Bed Rest Ramblings

*Did anyone catch the typo in the title before I could change it? Red Rest Ramblings?? Haha! Hopefully you knew what I meant ;)*

-Thanks for the encouraging comments on my last post. I know that I have to make decisions that I feel are best for myself and my family, regardless of real or imagined judgement from other people. I'm just too much of a people pleaser. I hate the thought of someone possibly thinking that I'm making a selfish or "easy" decision at the expense of my children. Especially a decision that I've put so much thought and prayer into. But, I need work on making decisions that I believe will, number one, honor Christ, and, secondly, be best for my family. Beyond that, I don't need to worry about making everyone happy with my decisions. It can be tiring trying to please everyone! But I'm thankful for my sweet blog friends!

-One thing I've enjoyed about bed rest is all the.... well, the rest! I feel like I'm getting to miss out on the normal end of pregnancy exhaustion. I'm getting as much sleep as I want. David gets up with the kids and feeds them breakfast and plays with them until our helper for the day arrives. I've really wanted to try to be awake and accessible when the kids are awake so things are a little more normal, but I've been getting up around 8:30 (the children get up around 7:30). Then I spend the morning on the couch while Aubrey and Jude play/watch movies/read books. I interact with them as much as possible. Sometimes they will come sit on the couch with me and let me read to them. That's usually brief, though. Both of them are pretty active! ;) Anyway, when they nap, I'm free to nap or just rest or whatever I want (as long as it involves being horizontal and fairly still - haha). David and I have been going to bed pretty early, too. David would love to go to bed early all the time, and I've been more willing to go to bed early since bed rest. Not because I'm tired, but because I'm just ready to be one day closer to having the baby :) Anyway, I wish there was a way to "store" sleep. Because no matter how much rest and extra sleep I get before Alaina is born, I know it will only take a couple of those newborn nights for me to be exhausted. I am thankful that I should at least be going into the whole thing rested! :)

-Since I've been on bed rest, I've had a LOT of time on my hands. I've done everything from online shopping, reading blogs, watching movies, reading, pinning on Pinterest, and who knows what else. I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos as well. Ha! I've gotten kind of obsessed with bread making videos and I've also been reading a lot of blogs on healthy lifestyles and eating. Now, I think we eat fairly healthy already. I do try to be intentional about cooking healthy meals and I try to watch what the kids snack on. We do eat out a lot, though. We always have, ever since David and I were dating. It's so easy to read a couple of things on health and nutrition and feel the need to go to the extreme. For instance, I now feel like I need to not only make our own bread, but I also need to grind our wheat and make everything that has flour in it myself. Plus, we need an organic garden and chickens in our backyard too, of course. Cutting out ALL processed foods is a given in this new, healthy lifestyle. Oh, and I'll be making all of our own cleaners. Well, you can see how it's easy to get overwhelmed. I think all of the above are good things, but there's no way I'm going to be able to do all of that overnight. For now, I'm just going to focus on cutting back on the amount of times we eat out per week, try to GREATLY reduce the amount of processed food we consume, and cook fresh, healthy meals. I would like to start experimenting with making our own bread, but I think I'll just start with a good wheat flour :) And I think it would be awesome to be able to grow some vegetables in our backyard, but David and I both are just NOT good at keeping plants alive, so maybe we should just take advantage of the Farmer's Market.

-Speaking of healthy lifestyles, I really want to start exercising again and get in really good shape. I canceled my gym membership after I got pregnant and quit going. My grandmother loaned me her treadmill, but unfortunately, I didn't even really use it. For now my plan is to walk on the treadmill after the baby is born until I'm cleared for "real" exercise at my 6 week post partum visit. Then I REALLY want to go back to the gym. The gym I went to before was a 24 hour gym, and it was great, but it didn't have any classes or anything like that. I think I would really enjoy classes, but I'm just not sure what I would do with the kids. I don't really feel comfortable with gym childcare at this point. Maybe I could go really early in the morning before David goes to work? Ha!

-I'm usually a winter girl, but this year I'm just really looking forward to spring. This just seems like a great time of year to have a baby. The weather is beautiful, everything just seems new and fresh, and I'm loving that the days are starting to get longer. I always feel so blah and hormonal for a couple of weeks after having a baby, so I'm hoping the spring weather will help with that. I'm going to try to make a point of just going outside and sitting in the shade with the baby. Aubrey and Jude were born in September and July, and while those months are great too, it's just so blazing hot here that getting outside much with a newborn isn't really feasible. I also have the urge to spring clean, and I hope that sticks around until I can actually do it! :)

-I feel like I have so many random thoughts in my head. Probably because I'm not really getting out much ;) Ha! So, hence the very random, ramble-y blog post :) You're welcome! Haha!