Lucky Me & The Little Things

Hello there, long time no talk. I’ve been laying low on the personal posts, and mostly have only taken the time to post business related updates. It’s time for some refreshing news, so right now- I want to talk about food!

Our household has been going through some long overdue nutrition and eating habit changes in the last couple of months, and I can NOT tell you how happy this makes me.

To give you some background, in my years growing up in Holland, my mom tried buy organic foods as much as the budget allowed, we went to the farmers market every single week to get our produce, and every  meal was home cooked and enjoyed at the table with the rest of the family. So even though I may not have necessarily always copied this exact great examples of how food should be bought and enjoyed, it’s always been a goal of mine.

And then I moved to America.

I was 18 so though I had a significant set of core values and intentions, they were still far from being nailed down, and I got swept up by the world of fast, cheap & convenient foods. There were several reasons for the intrigue some of which were 1) I no longer had a mom in my house reminding me to eat my veggies. 2) It’s the AMERICAN thing to do- right! I’d grown up seeing about this in movies and tv, I simply had to indulge. 3) At 18, I just simply didn’t think about unimportant things such as consequences and possible reasons as to HOW fast & convenient food could be so cheap, and WHY you’d want to buy fresh if you can just pick up a few boxes of hamburger helper and a bottle of SunnyD and have a meal in less than 10 minutes. Welcome to my new home!

Thankfully I have always had a fairly overactive metabolism so while I did gain weight as a result of this new lifestyle, it wasn’t nearly as much as I could have. Despite that, my ‘employers’ at the time took notice fast (these were my modeling days) and started demanding astronomical amounts of weight loss in ridiculous small windows of time, but that’s a whole other novel for another time. But the seed was sewn, consequences were recognised and I thought that maybe, possibly visiting Denny’s for breakfast, Taco Bell for lunch and Betty Crocker for Dinner and mocha-frappa-java-chinos for coffee in between were not the most nutritional way of life.

I guess at that time I tried to be a little more conscious about our food, visited the farmers market once in a blue moon, the produce section in the grocery store for a minute every trip, and home cooked meals happened a little more frequently than before. But we still very much indulged in eating out, eating fast, and getting much of the ‘convenient’ food in the grocery store isles. I thought ‘why not!’. And that was probably the key right there. Why not?

‘Why not’ is exactly what’s finally made the change for me and the eating habits for our family. I have been learning exactly ‘why not’ after listening to friends who have been knowing ‘why not’ to eat crap with a novel worth of unrecognizable ingredients on the packages for a long time. And by reading a very informative book called “Fast Food Nation“, and starting to see what’s been happening to America’s food supply. And you know how it is, once you are tuned in to something new, more and more information just comes at you, and your eyes are opened wider every day.

So over time I started to see the good reasons behind buying organic, buying fresh, buying local and even the taking the time to eat together, one of the seldom times in a day a family has to connect!
However again, these new found wisdom and actions were still largely counteracted by fast food meals. I couldn’t help it- I love fast food! I love to not cook every day! I love cheap stuff!

Then it became a possibility that our son Nolan had a gluten allergy. He was diagnosed with autism at the age of 5, and I went on a reading frenzy to find out exactly what, how and why. Don’t get me wrong- Nolan is considered ‘high functioning’ in the autism spectrum, it mostly only affects his school work and peer relationships at this point, and I wouldn’t change ANYTHING about him- I just want to know if there are things we can do to help him along.

As I heard and learned more about autism, food allergies kept coming up too. I was intrigued, and coupled with Nolan’s digestion issues we though there was a possibility many of his difficulties may be eased by cutting gluten out of his diet. So we gave it a shot, and interestingly enough, over time it seemed to have noticeable effects on both his digestion issues, and his presumed autistic behaviors!

Then the more I thought about it (we are having Nolan tested for food allergies this summer, to see if there is any truth to our food allergy suspicions) and the more I heard and read about food allergies (which by the way are most often triggered by the most basic of basic foods people have been eating since the beginning of time; eggs, wheat, peanuts, dairy, etc!) I figured it just had to be related to this junk (with ingredients that are practically coming out of someone’s laboratory instead of off a field) people have been eating more and more in the past few decades.

