Cleaning Out Your Pantry

How A Hangry Grouchy Chunkamunk Survived Whole30

Last month, my husband and I completed the Whole30 (for the second time since October 2017). I did this for a variety of health reasons, with the primary one being that I was recently diagnosed with lupus and looking to reduce inflammation within my body. 30 days no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no grains, no legumes. Which also means: no honey, no maple syrup, no fake sweeteners, no preservatives, no alcohol, no rice, no oatmeal. Which therefore means: every pseudo-healthy recipe people have ever given you is pretty much off the table. I was terrified. I cried a lot. I made a journal that reads like a prelude to a serial killer's log of kills and body locations. But we survived! And I lost 14 lbs and looked and felt better than I had in years. Here's some advice and ideas for how to effectively survive and thrive on the Whole30: 1. Eat the same things as much as you possibly can. This eliminates the need to be creative and cook 3-5x per day. My firs...

7 Things I'm So Glad I Ignored About Parenting Lists

For two years before our daughter Amelia was born and we adopted her, I scoured Pinterest and the internet for articles about parenthood. I wanted the cold hard truth, the whole story, as told by other women who were just as excited and terrified of becoming mothers as I was. I gravitated towards the buzzfeed generation's style of writing; seeing things written out as a concise list gives me an inexplicable sense of organized excitement. "20 Things No One Tells You About Motherhood" "35 Dads Who Have Totally Nailed This Parenting Thing" "42 People Who Might Be Parents or Might Be Stock Photos" "19 Reasons to Have a Kid for the Tax Deduction" "How Infertility Changed Me- a Story By a Slice of Pizza". Most of those article names are things I made up but in my two year stretch of trying to conceive obsession, I honestly would've clicked on every single link. But out of all those articles and lists that I actually read, I don...

Only One

Millie's birth mother and I have recently been commiserating over how much Kanye West's song "Only One" makes us both cry. I suspect she cries because it's written from the perspective of Kanye's mother, who won't be there for every moment with his daughter, so he's picturing her telling him to tell his daughter about her. We tell Millie about her every day, and the part about God sending him two angels instead of one? That's how I feel about her birth mother and Millie. For me, I cry because this little baby is my whole world, she's my only child, and I waited and prayed for her for so long. And I cry because, open adoption or not, there is a big "what if" in our lives. What if she's our only one? What if God has given us just this one opportunity to be parents? I've mentioned before that I am an only child. I remember being asked if I had siblings as a child, and when I said no, the response was always, always, ALWAYS a...

Mama's Gotta Eat

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