Hey friends! Thanks for stopping by today 🙂 It’s been some time since my last update as I was taking some time off for both the holidays and some personal growth. I’m excited to dive into that today with you and hope to inspire you on your own personal journey through life as we have entered into this New Year!
We left off just a short while before Christmas and my husband and I decided we wanted to begin implementing intentional time for both ourselves and one another as well as focusing on being more present with our children to make the holiday season magical and memorable for us all. That began with taking a break from things like blogging, spending much less time on our phones, and focusing on our health in all areas. Also, for myself, that included finally pulling the trigger on shaving my head! Yep, I shaved my head down to 1/2″ and have felt nothing but empowerment, happiness, and less headaches!
Spiritual Healing of Shaving my Hair
For those of you who have read my post “Dear 2020, You’ve Changed Me”, you will know some of the deepest and darkest struggles of my year with depression, marriage, PTSD, anxiety, and more. I had been wanting to shave my head for awhile but just never got around to doing it. My husband had always thought I wasn’t serious either so he would laugh it off and say no. As the year was coming closer to an end, I became more persistent in talking about shaving my head with my husband until one night he asked, “Wait, are you serious about this?” When I told him yes, he wanted to know my reason why I wanted to (I’ve been known for impulses and then being emotionally wrecked about my decision afterward, so it was a fair question). Here’s what I told him, “This past year has been so toxic and trying for myself and as much as I have learned and healed, I still feel like its dragging me and trying to pull me back down. I want to shave my head not only to get rid of the cells that are filled with toxic energy, but also to symbolize that I am never going back to the girl that I was this year and am only moving forward to grow into the woman I am becoming.” With that, he said, “Okay, you should do it.” I then proceeded to get off the couch and head to the bathroom. He laughed as he realized I was going to do it right then and there. So, naturally he followed me into the bathroom and shaved it for me! At the time, we only had a 1″ clipper extension so that’s what we began with. Over the course of the next week, I was persistently looking for the rest of the extensions that were somewhere for our old clipper set but with no luck. My husband then went to Walmart and came home with a very nice new clipper set and we got to work on going shorter! We finished with 1/2″ long of hair on my head and I felt so free. It was seriously like the last part of my chains finally crumbled and fell off of me. It’s been two weeks since then and although my hair has already grown a lot, I’m going to grow it back out from here. I’ll do some trims each full moon just to keep it healthy but I won’t be taking any length off anytime soon.
Becoming Mindful, Aware, and Establishing Routines
In addition to my symbolic haircut, my husband and I got on the same page about nourishing our bodies with good, whole foods in addition to supplementation and focused hydration. We established that we would prioritize our sleep, our Bible devotions, meditation, and daily exercise. Here’s what our personal decisions led us to:
- Wake at 6am and Journal, coffee/tea, and meditate
- Breakfast, get dressed, and do the same with kids
- Go about our day and get some sort of exercise in, even if that’s just increased housework or a walk or even stretching. My personal go to is my Prenatal Barre Blend workouts but I have days where I need to listen to my body and do something a little less intense.
- At 8pm, we eliminate all electronics, our notifications are all silenced, and we begin our evening routine. (Our kids usually go to bed between 7-7:30pm)
- We do some guided stretching or yoga, our Bible devotions, make tea, journal, and meditate. We darken the room down to just one main light that is still a gentle brightness until it’s time to meditate, we meditate last and drink our tea afterwards. When it comes time to meditate, we turn off the last light which leaves just the hood light for our stove on only. Once we have completed our guided meditation, we sit on the couch together while we drink our tea before heading off to bed between 9-9:30pm.
We are human, so this sometimes isn’t what our evening or morning looks like, but it’s something we have been focusing on to have be our routines each day. We definitely notice a big difference when we don’t do our morning or evening this way versus when we do. This evening routine has also helped us shift our focus on one another instead of being on our phones or watching something on the tv which is usually what would have happened. This isn’t to say we never watch a show together anymore, again, we’re human and we definitely have times where we want to snuggle and watch something together before doing our evening routine.
