus­tra­tion that comes with those things.  I would love to run (yes, run the whole way) a 5k.  If I want to run the Fargo 5k in May, I would attempt the Couch to 5k plan again.  This time, I have a new plan of attack.  Instead of leav­ing myself 1 or 2 extra weeks, I want to start in Jan­u­ary and do each week of the plan twice.  That means if I get sick, I’ll have a buffer.  If I have trou­ble with a week, I’ll have a buffer.  Hope­fully…    Hope­fully, Jason will be run­ning the half marathon again and I’ll be run­ning (yes, run­ning the whole way) the 5k.

June — Doing new things as a fam­ily — Because my boys are young and close in age, I some­times make excuses for not tak­ing them places or try­ing new activ­i­ties with them.  We haven’t gone to the state park that is about 2 hours east of here.  Many of our friends have reported back about how great it is.  We haven’t even gone to the park that is 30 min­utes west of here with them.  We also have not taken a fam­ily vaca­tion nor have we stayed in a hotel room since A was born (not with the boys any­way).  My goal in June is to do 2 new things each week.  One activ­ity I would like to do as a fam­ily and one dur­ing the day when I’m by myself with the boys.

July — Orga­nize clos­ets and stor­age unit –Before we moved, our house was neat, clean, and orga­nized.  We got rid of a LOT of stuff we no longer needed.  Once we moved in here, we put things where they seemed to go.  We put the rest of the stuff in a stor­age unit.  I can see we don’t need much of what we kept.  Dur­ing July, I want to go through clos­ets and cup­boards and get rid of what we no longer need or want.  I also want to spend some time at the stor­age unit orga­niz­ing that and mak­ing sure every­thing in there is some­thing we will want or need at our house when the time comes.

August — Orga­nize pho­tos and make photo books — I am ter­ri­ble at this.  I have done noth­ing since I met Jason.  We have a wed­ding album, but that’s it.  I think my mom put that one together.  We have a drawer of pic­tures and thou­sands of pic­tures on the com­puter.  I want to make photo books for the boys (like the ones at Snap­fish or MyPub­lisher) and put together one for our fam­ily, too.

Sep­tem­ber — Noth­ing — After hav­ing goals for the entire year, I want to relax.  I want to sit out on our deck and read if I want or sleep if I want or do noth­ing if I want.  I want to round out my 30th year by think­ing about how great it was.

As if I didn’t have enough going on, I have a cou­ple other goals I want to make ongo­ing.  I want to do bet­ter at tak­ing pic­tures.  Jason’s sis­ter par­tic­i­pates in a photo project called Project 365 where the goal is to take one pic­ture each day.  I’m not sure I want to com­mit do doing that, but I would like to think of some way to get bet­ter and more con­sis­tent pho­tos of the boys and of us as a fam­ily.  Lastly, as if I hadn’t sched­uled every moment of my life from now through next Sep­tem­ber, I want to con­tinue devel­op­ing my idea for the Inno­va­teND com­pe­ti­tion.  Maybe some day I’ll even be able to share it!

In my house, I’m very vocal about choices.  “If you chose to…, I will…” is some­thing my kids hear a lot.  “If you choose to throw toys at me, I will put them away” or some­thing sim­i­lar to that.  I also try to refrain from say­ing things that either place blame, “You are mak­ing me frustrated/mad” or don’t accept respon­si­bil­ity for my role in things (although I can’t think of a great exam­ple right now).  I know all this.  I also know that no one can *make* me feel a cer­tain way.  I choose to allow myself to feel the way I do.  Sure, I might have an ini­tial reac­tion of anger, frus­tra­tion, sad­ness, hap­pi­ness, or what­ever the case may be.  After that, the way I con­tinue to feel and the feel­ings I act on are the ones I choose.  Right?

Well, I’m hav­ing a really hard time with that con­cept right now.  In June, we put our house on the mar­ket and sold it in order to move back into town.  It was closer, more con­ve­nient, and we were want­ing a house with a dif­fer­ent lay­out.  Well, instead of find­ing that house, we moved into an apart­ment.  Well, really, a condo.  It just looks, feels, and seems like an apart­ment.  The dif­fer­ence is most peo­ple in our build­ing own theirs.  We rent.  It’s a great place.  It’s 3 bed­rooms, 2 bath­rooms, and less than a quar­ter mile from a great park.  It’s also right on the bike path and about a mile from where Jason works.  What’s the prob­lem?  Some of the women who live in our build­ing are being mean to me.  (Feel free to insert slightly whiny voice or pathetic pout.)

Unfor­tu­nately, it seems as though we didn’t get the unwrit­ten rules before we signed our lease.  Chil­dren are allowed but not par­tic­u­larly wel­come here.  Now that we have moved almost every­thing we own (the rest is in a stor­age unit or dis­persed at friends’ and family’s homes) here and signed a lease and made a 2 year plan to stay here, I’m not feel­ing as great about it.

