This is the first time I've made a t-shirt dress and it was so easy! I cut the bottom off a bodysuit and sewed a gathered length of fabric to it. A little serging, a little hemming and done! Greta loves it! She was so excited to see it and try it on. And she got so much dirt and food stains on the dress in the few hours that she wore it! I'm glad I took these pictures right away, when she first tried it on. The fabric I used is from Jo-Ann's. I made Holly a peasant dress out of it, but she will not wear it. Oh well. 

My girls love dresses so a few more like this are likely in my future. Especially since they're easy and quick so if someone decides it's not for her, it's not as big of a deal.

I struggle with balance all the time. I'll excel at one thing while other things seemingly crumble around my feet. 

Today's been a tough day. So I'm posting pictures to remind me of what really matters in life. Being a mother is so important. 

"When you save a girl, you save generations."

I have two girls (three if I count myself) that I influence. It's hard work, but I trust that it'll be worth it.

PS: read the lds talk the quote is from here.

As I've blogged about once, my family has undergone a lifestyle change of sorts. I'm not entirely sure what I thought I'd expect at the end of our 30-day advanced eating plan and it was a little confusing as I struggled to figure out what I wanted and what felt right for my family and for my own body. While Conor and I did our 30-day challenge, I took the girls off of gluten for 2 weeks to see if they have an intolerance to it and to see if we saw any behaviour improvements. Well, at the end of the two weeks, I determined that the girls are not gluten intolerant. I was wrong. I discovered that 2 weeks is not a long enough period of time to determine a gluten intolerance. And second, not eating gluten makes a huge difference in my children's behaviour. 

When Conor and I begun our 30-day challenge, our girls began to go to bed so easily. In the past, Holly would get up multiple times after we put her to bed and therefore bedtime lasted any where from one to two hours. This how it's been for as long as Holly has been in a toddler bed. And it was stressful. We read a ton of sleep books and implemented the suggestions and nothing worked. We tried different methods of discipline and bribery. Nothing worked! I felt like I had no time for myself and no time to be with Conor. And I hated that the last interactions of the day between me and Holly were stressful and negative. I really don't like ending the day like that. And the stress that came from it every single night was wearing me out completely. 

Magically, our girls began falling asleep immediately when we changed our diet. We stopped seeing them or hearing from them after the final goodnight hugs and kisses. At first, we didn't realize that it was connected to their diet and we were just grateful.

After the girls 2-week trial, I let them have gluten again, but since I'm gluten-intolerant and I've lost all faith in wheat, it wasn't in our home very much. The girls only had gluten when they were at friends' homes, at church or when we went out to eat. 

One night I brought them to a relief society dinner with me. It was a lasagna dinner with rolls and salads. Holly and Greta were so excited to eat bread and ate as much as they could get their hands on. Guess what? They had the hardest time settling that night! The next day, no gluten, smooth bedtime. The day after that, they ate pizza and would not settle at night. It was after that night that Conor and I finally clued in to their gluten intolerance. We've officially taken them off gluten. In fact, we're gluten-free as an entire family. 

I share this only because of what a difference it has made to our family. Every bedtime doesn't run perfectly smooth but the difference is extreme. While it's been overwhelming to navigate gluten free foods (I used to believe peanut butter and jam sandwiches were God's gift to mothers), our family functions so much better without gluten.

I realize many readers may be skeptical. And that's okay. When one of my friends initially told me about how gluten and sugar affect her little boy, I didn't believe it. Now I do. Gluten and sugar affect my girls differently, but it definitely does affect my girls. Besides struggling to relax and sleep, Holly complains of stomach aches and they both get bad gas. 

I also realize that we're all at different places and for some, a diet change isn't possible. I can relate to that too. When Conor introduced the idea of eating Paleo to me 3 years ago, I told him no way. I wasn't in the right place. Now, we don't follow the paleo diet perfectly, but we're pretty close. 

I hope that me sharing what has worked for my family will help others find the balance and the health that they might be looking for. I ask that my readers see my vulnerability in sharing my experiences with nutrition. I'm not a nutritionist, but I do believe in food and in our body's ability to heal themselves. 

For whatever reason, I thought the girls would be lukewarm about dyeing easter eggs. I was wrong! They totally loved it. It was a fun little activity to have them color on the eggs with white crayon and then dip them in dye. Holly had a nice color theory lesson when she wanted to dip one of her eggs repeatedly in different colors. It really is the little things...

PS: if you're interested in a delicious Paleo egg salad recipe, here's one. 

Yesterday, we staged a small easter egg hunt for the girls. They each had one dozen eggs to find and their eggs were different colors. They did a great job at collecting only their own eggs and Conor did a great job hiding them according to their skill levels. It was just so fun to see their discovery. Greta "gets" hunting for eggs and is quite good at it and of course Holly definitely understands the game. Once all the eggs had been found, we dumped them out and let the girls have at it. Both Holly and Greta love chocolate. Greta quickly found all the eggs filled with chocolate by shaking them and ate her chocolate as fast as she could. To quote Greta in her deep, toddler voice, "CHOCOLATE!" This age is so fun. Conor and I loved remembering Holly at about the same age and her sheer enthusiasm and pure delight.

Details of our egg hunt: I filled a third of the eggs with stickers, a third with Annie's fruit snacks (3 per egg), and the last third had cadbury mini eggs (2 per egg). To collect the eggs, the girls used drawstring bags that I already had on hand. 

We're trying to keep our holidays simple. And while I thought that the amount of sweets we gave them wasn't all that much, we definitely could tell they had too much. Holly had a stomache ache and Greta had a hard time settling at bedtime. 

We didn't get a visit from the Easter bunny. I think we're going to nix that tradition. Partially it's out of selfishness for me, why should these make believe creatures take all the credit? And also because I think I would fill up an easter basket with a lot of stuff we don't need, which adds clutter to our home and I don't want that. I feel really satisfied by how this easter went down. We're trying hard to find a balance that's right for our family and even though it was a tough decision to not do anything from the easter bunny, or anything at all, besides an egg hunt, I'm really happy we did it.

On an unrelated to easter note, Holly is looking way too grown-up these days! Time is flying!