Sharing.

I feel a little ridiculous teaching my toddler how to share and be kind when I haven't figured it out myself yet.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm sure Ross would agree wholeheartedly with this diagram.

And I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'd agree too, not even counting when Aoife was in between us, along with both cats. For starters, here's how we fit in our bed.

Ponytail = not sleeping. But I fit nicely on "my side".

 Here's what happens when you put the sweetest, self sacrificing 6' 4" husband and an unrelenting, sleep deprived, psycho wife in a queen sized bed together.

Aoife is only allowed in her crib, and we're down to one cat, and absolutely Pepper cuddles and sleeps with us. And my hair goes all kinds of crazy when I sleep.

I am stubborn. And particular. Especially when it comes to sleeping. I have MY pillow, the comforter only covers my legs and stomach while the second blanket covers my arms and head, with only a breathing hole for my face to poke out. And I am spread eagle. Unfortunately I never got the memo that married people don't fall asleep cuddling and have all kinds of extra space for your legs. It's actually the opposite. We have an unspoken no touching while trying to sleep rule. Violators may or may not get a little shove accompanied by a big huff.

Usually we end up with all kinds of tossing and turning and flopping and squishing and whatever other "ing" word would fit in here, until we arrive here:

"Our Room:" and "Meanwhile on the futon..."

Luckily we have a futon in Ross' study room. (Which is currently where Aoife and her crib reside.) It's been a fabulous futon for when family comes to visit, but never in a million years would I have thought I would prefer to sleep on it rather than my own bed. I love the futon. I love the study room. And unfortunately Aoife has been occupying that room and I've had to make do without it the last few nights.

I vote our next major purchase following the move is a California King firm mattress. Not a 2nd car, or house, a big mattress. We actually had this discussion last night. :]

*Please note, I do like sleeping with my husband. No, our marriage is not in trouble. Quite the opposite in fact. We love and like each other and sometimes manage to fall asleep in the same bed. However, when I am restless I do relocate to fall asleep and then move back into the bed upon waking up again in the middle of the night.

Potpourri of Loveland Happenings.

We've had a BUSY last couple of weeks, and I haven't been blogging much. Let me explain why.

Claire, Aoife, and I just got back from spending a couple weeks in Oregon. It was wonderful. I flew out with Claire at the end of August, while Ross stayed with Aoife for classes. A few generous people helped watch Aoife while Ross was at class, or work. (Thank you again, Clarissa, Kami, and Shaelynn!!) Ross and Aoife drove out a couple days later with his sister for the weekend. It was Ross' brother's birthday that weekend. We're so grateful we could all make it and have the whole family together. To celebrate, we went on a family bike ride. The girls rode in a bike trailer together for the first time. They did great! Claire of course had Mama Loveland's iPhone and watched Elmo on YouTube the entire way. On the way back, Aoife was hungry and struggling. Whenever I'd look behind me, Claire was either holding the binky in Aoife's mouth, or trying so hard to feed Aoife a bottle. It was sweet. Claire really is a wonderful big sister and it's been fun watching these two grow together and start to play and laugh together. I adore it.

While visiting with the Lovelands, I went red! And I love it. I don't know if I'll ever want to go back to blonde. After a week with Ross' family, we ventured off to my family's house.

(Excuse my lack of my lack of make-up, just admire the color of my hair. Not what I look like. Thanks.)

They have an amazing yard, and Claire loved being outside. The first few minutes we were there, she was running outside, exploring trails, and picking blackberries. Oregon berries are phenomenal, and one of the many things I miss dearly from Portland. We had a lot of adventures. Claire went to my favorite apple farm that my family went to while growing up, ran all over the zoo, experienced the Oregon Coast for the first time, and chased the dog.


And then I flew home with both girls. It was actually a great experience and just about as normal as if I were flying alone. (Except that I had to urge Claire through the metal detector, take Aoife out of the car seat, walk with her through the detector, move the stroller to another place, and somehow collect all our stuff, get Aoife back in the car seat, while herding Claire and trying to keep her in the same general area.) But really, it wasn't bad at all. They girls did so well on the flight and slept during the drive home.

Now, back to why I haven't been blogging much. Being home has been wonderful. I feel like every time I got out of town, I come back with renewed determination to be a better wife and mother, and to make improvements. With the big move coming up, I feel like that determination is multiplied a hundred fold. So here's what I've been up to.

As soon as I got back, I organized different movers to come out and give us an estimate. I finally got around to actually applying for apartments, instead of just researching and organizing them into a spreadsheet. (Can we say NERD?!) So far we've applied to 3, and I'd like to do more this week. Winter generally isn't a time for moving, so availability on the apartments we like might be hard to come by.