It started off a lit­tle less direct.  The woman who lives in the condo below us rode in the ele­va­tor with us one day.  After mak­ing some small talk, she said, “You must live in num­ber such-and-such.”  I said that yes we did, and she made a pass­ing com­ment about hav­ing heard the boys play­ing.  A few weeks later, we were in the ele­va­tor again, and this time we were going up and she was com­ing down.  K stood a lit­tle too close to the ele­va­tor and when it opened, she scolded him to move back and said, “It’s the Three Mus­ke­teers or what­ever they’re called” refer­ring to our boys and a friend’s son who was with us.  After that, we didn’t see her again for about another month.  Then, one day, I went to let some­one in at our front door, and she came out of our apart­ment just to watch us go up the stairs.  I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.  That night, I was at a La Leche League meet­ing, and Jason was home with the boys.  The next day, I was com­ing into the build­ing with my boys and 2 girls I watch a cou­ple days a week.  She stopped me and basi­cally told me that we were far too noisy.  She went on to tell me that we were using a tread­mill, and it was too loud.  I told her we own a tread­mill that is cur­rently in stor­age on the other end of town, and she con­tin­ued to insist that we were using a tread­mill.  I ended up invit­ing her up to see that we did not have one.  She didn’t come to look though.  That day at lunch, Jason said that he had been a lit­tle nois­ier than usual the night before.  He went down­stairs to apol­o­gize to her, but she didn’t answer her door.  He tried a cou­ple times, but she hasn’t answered.

Today, I was tak­ing the boys out of our apart­ment to the ele­va­tor, and when we were wait­ing, the boys were ask­ing about a woman who was out in the com­mon area between the two wings of the build­ing.  She was putting up a Christ­mas tree with some angels and other dec­o­ra­tions on it.  We talked about what she might be doing and said hi to her.  She didn’t respond.  She didn’t respond!  She didn’t even look at us.  Based on other inter­ac­tions with her, I don’t believe she has a hear­ing impair­ment.  I really do think she ignored us.  When we returned 45 min­utes later, we said hi again, and again she ignored us.

As I’m writ­ing this, I am think­ing about how petty all of this sounds.  I know that, I really do.  The prob­lem is that I no longer feel com­fort­able in this apart­ment.  I’m con­stantly think­ing about how loud it might be down­stairs, if she’ll stop and scold me again, and dread­ing the upcom­ing win­ter when com­ing and going will be even tougher.  The other day, K was “help­ing” me sweep the kitchen floor.  Unfor­tu­nately, he also kept drop­ping the broom.  It was too big for him and very awk­ward.  I kept won­der­ing if we were going to get a knock on the door or a note slipped under it.  I won­dered if some­one would stop me again as I was com­ing or going with my kids.  I feel like I can’t relax here.

I feel really frus­trated about that, too.  I like our apart­ment.  It works pretty well for us.  I like the loca­tion.  I like our neigh­bor next to us.  Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t know how to deal with the con­flict (or per­ceived con­flict) that appears to be between me (us) and a cou­ple other peo­ple who live here.  I really do wish I could just move out in March or April like we had orig­i­nally hoped to do.

So, com­ing back to the title and begin­ning of my post, “you choose to feel that way,” I know I am choos­ing to let this be a big deal.  I real­ize that I could just (some­how) stop wor­ry­ing and stew­ing about it.  I know that I should just live and apol­o­gize if nec­es­sary.  I know all those things, but I really do care about other peo­ple.  I’m not the type of per­son who cares so much what oth­ers think that it really directs my life, but I do care about other peo­ple, and to have this unre­solved con­flict both­ers me.  A lot.

And yes, now that you ask, I did just eat a giant piece of birth­day cake from the freezer.  She made me do it.

I’m about 10 min­utes late post­ing today’s (yesterday’s?) post.  I spent the evening cel­e­brat­ing the 30th birth­day of a great friend and just got home.  Happy Birth­day, Friend!

Instead of try­ing to think of some­thing super inter­est­ing to post tonight, I thought I would post links to some char­i­ties that we believe in and have sup­ported over the years:

Com­pas­sion International

Heifer Inter­na­tional

Samaritan’s Purse

Show Hope

I hope you have a great hol­i­day with lots of friends, fam­ily, football, and food!  I’ll have to blog about my first veg­e­tar­ian Thanks­giv­ing some time this week or next.  I hope you all had a great day.

I have heard adults talk­ing to each other and to kids many times about the dif­fer­ence between tat­tling and telling.  These same adults often say, “Kids need to learn to work it out on their own.”  For those who don’t know, the dif­fer­ence between tat­tling and telling is that telling hap­pens when some­one is in dan­ger or hurt.  Tat­tling is the other stuff.  I used to say this to kids when I was teach­ing, too.