Then the one documentary that finally put an end to it all for me was Food Inc. It just showed me everything I needed to see about the way people are being conned into growing, selling, buying, and eating manufactured and engineered foods that are nicely growing other people’s bank accounts. For me the greatest and most compelling line in it was a farmer explaining how every time a grocery shopper buys an item in the grocery store, they are essentially voting for the types of food they want farms to grow. That’s all I needed to hear. I stopped buying food because their price was enticing yet their ingredients list mind boggling, and started buying foods that are the best possible choice for my family, our health, but also still our budget.

So basically this is what my new grocery shopping rules/system comes down to:

Every week I get a box of fresh local and/or organic veggies and fruits delivered to my front door (I LOVE Papa Spuds).

For everything else I mostly stick to the grocery stores that have a habit of mostly selling organic & natural foods and processed foods with minimal additives. (Since we are on a budget I love Trader Joe’s for this. If money weren’t an issue I would shop at Wholefoods)

And I ALWAYS look at the ingredients of anything I buy anymore. I have to anyways to make sure there is no gluten, but while I am looking I make sure there is not high fructose corn syrup hiding up in there, or anything else that I don’t recognize. The fewer ‘lab’ ingredients the better.

And the result? Amazing! Energy is through the roof, we feel better, are healthier, don’t crave junk much or at all! And the pounds are flying off! That last bonus was very much an unintended side effect, but it makes perfect sense-right!

And that’s pretty much it. Opposite to my first belief we spend roughly the same amount of money on groceries every week- even though I am reaching for the more expensive ‘organic’ groceries, I am also buying less fringe junk. And since I have lots of fresh foods to get through in a week I am cooking pretty much every night, so we are spending a LOT less in eating out to boot. And as a side note about eating out; since I am so hyper sensitive now about where my food comes from and what is in it, eating out becomes a lot less appealing, who knows where they get their stuff? Yet another budget booster!

As you can tell, I can keep talking about this for another hundred miles, so I will do everyone a favor and keep it at that. I think the thing that is just keeping me all atwitter about this is that I get it, and I want you to get it, and you, and YOU! I want no one to be manipulated anymore by big money-sweating corporations who are deciding what is going into your shopping carts and bellies, while you watch your energy go down, and your pants size expand, and your bodies reject the most basic foods out there. I have (FINALLY!) seen the light, and I hope everyone else can too.

From your local first grader

Nolan came home from school with this list today, and when I asked him what it was he grabbed it from me and read it with such authority and fervor I knew I had grab the camera to share it with the world.

If only he practices what he preaches.

The Bug is on spring break as of today, and we are already enjoying slow mornings broken up by extra cuddles, tickle fights, and multiple trips to the kitchen for MORE SNACKS! Our holiday itinerary is filling up with play dates, trips to Marbles and the Arboretum, logging a few hours together at the studio for work (me) and watching trains out the window (not me), and most likely some serious park playing and gardening will be involved too.

The boy has been saying some pretty priceless lines lately, and I know I will forget them if I don’t write them down somewhere. I have been making a live feed of them on my Facebook page, but I thought this would be a great place to collect the latest:

Nolan just asked my if I wanted to go to the “AT&T Christmas feast.” When I told him I didn’t know what that was, he told me it’s in Texas.

Nolan: “Mommy, make the phphphfffft sound when I pull your finger”

Nolan: “I don’t like Walmart, because it has BAD stuff in it”

Greg to Nolan: “You know, you are a hansome boy, when you are older a lot of girls are going to want to hang out with you” Nolan’s response: “On Kwanzaa or Hanukah?”

Nolan “No dad, God doesn’t speak Dutch, only mommy does”

I’ve been way too businessy- with not enough family on this blog here, so today I am sharing a video of our little man helping with the laundry. As you can tell by his non-stop chatter, he is terribly excited to be doing this. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope that when he is big enough to do chores consistently he will enjoy it just this much.

Nolan is doing the laundry from Kiona Wilson on Vimeo.

Last Monday was a teacher workday and so the little stinker tagged along with me to the studio. He loves visiting ‘his lovely ladies’ there and touching their stuff, and asking them about what hey are doing, and tell them when they are doing it wrong. Apparently they love it, and kinda miss it when he is not there to keep them on task.

So I am thinking this day he wanted to really make his mark and leave his lovely ladies with something to talk about for all the following weeks he would be spending back in school. Because when we weren’t paying attention for a few minutes, this is what he did with the poly fill that was originally destined to be inside Michelle’s peculiar pets

This past weekend is one of the few ones left this fall season without a show scheduled on it, so my husband had the great idea to visit one of our states’ parks and take a hike at it with our little man and the pooch.