I've decided to put Pinterest to good use. I've done a few crafts here and there, but I've decided to do something else. I've been organizing my shopping list for the entire week. I browse Pinterest for different dinner recipes and make my list and add the other things we need for the week. So far it's been AMAZING. I get to find new recipes, so I'm not cooking the same thing each week. The only catch is, I can only go to the grocery store once a week. Which is great, because if I want a treat or dessert, I have to plan for it, otherwise I can't have it. The result: We're eating a lot less crap and not buying things because they "sound good". I was going to the grocery store DAILY. And I never wanted to because I didn't know what to make for dinner anyway. If things go like they have these last 2 weeks, we'll have cut a couple hundred off of our grocery bill for the month. And the recipes have been super delicious, too! Since the recipes make a lot of food, we have nights for leftovers, and I've been freezing some so we'll have easy meals when December comes and we're packing, and I don't feel like cooking.

I've been working on being more productive. (Organizing and planning for the move has helped a lot.) So I haven't been online as much. And I really like it. Which explains why I haven't been updating our blog.

And we found the coolest place for kids ever. Its called Jungle Jim's. It's kind of like a Chuck E. Cheese in that they have games and prizes you can get with your tickets, but we didn't really care about that. They have rides that are just for kids. We got Claire an all day wristband for super cheap so she could go on all of the rides she wanted. I so wish I hadn't forgotten my camera. She had so much fun and went on most of the rides by herself. The only ones she didn't go on alone were the bumper cars (Only because I knew she wouldn't do the gas pedal and steer at the same time.), and the roller coaster. (Because that one was SUPER FUN and we wanted to do it too.) It was hilarious watch Ross squeeze and fold and cram into the kiddie rides. We were there for almost 3 hours and had the best time.

Since being home, we've been working with Aoife on sleeping. Claire was easy. (Get ready, super controversial) I did Babywise, starting at 3 months. After two nights of crying, she'd sleep 13 hours a night. Straight. And is still an amazing sleeping. It was HARD as a mom though, and it drove me crazy. We're doing things differently with Aoife. I don't know if it's because she's a premie, or if I've gone soft, but we're not doing that with her. Instead, we cut down the number of bottles we feed in the middle of the night until we'd only put the binky back in her mouth if she woke up. I've done a regular nap pattern, and it's working. She's been going to bad at 7 every night. Last night she fussed a little at 5 AM, and went right to sleep after I put the binky back in. And she slept till 7:30 when Claire came running in screaming, "HI!" We've even had the girls sleeping together in the same room at night, but today I'm taking apart Aoife's crib and moving it into Ross' office. It's wonderful to sleep again! It's like I'm a whole new person!

Our next adventure is getting our family portraits done on Saturday. I still need to work on what we're wearing, but I'm really excited. Pictures to follow, I'm sure!

Death of The Vegan Diet, Lifting, and Loving Your Body.

I recently checked out this book from the library.


And by recently, I mean 2 days ago. Most of you know I'm training for a half-marathon that will take place October 27th. What most of you probably don't know is that I've been out of running for this week, and I was struggling with running a few weeks prior to my ER visit. I've been having serious abdominal pain concurrent with frightening neck pain, both on my left side. I was told to follow up with a Sports Medicine doctor, which quite frankly made me feel athletic despite the fact I couldn't run more than a half a mile, or a mile if I'm pushing it, without doubling over in pain. My goals for the half quickly shifted from running the whole time, with a quick-ish pace to simply running the whole time, to FINISHING. I was disappointed. Really disappointed. My dad is coming out to run the race with me, and I'm really excited about that. Running has brought us a better connection and strengthened our relationship.

Back to the book. I love lifting. My training program looked something like this:

Monday: Medium run, Abs, Glutes.
Tuesday: Light run, Arms
Wednesday: Medium run, Abs, Glutes
Thursday: No run, Legs, Back
Friday: Cross train (time increases each week.), Abs, Glutes
Saturday: Long run
Sunday: Off

Needless to say, I was killing myself in the gym. And I loved it. It was my "me time", and I loved seeing my body change. I got to my smallest weight and size EVER. I could honestly say I liked how my body looked. However, with the vegan diet, I was hardly getting enough protein, and not nearly as many calories as I needed. I think it really added to my muscle damage.

Last night as I was reading my new book, I came across the anatomy chapters. (Ok, I've never actually taken an anatomy class so I was FASCINATED!!!) I learned the different directions of muscles, how they're connected, and the best part: I learned why my lower abdominal muscles and my neck have been giving me so much grief!!

