Home Alone

Every year around August, I get to stay home alone for a weekend. The hubs takes the babes and they go camping with another family. This started as a father daughter thing because one year, the mom of that family couldn't go so I happily stayed home. Consequently, the mother does join them every year and I still, happily, decline.

She laughs at me

First of all, let me just state that it is unacceptable that I have waited so long to post. Tsk! Tsk!
I'll try to be more diligent.
My child, she laughs at me. I've only really lost it, in a sad way twice. Once when the babes was around 4 years old and I had just had it with all her complaining about the food she has to eat, "Ugggh, oatmeal AGAIN" Meanwhile, I can understand if I was feeding her oatmeal every day she would have a reason to complain. But, we don't.

Natural flavors is to food as...

Fragrance/parfum is to beauty/cosmetics! Whaaat? Yes, do not be fooled by the ingredient "natural flavors." That makes me sad, though I am not surprised. Sad because I have sometimes been excited about minimal ingredients in my packaged food and have overlooked the natural flavors as an ingredient that should cause me to pause. Not sure why, I certainly avoid all skincare/beauty products that have fragrance/parfum as an ingredient because they can hide any number of toxic ingredients under that label.

Mothers...motherhood

Gwyneth Paltrow interviews her mother, Blythe Danner on her Goop podcast. This interview brought tears to my eyes because it exemplifies how mothers often feel like they weren't good enough. I felt sad that Blythe diminishes her influence on her daughter, always attributing G's good qualities to her father. We never seem to recognize our gifts as mothers and we really give so much...from the moment we give birth, actually. Am I right?

My mother and myself as mother

Does anyone ever compare their parenting with that of their parents? I don't necessarily think "compare" is actually the word I am looking for. I'm not necessarily comparing my parenting to that of my mother's but I do have flashbacks of what my childhood was like in certain scenarios as I act out something different.

Brown Rice Porridge

Mmmm...I really should've taken a photo of this yummy breakfast dish. I was at a bookstore the other day and happened upon the SQRL cookbook. One recipe that caught my eye was their Brown Rice Porridge. Yum. I did not buy the cookbook but jumped online this morning to find a comparable recipe. The Interwebs is so good like that - you can put in "SQRL brown rice porridge" and it will pull up either that exact thing or something like it - like this one is the one I used. Or like when I entered "In and Out special sauce" and recipe totally comes up. So easy!

Full body gua sha

I just did a full body gua sha and it felt great! A while ago, I attended a wellness panel hosted by Jenni Kayne. The panelists were singing the praises of body brushing aka dry brushing for detox. Truly, they were all saying if there's one thing we should all be doing, it's dry brushing.