Surviving, Cleansing and Growing

It has become very apparent that I live, not in Alberta, Canada but in Narnia: the land of “always winter, never Christmas.” It’s enough to drive one to insanity. The sun is no encouragement and rather adds insult to injury because you can’t actually venture outside without your nose hairs and eyelashes freezing. To add to the discomfort that the weather causes I am officially half way through my little cleanse. Day 6.
Needless to say, this week I shut down. I rejected all “busyness” and went into survival mode. We resorted to what we know best….baking (even though I can’t eat it). I can live vicariously through the smells, and smiles on the faces of those who devour the goods. Baking is one of Jakob’s favourite things to do, and he is actually getting pretty good at helping instead of “helping”.

In reality, the cleanse hasn’t been too bad. I do the Wild Rose Detox. I have done it a few times now and quite like it because you can actually eat a wide variety of food. I am one of those people that needs to eat so the whole lemon juice/cayenne pepper/maple syrup thing just doesn’t work for me. And I always feel better after. That being said my husband hates it. I like to think that I eat relatively healthy anyway so the effects are almost not noticeable for myself, whereas it ends up cleansing a little too aggressively for someone like my hubby who enjoys his Pepsi and Doritos from time to time.

For the first few days however it does drain my energy. So I tried my best to do only the minimum and just enjoy being home, playing with kids, baking and taking care of myself. I would pull out the iron and then do yoga (the ironing has yet to be done.)

Which brings me to yoga….oh how I missed you. I practiced regularly for 5 years before we moved to this little rural town, at which time, my practice came to a screeching halt. As part of my cleanse, I committed to doing yoga at least every other day. It has been so uplifting and invigorating. I have a theory about the languages our bodies speak. For some it is through music, for some it is through writing, and as I have mentioned before, for me it is movement. Yoga became the accessible alternative after highschool when dancing was my life. All this to say, its been good.
*To get back in the groove I used a YouTube video to give my practice a jump start. I found one from Yoga Yak that was perfect for where I am at. Check it out.*

I am hoping the cleanse only adds to good health that my family has been experiencing. We are almost a month, sickness free (this is AMAZING). I am so thankful! It has been so wonderful to see my kids thrive and develop at full steam. Ella’s progress is consistent adding new skills each day. For example, this morning when asking for more banana, she signed “more” (which she has done for a while) but she also said “baba”. This is huge because she often totally rejects using any sound other than “da” or “tse”. She has started embracing her walker and is working on standing balance.

Jakob is also continuing to learn at a rapid rate and amazes me with his social maturity, ability to memorize and his progress with shapes, relativity and grammar.