2011 – Page 21 – a hippie with a minivan

Menu for the week…

Saturday is my usual shopping day.

I figure out what we are going to eat for the week, what we need for the house, and then leave the kids with Simon and head out to get it all done in one trip.

Figuring out our weekly meals is not hard, but it does take some planning… For inspiration I look at my past recipes, my favourite blogs, Foodgawker etc…What do we have in the house already? What is on special? Sometimes I am just feeling picky or want certain types of flavours or am just tired of the same old thing… it takes a bit of time, but I know that it is 100% worth it and that it will be satisfying to come home with a weeks worth of meals.

So here is our menu for the week:

Tonight: Swiss Fondue and chocolate cake (It is Simon’s Birthday)
Stuffed bread with Salad
Crispy Tofu and coconut Quinoa (the curried version)
Meat and Sweet Potato pie
Panko crusted tilapia with rice
Roasted Veggies with Garlic and cheese flat bread
Szechwan Eggplant and Cauliflower

Breakfast ideas :Smoothie, Bagels, eggs, oatmeal

What is your meal plan this week? Do you make one? Where do you get your inspiration?

Little steps

I wrote something in the comments of the last post that I would like to expand on… “I am ready for some changes in my life and the easiest place to start is with myself.”

I have some big plans for the future. We would like to sell the house and move. Maybe back to Montreal, ideally, out of province. However, it is hard to leave the stability we have now and take the plunge into the unknown. The more I think about it, the more I want it, but because we are not ready yet, it just becomes depressing to think of what could be. I am one of those people that when I want something, I want it now, and when I can’t get it I feel discouraged and live in a standstill… living in wait of something, instead of living in the moment.

I realize though, I can’t control big changes like this. Our Mortgage is up next year, if we sell now, we would have a penalty to pay which we can’t afford. Simon has a a stable job, which he hates, and we hate that he has to do something he hates each day, but it is a steady income that is hard to leave behind. One day we will be ready, but it isn’t at this moment. I need to accept that. Not that I will not change our dream and work towards it, but I realize that it takes little steps.

I may not be able to control the big picture at the moment, but I can control small changes, changes within myself, external and internal. A haircut, may be just a haircut, but it also a symbol for me that I am ready. I have dropped 10lbs in the last 2 months and I plan on losing a whole lot more. I no longer feel attachment to most of the stuff in my house and I just feel like getting back into that active mode of decluttering I was in a few years ago and getting rid of as much as I can that we don’t use or need.

I might want the big change now, but I am accepting that it might take longer then I wish. But, the little changes, I can control them. The little changes I make now can only make us more ready for the future and in the meantime I will not feel at a standstill, I will be able to keep moving ahead and hope that our big dreams will be realized sooner than later.

I did it…

After debating the decision for quite a long time…

I woke up this morning and decided that it was the day last day that my hair would look like this…

I called my neighbor and got a recommendation for a Salon (I have not had my hair cut professionally in years!) and came home looking like this…

What a change!! it feels so light and well, short! (the braid that was cut off was about 18 inches so it is quite a change)

I actually was thinking of going shorter but the stylist loves long hair and she was cringing at even going this short…

Feels good…

How far I have come…

I have said it in the past, yet I will say it once again. I have always wanted to journal, yet never found the medium that inspired me to keep at it. This blog is what changed that for me. Now, as more years go by, I am enjoying going back and seeing how much I have evolved as a parent and as a person… as I updated the blog I happened to find myself re-reading a few old posts. It is amazing to me how far I have come in the last years.

When I started this blog I was a mom of two… Xavier was 2 and Colin was about 9 months old, I was the moderator of the AP board on a very popular mainstream site and needed a place to rant. I defined myself as “AP” though I was past that “list” stage, yet it was still was a way to find like-minded people. I was not yet an “unschooler” though I did know that we would be homeschooling with little to no structure. I had ideals, I had a parenting philosophy, I knew what was important to me, yet I did not have the experience. I read what I wrote so many years ago and realize how I was so “new” at being a parent.

So many things have changed over the years, yet it has only evolved in what I see is a positive way. I remember being told “oh, you just wait and see…your kids are young/you only have one/you only have two” when it came to subjects that were not in the mainstream, as if my ideals would change as my children grew or I had more. I agree, they have, but they have not been crushed or been left behind, they have only evolved or have been reinforced.

I used to have ideals that I believed were true and possible, now I have the same ideals that I know are true and possible. I have seen my children learn to fall asleep without ever being trained or crying and without having sleepless nights, I have seen my children wean without weaning them. I have seen my children learn to walk though I always held them and wore them. I have seen how EC works and how amazing it can be to have a baby not wear diapers. I have seen my children learn to read without having taught them. I have seen my children learn boundaries without punishment, whether it be physical or emotional.

It is what I have seen and experienced that has made something change in me.

I no longer have the rants in me that I once had. I saw that shift when I decided to change the name of my blog from “Paxye’s Rant” to “a hippie with a minivan” back in 2007…

I knew that I didn’t need to rant as much anymore but I don’t think I understood why as much as I do now.It is in this respect that I see how far I have come…

I now see that my rants were often signs of defensiveness. Not defensive because I felt I was doing something wrong, but because it was all still so much of an unknown. I was parenting in a way that was foreign to the way that I grew up, that was foreign to the way those that surrounded me parented. I knew in my heart that it felt like the right to parent for us, yet I did not yet have a concrete example of the results that would be attained by doing so. Of course, I am still learning each and every day how to break the cycle of the way that I was brought up. I am still a fairly “new” parent with many trials ahead of me.There are still many mistakes to be made and that have been made, that I have learned from and am still learning from. But, I can see that it is no longer as easy for other parents to say “just wait and see”, I am now a more seasoned parent of four that is not only talking the talk, but has been walking the walk.

I look forward to seeing this post in another 6 years and again understanding how far I have yet again come from where I am now.

Bear with me…

As you can see I am in the middle of changing the layout of my blog…

It isn’t changing much in the look, though I do think it looks fresher with the small changes I have done… but it is changing a lot in the background.

One thing for sure is that my brain is getting a workout getting everything working the way I want it to.

I would love some feedback 🙂