Yo ho and hello! It's been two months since my last post, and for that I am sorry. Procrastination has been my achilles heel lately. Anyhoo, I figured it's better late than never so here goes!
Tate turned 4 months old last week, and I could barely believe it! He's sitting up, talking and cooing constantly and rockin' the jolly jumper like it's his job. He's started teething too! It's tough to think about how fast time is flying by, and realizing that it's not going to come back. Being a parent makes it 1000x more obvious how important it is to live in the present moment and soak it up, and it also makes is 1000x harder to live in the present moment and soak it up!
Tate and I have found our rhythm, and the days go by pretty smoothly now, with the occasional freak-out on his part (and sometimes on my part too). He sleeps through the night now, generally until 7 or 8am, and goes to bed at about 9pm. We have to wake him up to eat around 11 every night or he will wake us up at 3am with hungry cries, and neither of us can get jiggy with that, so we make sure to feed him before we go to bed.
Tate loves being read to, and I really enjoy it too. It's so much fun to buy and read him all the books I used to love as a child, like Strega Nona, Corduroy and Grover's Bad, Awful Day. Sometimes he falls asleep on my lap as I read to him, and I do my best to relish those moments, because they really are so sweet.
We spent Christmas with my family in Sault Ste. Marie and it was lovely. We were able to visit most of the family, but only a few friends due to the shortness of our visit. Although it was very, very busy, Jim and I both really enjoyed our time there. We came back to Thunder Bay for New Years and laid low for New Year's Eve. Jim's birthday was on the 8th, and we celebrated it with some yummy cake and chilled at home for the day, then had dinner at Montanas with some of Jim's friends. Montanas has the best veggie-burgers EVER. Then Jim went down to Florida for a week to train for his new Captain position at work, and Tate and I enjoyed a very laid-back Mommy-Tate week in his absence. When he got home, we headed for Nova Scotia to have our second 'Christmas' with Jim's family. That visit was a little less busy, and just as lovely. We spent more time hanging out at Jim's parents house than visiting people this time. Although there were plenty of people we wanted to see, Jim needed some time to relax, and I was more than happy to chill at the house too.
Jim is back at work now, and will be sitting in the Captain's seat starting in February! As for me, I'll be starting my Holistic Nutrition program in a couple of weeks, as soon as the study material arrives. In the meantime, I'm finally preparing to go for my driver's license test, and I've been getting back into running! I realized that the only way I was going to lose my baby weight and actually enjoy the process was to write up a training plan and stick to it. We have all kinds of exercise videos like P90X, Turbo Jams and yoga videos, and I enjoy them all, but as most of you know my true love is running, and it feels delicious being back out on the road again. Jim and I are planning on running the Winnipeg Half Marathon in June, and if training for that goes well, I'm going to continue with my training and go for the Thunder Bay full marathon in September, while Jim is thinking about training for a triathlon afterwards.
We're still going strong with our vegan diet, and have recently decided to get a little stricter about what we put in our bodies. After our Christmases, during which we ate things that our bodies weren't used to anymore (like free-range organic turkey, coffee, cheese, alcohol, etc.) we noticed lots of outward symptoms of inward chaos, like pimples, digestive troubles, fatigue and dry skin. We realized that our bodies are much happier and healthier on a plant-based diet, and since we got home I've been chugging the green juice in an attempt to call a truce with my body. I also started sprouting wheatgrass again, as I've just ordered a manual wheatgrass juicer (it will juice it way better than our centrifugal juicer, which is meant for fruits and veggies, not grass) so that we can add a daily shot of wheatgrass to our diet.
For February, we're planning on hanging out in Thunder Bay and using our free time to chill (since going away during Jim's time off doesn't really allow for much relaxation). There are lots of trails in the woods right outside our door that we haven't been taking advantage of enough, and we plan to do so this month! Jim brought his snowshoes back from Nova Scotia, and I have mine here as well, so we're going to bundle Tate up, put him in his little sled and head out for some day hikes, in preparation for some overnight hikes once the weather gets a little milder. I've set a personal goal of finding some new vegan recipes for us, and I'm determined to perfect my granola bar recipe (which has been harder than you might imagine!)
Hopefully I won't be such a blog sloth in the months to come!
Have a happy February everyone, make sure you find yourself a Valentine. This year, I've got two!!!
xoxo
Kim
