My daughter has started whining.  This must come with toddler-hood because she rarely whined as a baby.  But her new way of expressing her emotions is through scrunching up her face and spitting out this high-pitched whine.  And oh no, not just once or twice, but over and over and over. 

So it got me thinking about whining and it reminded me of a story I heard about last year.  It’s about a pastor from a church in Kansas City who decided to encourage his entire congregation to become complaint-free.  (Apparently his congregation had been full of trivial complaints and it was really having a negative impact on them.) 

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It seems as though life is a series of ‘firsts‘.  And as if best friends, my firsts have always been paired with fear and anxiety.  In the past, every new experience that awaited me was greeted with white knuckles and peeking out of fearful eyes.  In the case of motherhood, everything about raising a daughter has been a first. 

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Lately I’ve had a lot of financial issues on my mind. Maybe it’s because tax day was yesterday and the media was all abuzz. Or maybe it’s because my husband and I are working to improve our own financial situation to begin saving for our daughter’s future. Maybe it’s the continually rising gas prices or the big R word we keep hearing about. Or maybe it’s some of the fantastic articles I’ve read lately about money saving tools and finding financial perspective. It’s likely that all these things have played a role in money being at the fore-front of my mind.

During these frustrating economic times, it can be so helpful just to feel as if you are taking control of your own finances by being proactive. It certainly helps to avoid feeling like a victim of circumstances and like things are beyond our control. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I am solely responsible for my actions and that it’s my choices that have brought me to where I am today… whether that be good, bad, or indifferent.

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Do you know how many calories you eat a day?  Do you regularly keep track of them?  And if so, how?  On paper, in your head, maybe an excel spreadsheet?  Well, my Useful Website of the Week, caloriecount.about.com, is a free online calorie counting tool and is very helpful in keeping track of those numbers.  Given my recent realization that I wasn’t eating enough calories, I am definitely finding this to be a handy resource.

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I need to take a moment to thank my dear husband for all his help in putting together this blog.  He has been incredibly supportive from the beginning, and in fact, it was his idea that I start writing to begin with.  Ever since my daughter was born he has been saying, “you should be a mommy blogger!”.  And now that I am, I could not be more grateful for his ideas and support.  I truly enjoy writing this blog and sharing my experience, strength, and hope with you.

Not only has my dear husband been supportive with his words, he has also lent me his talent.  He created the new heading and fixed many of the kinks in the theme of this blog, and not to mention basically setting the whole thing up to begin with.  Talk about dedicated!  So with all that being said, thank you my dear husband for being so awesome and helping to make EvolvingMom.com possible!

Right now it seems as though my path to weight loss has a big, fat, red brick wall sitting across it.  I’m working really hard in my workouts (harder than ever, in fact) and eating the minimum amount of calories that I should be, and yet, the numbers are not moving.  This keeps happening and I’m not sure why, but I have a couple of theories. 

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I will not be posting much this weekend.  We are taking a family trip to the beach Saturday to enjoy the beautiful weather we are finally getting!  I suppose I will call this a wordless weekend.  I hope you enjoy yours and make it a healthy one!

Each week I allow myself one splurge.  I call it my “treat”.  My diet has always included a treat because I feel it is very important to still act like a human being while on a diet.  Seriously, I think that sometimes people cut out so much so fast and they lose it all so quickly that they forget that it’s not just a diet that we are on, but that it’s a lifestyle change.  I’m not knocking their strategies for losing weight but this is how I have to look at my own journey.  I found this article that helps explain this theory and why it’s important not to cut everything out completely.  It also provides tips on successful splurging.

I’m not just in this to lose weight so I can wear the clothes I like and look cute.  Don’t get me wrong, that is a huge reward, but it’s not my motivation.  My goal is to be a healthy person and make my older years a little easier than they might have otherwise been.  I don’t want to learn how to cut out all my favorite foods only to never have them again; I want to learn moderation.  My other goal is to teach my daughter how to live a healthy lifestyle through mine and my husband’s actions, not just our words.  I want her to grow up eating healthy foods and being active, and our hope is that with a solid foundation, she would continue that on her own. 

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Something amazing happened yesterday on the treadmill.  I ran for 10 minutes straight!!!  As in non-stop, 10 solid minutes!!  This is an absolutely amazing feat for me on so many levels and for so many reasons.  The main reason being that I used to hate running with a passion. 

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Something that we have a lot of in my household is clutter.  It is not intentional and my husband and I are always trying to keep it clutter-free, but never-the-less, it still exists.  Not only is there clutter on our shelves and counter-tops, but there is also plenty of mental clutter.  It seems that so much of the time we are trying to rid ourselves of that as well.  Enter ZenHabits.net, the Useful Website of the Week. 

I have found this website to be truly useful in the war against clutter in our house, as well as our lives in general.  It seems as though a clutter-free lifestyle is much more of a journey than a destination, and ZenHabits.net has been a very instrumental tool on our journey. 

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