I'm going to try to start running again this week, after having a week and a half off the vegan experiment and a week off of running, I'm feeling better. The first couple weeks of the diet, I was feeling great. I loved it. After that I noticed how exhausted I was 24/7. I was grouchy most of the time (as Ross will attest, I'm sure), and I had no idea the damage I was doing to my body. Maybe a vegan diet would be great for a 7-10 day cleanse, But I definitely won't be trying that ever again.

While we were at the library, I wanted to find a basic book on nutrition, not a diet book, or a cleanse book, just old school nutrition. I guess I was looking for something like a textbook. I was horrified and appalled at how many books I found about diets to be skinny I found. There must have been over a hundred different diet ideas.

I've always had a problem with body image, and obviously it's an even bigger problem in America. I developed a routine where I would wake up in the morning, go to the bathroom, undress, and weigh myself. Every morning. Sometimes Claire would run in and laugh and proceed to step on the scale right after me. She just likes the flashing lights, but I realized I didn't want her ever to think about her body the way I did mine. About a month or two ago, I stopped weighing myself in front of Claire. And recently I've stopped weighing myself so often, and I'm starting to not care at all what that number reads. Claire still likes to play with the scale occasionally when she goes into our bathroom, but she just pushes the button, watches it flash a few times until it reads "E".

After we got married, Ross and I were talking about bodies. (Remember this post?) He was explaining why he loved to exercise. It wasn't for the outward appearance at all. It was simply because our bodies are a gift from God. So why wouldn't we want to give our bodies the best care and get them in the best shape that we could? Why wouldn't we take extra care of that gift? And I love that. That's how I want to teach my children. I don't want to teach them that they need to be skinny to be beautiful, or that there is anything wrong with their bodies. I just want them to know that our body is a gift from Heavenly Father and we should take care of that gift because bodies are important.

I just remembered that conversation yesterday and got to reflecting on that. Of course I want to look good, who doesn't? But I think more importantly, I want to take care of my body. I want to fuel it correctly, and get it in the best shape that I can. So here's my new plan:

Hopefully running tonight goes well and I can get back on track. If not, hopefully it'll just be a couple more days of eating what I need to and recovering. I'll be lifting 3 days a week, still running 4 days a week, eating a lot more calories, and taking more time to rest and recover. Hopefully it'll go well and I'll be back to running in no time.

Madison, Wisconsin.

I actually have a lot to blog about and catch up on, but I'll start with the most exciting bit of news we received yesterday.

Ladies and Gents, we will be moving to Madison, WI at the end of the year!


About a week and a half ago, Ross had a fly-out interview with Epic. (pictures found here)It's a really cool campus, and each building has a theme. Ross' favorite is the moat and drawbridge one. I'm excited for Ross to start so I can check out the campus!

Ross got the call yesterday afternoon. I went to go eavesdrop and when I asked Ross if it was good or bad news, he gave me a thumbs up. I wanted to run around screaming and tell everyone I knew, but Ross was still on the phone and I wanted him to share the news first.

When Ross got off the phone I went to give him a big hug and ended up passing out for a second. (I had donated blood only an hour earlier.) Everyone laughed like crazy, it was super funny. I guess it looked like I fainted on purpose, but I remember standing up, feeling dizzy, and then I was on the floor.

Anyway, so Ross will begin the first Monday of January doing internal finance. I've been looking at homes and apartments to rent and it's just been fun and exciting. We've been looking at what there is to do in that area. I love that it is right on the lakes. That'll be so fun with the girls in the summer! The next thing to figure out is when we want all of our stuff moved, how to do Christmas in Oregon with our families, and where to live! It's just been really fun and exciting.

Last night we celebrated by going to the mall and getting Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and then to the game store to get one of our favorites, Kill Doctor Lucky. We have a couple of Ross' siblings staying with us and we all stayed up late having a pizza/game night. Not a fancy way to celebrate, but it was perfectly laid back and so much fun!

Like I said, I have about a thousand things to blog about, and I'll have to catch up later!

August.

It's only the beginning of August, and it's been a BUSY month so far. Ross was out of town for a couple days last week. Thanksgiving Point started the 2 buck Tuesdays deal, which we LOVE. So I took the girls to the farm last Tuesday. I was thinking Claire would love the animals, and being able to pet and feed them. However, right when we got outside, a big cow took to Claire immediately. He came over right up to her and kept mooing at her. We'll just say it terrified Claire and she lost all interest in seeing more animals. I still wanted to look, so I ended up carrying both girls walking around to see all of the animals. They had free tractor rides and horse drawn rides. Those ended up being her favorite. I can't even count how many times we went on the rides, but Claire loved it. All in all it was a good day.



