sugar and spice.

Another post where I admit to being absent, as of late! Iris and I have been going through a bit of a rough adjustment period, where she is asserting her new independence and creating boundaries for herself. She will now say the word, "no" to me, has become very picky about food, is determined to stand and run along the couch, pull dvds off the shelves, and becomes extremely emotional about every little thing. It has been hard for both of us, especially on me since I am very much alone, most of the time. Marius' internet has also been very unreliable lately, which tends to add to the heaviness of missing him which I always seem to feel in my chest. Sometimes it can take hours for our skype messages to go through to each other, and we very rarely get to see each other's faces. We still don't know when he will be coming home from his deployment, but we are hoping for within a month or two.

Things are going well, aside from the changes and difficulties. I am readying our home for our impending move to Germany this spring, which means sorting through all of our belongings, organizing them and minimizing as much as possible. I've already made one huge donation of old baby clothes, toys and various kitchenware to a local shelter and have another one almost ready to go. I have started reading again and practicing a bit of yoga, both of which are much needed.

I have also recently made a huge change to my lifestyle in terms of cutting most sugar out of my diet. I now use one teaspoon of agave in my coffee or tea and have no candy, chocolate, or much of any processed food. I have also stopped eating any kind of products containing eggs (due to my allergy), and I feel worlds better after both of these adjustments. It's really amazing how addictive sugar is and how it finds it's way into almost all of our food these days. After a week of eating no more than 10g of sugar a day, I tried to eat a sweet potato for lunch and found myself disgusted at how sweet it tasted, even with nothing on it! Did you know that the average American eats 150lbs of sugar each year? That's one teaspoon of sugar for every hour of every day!

Anyway, here is the only picture I have available to me right now, as I still haven't bought a new camera card. I took this for Marius to show him just how big Iris has really gotten. We had both recently woken up and were still in our jammies, looking sleepy. Speaking of which, I am exhausted. I hope to soon have more time and energy to devote to my blog.