Sleep Training…Again…
So, we have two kids that share a room. Our oldest will turn 4 next month and our youngest (soon to be middle child) turned 1 this last September. She wakes Every. Single. Hour. every night and sometimes I’m lucky to get every two hours instead. We’ve sleep trained her twice before but she always went right back to her usual 1-2 hour stretches and drank bottles of formula 3-4 times each night. She wouldn’t eat food during the day so when she would be up at night, I knew she needed food but I was also battling wanting to stop the bottles and get her sleeping through the night. Being almost halfway through my pregnancy has made getting up through the night much harder on myself and there’s no way I’ll survive a toddler and newborn both waking every 1-2 hours in a few months, NO WAY. However, I have been part of the problem. Every time she wakes crying, I have jumped out of bed and gotten to my bedroom door sometimes before I’ve even realized she’s crying. It’s been a habit for so long because I have been fearful of her interfering with my eldest’s sleep by her crying. Sleep training went out the window with me when we would bring our oldest back into their bedroom after sleep training for a week or so and it being successful (we brought our oldest into our room with her bed during the first two times of sleep training so she wouldn’t be disturbed by the crying). Now, we are doing sleep training again and taking away the bottles at night. Last night was night two, and surprisingly our oldest actually sleeps through the crying just fine! I’ve been so worried about pretty much nothing. The past two night have been rough though, mostly for me. I definitely cussed out my husband quite a bit the first night as he stood his ground firmly with the timers and no bottles. I was definitely not having it! However, by night two, we discussed the previous night and I admitted that I’ve been part of the problem and had no idea Amelia (our oldest) could sleep through it just fine. Also, since taking away the bottles, our daughter has eaten way more food during the day than I have ever seen her eat! She definitely figured it our pretty fast that formula was gone. All in all, I think this third round of sleep training will be our final round, THANK JESUS!
ADHD and Adjusting Nutrition/Supplements
We have also realized our oldest daughters struggle with ADHD since the last blog post. I have been struggling for months with her and her behavior and impulsivities without having any idea what’s been going on. As my husband has been diving into his own ADHD struggle, we have been realizing our daughter struggles in a lot of the same ways as he does. His side of the family is very strong genetically in having ADHD, so when we began looking into it more and talking with the doctor along with our own therapist, we decided that she does have ADHD and have began taking steps both to help her as well as steps to help myself understand her so I can be more patient and helpful for her. We have readjusted our diet as a family to go back to being gluten-free, limiting dairy, only using organic foods, no processed food or artificial dyes/flavors, as well as getting her back on a whole-food multivitamin on top of her Vitamin D and Probiotic as well as being very consistent with giving them to her. We have VERY limited screen time with her now and most days don’t allow any at all just so we can detox her from it. We have more things like playdough and other fidget items, we have implemented daily workouts for her also. Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube has been AMAZING for her! She loves it and actually follows along with it also. We have also been giving her some tea of her own before bed but also during the day if she needs a little extra support. We have reached for our oils daily again and have the diffusers running daily again also, I had been very slacking on using the diffusers lately and just focused on other things that I didn’t realize I wasn’t using them like I had been. All in all, it’s been over a week since we implemented these things with her and we have seen a significant change in her behaviors overall. Yes, she still has tantrums, she’s not perfect and she’s only just about to turn 4, but she’s been doing incredibly better than the past several months and we have had WAY less accidents when we had previously been dealing with multiple accidents per day. To say I was frustrated and burnt out as a stay at home mom would have been a HUGE understatement. My sanity is returning and everyone in our family is benefitting and beginning to truly thrive again.
All in all, this first week of the New Year has been a great one for our family and I’m so excited to be on this journey as a family. I would love to hear about you and your family, what changes are you making for you this year? How can I help support you in your own journey?
Until next time friends 🙂