Ross' mom and brother Wesley arrived Tuesday night, and Ross returned LATE Tuesday night. Or maybe I should say Weds morning. I picked him up, and we didn't get home until 4 AM. It was pretty brutal. Thursday morning Ross' Dad and two sisters arrived and the graduation festivities began! We had a barbecue outside our house with lots of cousins, and family. There was a lot of great food, and we had fun visiting. It made it so much more real and we're excited for December when Ross actually graduates.





Ross' youngest brother will be staying with us for a couple weeks, and his oldest sister will be attending BYU in the fall, so she'll be staying with us as well! (Until move in day) It's a party at the Loveland's and Claire's loving it! We are too. It'll be a fun way to end summer.

Veganism Observations.

I guess I'm about halfway through my *mostly* vegan experiment. I definitely haven't been a gung ho vegan, especially with family visiting, but I've noticed some pretty drastic differences.

Immediately after Aoife was born, I got a gym membership. Ross and I got to talking and I told him my big goal (the one I thought would be unattainable) is to weigh 125. My more reasonable goal was 130. I am now just 2 pounds away from my BIG goal. (While I'm not posting my actual weight, I'm pretty sure y'all can do the math.)

My main purpose for doing this experiment wasn't for the scale numbers, but let me tell you, it's a big perk. There are visible differences in my body, and I'm starting to see the potential of what my body can do. And I like it. NOTE: I am training for a half marathon, and I'm sure the running and strength training are contributing factors.

I was on sleep aid, anxiety, and depression prescriptions. (Oh, the unspoken joys of motherhood.) I still take the one for depression, but I rarely take the other two. I've been falling asleep faster, sleeping better, and all around feeling a lot better. Frustrated kids don't stress me out nearly as much as before and I'm really enjoying being a mom. I'm loving singing songs over and over again to Claire and playing with these two. We've been exploring and having a blast together. My house is cleaner than usual, and with new recipes to try, I'm ENJOYING cooking for my family. It's no longer something I view as "my job", but a new found hobby.

Yesterday, I ventured off to Good Earth Natural Foods. It's a small store, but I was like a kid in a candy shop. They had vegan, whole wheat, whole grain, gluten free, super healthy cake mixes, cereals, amazingly fresh produce, and even a bulk section! As small as the store is, I could have spent all day in there. I'm excited to shop there more and find new things to try. They even had a beauty section. (It looked like fun, but I was on a mission to get coconut oil to bake cookies.)

I'm about halfway through, and I'm finding a mostly plant based diet helps me feel better. I'm not eating nearly as often as I was before, but I still pig out! I feel fuller longer, and have more energy than before. I honestly think this is a lifestyle I want to adopt beyond the 30 days. Again, not completely vegan, but mostly plant based. I'd be ok with incorporating meat into my diet, but sparingly. It's been fun discovering new recipes that don't leave me wanting. I don't feel like I'm depriving myself in any way. (Though I did have a delicious ice cream sandwich last night.) WE'll see if I still feel this way in a couple weeks!

Pinterest.

Pinterest has ruined me. I already had a deep love for a clean organized home, but after discovering Pinterest, I've had to make our home more clean, crafty, creative, organized, and full of memories.

Back in July I made the note card calendar, where each day you write something that happened that day and you reuse it each year and add to it. I loved that idea. I'm excited for 5, 10, 20 years from now where we'll have a history of our family happenings. Imagine how long it'll be when Ross and I die! (Not to be depressing, but I think it'd be neat to find of my grandparents, or parents.)

I added some shelves above the laundry area, and above the toilet in the front bathroom. Yes, we have a linen closet, but not everything would fit, and Claire loves to open the door and pull it out. Now I'm able to stack our sheets and towels where Claire can't wreck havoc, and our linen closet it clean and organized and holds all of our extra things.

I'm really bad at baby books. I didn't even buy one for Aoife. It's been so hard to keep up with Claire's. (Do not ask what a stay at home mom does.) So instead (And I'm so proud to say this is my own idea and not something I saw on Pnterest) I got the girls some really pretty floral binders and filled them with page protectors, and photo sheets. Each month on the day they were born, I write them a letter. Right now they're so young and they change so quickly, I figured I could cover all the changes they've gone through each month and funny stories I'd like to remember. I can also put important papers or certificates in there as well as pictures as they grow.

All in all, I've turned into a cleaning psycho, constantly thinking of how I could redecorate, organize, or little crafts I can do. Bless your heart, Pinterest. Bless your heart.