So we headed out to Raven Rock park which is right along the Cape Fear river at Lillington NC. I didn’t realize that there was this much mountain-like terrain only an hour outside of town!

Sasha (our dog) was totally in her element. She gets walked a good bit at home, along with the occasional trip to the dog park, but that all paled in comparison to this giant park with creeks to jump into! and rocks to climb like a mountain goat!

And our little trail-blazer monkey took the lead all 3.5 miles of the trail, running most of the way. When we got home we expected him to want to take it easy for the rest of the afternoon but instead he bounced around off the walls for a few more hours, making good use of all the fresh mountain air in his lungs.

Last month Nolan started first grade which ofcourse had to be documented thoroughly on camera. As I was digging though pictures of last year, I realized we had taken near identical pictures of his first day of kindergarten too. Something tells me there are probably also similar pictures for the first day of pre-school, but for those I will have to dig a little harder.

So here is our little beansprout on both his first days:

His backpack can still swallow him whole, and probably a second kid too, but he certainly seems to have grown in both confidence and height!

And both my birds still sit on their perch waiting for Nolan’s ride every morning:

I wonder at what year this picture will show a wiry Nolan towering high above his dad, sitting like this. That is ofcourse if Nolan doesn’t first decide he is WAY too cool to be sitting next to dad while waiting.

I still just can’t believe we have a first grader! What’s next, college?

I have been in the process of clearing old pictures off the computer and burning them on a CD, which has to be done at least every 6 months, and that’s if I wait for the computer to get painfully slow due to limited available space. Which I typically do. I think it’s fairly obvious that I am a bit trigger happy when it comes to my camera.

While clearing out these old pictures I realised how many share-worthy pictures on Nolan I had not shared yet! Shame on me. So here I am making a few (probably more than a few, can’t say I didn’t warn you) retroactive updates, mostly of the boy, but also a few of the dog I am sure.

For starters, and I am ashamed to admit I didn’t post this, The First day of Kindergarten!

Greg and his mini-me waiting for the school-cab.

Nolan points out it’s his ‘first!’ day of Kindergarten, not to be confused with the second day.

And his backpack is about to swallow him up. It’s big enough for lunches, folders, notes, craft projects, and acting as a tent on those unexpected overnight stays in the wilderness.

Looking back at these pictures from only half a year ago, I can’t believe how much he’s grown already!

Last weekend we had a small party at the park to celebrate Nolan’s 6th birthday. We made a point to keep the party nice and small as the poor kid got incredibly overwhelmed last year at his 5th birthday party. That party had also been planned to be outside in a park, so we had invited lots or our and his friends, thinking there would be lots of space. Then windy weather made us change plans and we moved the shindig indoors, making our house filled with friends like sardines in a can. I will never forget the look in Nolie’s eyes when we all crammed into one room to sing him happy birthday. All eyes were on him, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He spent the rest of the party in his bedroom playing quietly by himself, and to this day refuses to be anywhere near someone singing ‘Happy Birthday’. A week later we got his autism diagnosis, and as we learned a bit that meeting what it means for a kid to live life with autism, we thought back to his birthday and felt terrible about the large amount of over stimulation he got that day, enough to overwhelm any 5 year old kid, but especially one that has trouble processing all of it.

So having learned our lesson, we kept things nice and small this time around. We felt sad that this meant there were a lot of friends we wanted to invite and couldn’t, but as long as it meant the chances of the boy enjoying his birthday party would be better, it was worth it.

This was also the first year that he had specific requests for is birthday cake. The requests were: A purple cake (his favorite color) with gumballs (he’s been eying a gumball machine at our favorite Mexican restaurant for months). So that’s what he got, and he loved it. But when it came time to blow out the candles he reminded us plenty of times that we were not allowed to sing the birthday cake, though after some careful thought we were allowed to say ‘yay!’ after blowing out the candles. He isn’t anything if not specific.

For the rest of the party we just had a really great time at the playground. We couldn’t have asked for better weather, it was a freaky 70+ degrees sunny, and breezy. Kids blew bubbles and colored the ground with chalk, ate chips and cake, and played on the playground. Adults socialized and saved the occasional child stuck at the top of a climbing contraption. And most important of all, Nolan was genuinely happy, relaxed and enjoying every single second of it.

I have a whole folder full of additional pictures right here should you feel the need to check the rest out too.