Tea. It's where it's at.

This summer I was determined to make my own healthy iced tea and make my family love it! I'm proud to report its been a success.

Every week we go downtown to the local tea shop on 5th and pick out 2 teas to have for the week. I feel like I've become a bit of a tea snob now that I've been home brewing loose leaf tea my self. No more boxed brand name teas, now we just go local and natural and I'm lovin it!!!! 

These are my 2 faves so far and I highly recommend:

- white tea raspberry cream

- grapefruit jazz green tea

Both are refreshingly amazing and we seem to go thru a jug every 2 days right now!

So if you are wanting a nice summer drink, definitely check them out!! Mmmmmmmm. 

The art of the cover up. Tired? No not me.

"Long nights equals long days and then you depend on coffee to sustain you through out the day." 

This is the advice I received  from a friend when I was gearing up for my first child. I was not a coffee drinker then, infact I found the drink to be bitter and repulsive. Fast forward a couple months and that very unsatisfying drink would become my very best friend. 

Who knew that sleep deprivation could play such havoc on your body and mind. When they say you go crazy, it's true! 6 weeks into motherhood I had already visited the hospital emergency ward after trying to split frozen chicken with a butter knife.  Seriously!!! 

Only sleep deprived crazy people do that and I was for sure becoming one of them. Nothing could ever have prepared me for the amount of sleep I was going to live without, or so I thought. Insert child number 2 when my oldest was 3yrs old and we have the make up for a mother atomic bomb. 

That period in my life was the toughest life lesson I ever had to endure. I was up all night with a baby, up all day with a toddler and this process was in constant repeat. My husband was only able to take a week off when the baby was born and there was times when I would be up at 3am for the third time that night, bouncing, feeding and diapering a screaming child and there he was, peacefully sleeping (and snoring). 

I could of killed him. 

The thought crossed my mind. 

The unfairness I felt....

The guilt for feeling that way....

Then trying to be understanding because I knew he had to work, however the visuals of stuffing a rolled up sock down his throat seemed like the suitable payback for the time I was putting in. 

So how do we survive?

Yes, we adjust. 

We learn to go on and build a routine with minimal sleep and then all of a sudden the kids are grown and we forget the torture we put ourselves through. Like its in our DNA to automatically forget the roughest periods of your life when you lived months, no YEARS without sleep. 

Now...

In walks your best friend, she's just had a baby. You hold him, and that's it! Your ovaries are tingling, your boobs are twitching and you begin reminiscing about your babies and how cute they are, and how you want more... 

Wait... What???

Really?? 

MORE?!?  

Nope!! Not this chick. I'm done. 

But that baby smell.... 

Love it. 

Want it. 

Can smell it from 50 miles away.....

You see us mothers, we take on that battle like nobodys business. We stay up, we endure and we drink coffee because we love those little butt farts!

After all you made that! 

And there is nothing better in the world. 

An open book....

There's a ton of pressure from the world to look like the women on the cover of magazines. The women who shop at any store and walk into a mall with so many choices as if everything has been hand picked for them...and it has. This pressure turns into constant paranoia and anxiety that robs you from opportunities in pursuit of “perfect”. 

We've all been there, in fact I'm still there. We try to change ourselves and we suffer through discomforts all in an effort to fit in and be accepted. 

We lose weight, we gain weight and we repeat the process again and again. I think most of us are always on a diet and when asked at any given time there is always some food that we are at war with. 

Being overweight I am living in a body that I struggle to love everyday. The pressure from society to be something I am not is constantly on my mind. Society treats fat people differently as if our size is a reflection of our worth because people instantly type cast you like the other "fat"people they see in the media. As if they have an open window into your life. 

Truth is, we live in a body that immediately declares our self-worth based on the media's standard of beauty. But it is my body right? Or maybe it is yours..... 

The reality is no matter how much I love myself I'm constantly reminded that I should feel ashamed. It's a constant struggle for me and for anyone who feels the pressure to be the starlet on TV, the women in the fitness video or the model on the magazine, but at the end of the day I am in control. What matters to me is what is important and only I can make a change if I want to. It's only until we love ourselves that we can truly be free. To that I say "Screw you society!" I've got this.