24 Weeks Old and Why I Hate Diets!

Lauren is now 24 weeks old, almost 6 months (that is half a year, ugh!). Some fun things that have been going on...dancing (a.k.a. swaying back and forth), squealing at the top of her lungs, laughing a bunch, starting to understand peek-a-boo, and able to activate her toys that make noise. She is still nursing about every 2-3 hours during the day and sometimes gets rice cereal in the morning (I need to be better at being consistent). She was having some mild issues with constipation from it which doesn't contribute to my eagerness in feeding her...plus she doesn't need to eat food at all at this point in her life. A lot of families participate in the baby led weaning (BLW) or baby lead solids (BLS) in which they let their children decide when they want to start eating solids instead of introducing purees. From what I have read, the majority of children start to eat solids around 13-15 months that participate in BLS/BLW and are exclusively breastfed until that time. Ideally this is what I would like to do but it is not realistic for us since I have to go back to work in the Fall and she refuses to take a bottle so I need her to be eating more at that time and drinking the breastmilk from a sippy or cup.

I finished nursing her and laid her there to put my shirt back together...she completely passed out, must have a full belly!

Lauren was being really fussy so Kyle rubbed lotion in her hair and combed it, she was delighted! She just sat there and kicked her legs like a puppy wagging it's tail!

So onto the next topic: Why I Hate Diets! I grew up watching far too many people go on diets that were never successful. The idea between dieting is good: eating healthy, changing your portion size, etc. but the the concept really sucks: the majority are only temporary. What is the point of only watching your portion size for one month or eating grapefruit exclusively for a set amount of time? Instead of going on a diet, we think of it as a lifestyle change. We eliminated tons of processed food almost two years ago and slowly have been getting rid of more. Honestly, I do not crave a single bit of what we have eliminated...who would want Hamburger Helper when you can make the the same thing with fresh ingredients and have it taste better! Yesterday I made 3 batches of fresh egg noodles, fresh spaghetti sauce, and homemade meatballs (even the breadcrumbs were homemade). The only thing that came out of a can was the tomato paste for the sauce. On the menu later this week is homemade gnocchi, tacos with homemade tortillas, and homemade pizza.

Two of the three pasta dough balls, Kyle has to roll the dough out because I am not good

After rolling out the dough you roll it up like a jelly roll and cut into pieces

Then you roll out the pieces and lay them on papertowels to dry

Finished product! The best pasta ever!

This entire meal was under $3.00 including the hamburger!