Now that I have my own chil­dren, I’m ques­tion­ing the wis­dom in this phi­los­o­phy.  First, are we really ask­ing kids to know and judge in advance some­thing that might be harm­ful or dan­ger­ous?  My kids are 2 and 4, and fairly reg­u­larly my 4 year old does some­thing which I would con­sider to be unsafe.  I don’t think he’s pur­posely out there look­ing for things to do that might hurt him, his brother or his friend, but he is still find­ing them.  The other (main) prob­lem I have with this phi­los­o­phy is the idea that kids will learn to work things out on their own.

It has been my expe­ri­ence that unless kids are taught these behav­iors and words,  and they are mod­eled and used repeat­edly, the big­ger, more aggres­sive, or older child will often get his or her way.  This doesn’t often seem to hap­pen with a calm exchange of words.  More often than not, it is done in a way which I would con­sider to be unkind or unde­sir­able (as far as social norms go).

So, as much as it is frus­trat­ing and at times annoy­ing to stop what I’m doing each time my kids have an instance which leaves one or both upset, I think it is very much worth my time to go to them, model the words they can use (or help them come up with their own words), and help them work towards a res­o­lu­tion, I think it is worth it.  We don’t expect adults to have the skills to work things out on their own when a sit­u­a­tion becomes very intense or heated.  I know many adults who have sought coun­sel­ing either indi­vid­u­ally or as a couple/group for sit­u­a­tions which were not eas­ily resolved.  Why is it we expect chil­dren to be able to iden­tify these sit­u­a­tions and work on them with­out our input?

As I’m sup­posed to be writ­ing this post and meal plan­ning, I am instead try­ing to catch up on the unread posts in my Google Reader.  In the past few months, I have var­ied between being caught up on all my feeds and being hun­dreds and hun­dreds of posts behind.

In the past, I have talked about my strug­gle to com­ment more on oth­ers’ posts because of the ease of flip­ping through so many blogs on that Reader.  Tonight, I also real­ized that when peo­ple post only an intro or the first cou­ple lines in Google Reader and invite you/me (the reader) to visit the blog to read the rest, I have a sim­i­lar dilemma.  Should I click?  I prob­a­bly miss a lot by not click­ing and just mov­ing on, but most of the time I don’t go to a blog like that.

I know that peo­ple choose to do that for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, but for me, it’s a lot eas­ier to read all the blogs and posts I want to read if they are acces­si­ble in Google Reader.  With its down­falls and all, I still find hav­ing them all right there is really the eas­i­est thing for me.

Well, I had set my last post to auto-post yes­ter­day, and appar­ently I don’t have all the kinks work out of the auto-posting sys­tem. I really did have a post writ­ten, but it didn’t go up yes­ter­day. I’ll have to watch more closely until I’m sure that I have it all done.

Today is my baby’s 4th birth­day!  It’s hard to believe that 4 years ago, I was expe­ri­enc­ing my first hours of moth­er­hood and my first attempts at nurs­ing.  Look­ing back, it’s hard to remem­ber my life with­out him.  What did I do?  Oh, yeah.  I was a teacher.  That’s right.

As I am writ­ing this, I am strug­gling to get my words out.  I can­not even begin to put into words how much I love this kid.  He is funny, smart, adorable, and one of my favorite peo­ple in the world!

I am think­ing we may need to start a book of all the mem­o­rable things he has said to us:

• “Urine is our body’s waste.”
• “How did the oceans get salt in there?”
• “Mom, is it okay if we have a sister?”
• “How do babies come out of a mommy’s tummy?”  (Yes, we have had the begin­nings of THAT con­ver­sa­tion at not even 4 years of age.)
• “When I get a lit­tle big­ger, I can hold you some­times, too.”
• “I like my dia­pers.  I don’t enjoy underwear.”

Happy Birth­day, Sweetie!

I’m doing it again.  I’m going to attempt to post once a day in Novem­ber.  This should be inter­est­ing, because I’m not sure I’ve even posted once a month lately.  I have a few top­ics rolling around in my head, so we will see if they all get put into words or if they get lost before I get a chance.

Right now, we are also car­ing for a sick lit­tle boy.  My 2 year old has croup.  My older son has had croup before, and it was sad for him, but it wasn’t too big of a deal.  Unfor­tu­nately, A seems to have a worse case.  It came on pretty quickly yes­ter­day.  Last night was a ter­ri­ble night for sleep, and today he is still run­ning a fever and hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing, drink­ing, and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with­out the cough.  Poor guy.  I’m so glad he’s still nurs­ing.  Last night, that was the only thing that I could do to get him calmed down when he was cough­ing and cry­ing.  I’m hop­ing that after 2 days and nights, he’ll be bet­ter.  K’s birth­day is on Tues­day with a party planned for Friday!