Spring Break Babes

This is just copy pasta from my photography blog. But really, it's so cute, it deserves to be posted twice.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!
Here's a short n' oh so sweet post featuring my ittiest bittiest and her BFF Miss H.

 "Suck it in, Norah! They are taking our picture"

Aren't those the sweetest, tiniest one year old rolls you've ever seen? (No need to answer that, they are)

"Mama..You know this water is not...how do you say...warm? Right?"

Classic baby faces. H looking adorable- Norah eating nature.

 "Look H, Give Nona kisses, like this"
"Yessss, kisses!" 

"How bout I just love her like this?"

Yes! Perfect! Now, Give each other kisses!!!

...Or the pool.

"Wait a minute...I think they want us to kiss each other!!! Silly mamas..."

Sigh...I guess you can just sit there and look adorable, if you must.

Hope your spring break is going splendid! 

Daylight Savings Suck & How God Loves Us

Do you see this beautiful, well adjusted, not a care in the world little toddler?

About 5 hours after this picture was taken, she was replaced with a small, terrifying, deafening creature of which the likes of M. Knight Shyamalan could not even imagine.

Daylight Savings Time is such a piece of crap. We've NEVER had issues with the time change before, NEVER! But now I know why toddler moms across America get drunk prepare themselves for this most unholy night of the year. The terror it brings is unmatched.
I'd much rather be creeped out by that one stuffed animal in your kid's bed that looks JUST like another person than deal with the Grimlin my Mogwai turned into.

Until, that is, God gave me a very precious gift.
After about an hour of sitting, ahem, screaming bloody murder, in the hallway over not being able to finish her Bible story because I took a toy away and she threw a fit (Yes, this story actually starts with me punishing Lily by not reading her the bible. Awesome parenting, anyone?) Lily gave in. I heard her apologize to daddy in between her shaky breaths, and heard her chubby baby feet stomping down the hall towards me.
I tried to be all "Ya, you are a bad kid, what the hell have you been doing for an hour, you better not wake up your sister when we get in your room" but God quickly, lovingly, slapped me outta that.

"Hu, hu, Mama?"
"Yes, Lily" (In my stern, but beautiful stepmother voice)
"I-I sthowwy for cwyin mama"
She lets all of her weight fall into my arms and I feel God there with me. Right there.
I have a flash back to minutes before when she was thrashing around in the hallway like an adorable, deadly, miniature killer whale, and I'm asking myself "WHY is she doing this? She's screaming about wanting to go to bed, but refuses, she's doing this to herself!"
But as soon as her chubby cheeks covered and boogers and tears rub up against my chest, and the weight of her little frame becomes heavy in my arms, and I can feel the conviction of her repentance, I feel- and momentarily understand- God's love for us. I can see all the times I've fought Him, though His plans for me are just and for my betterment, thrashing around in a fit of inobedient rage, only to be worn down by His patience (this is where I fall short, naturally) and want nothing more than His embrace.

He is so good.
Daylight Savings Time, is not.

Mark 9:36-37

"Taking a child, He set him before them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them,

"Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me." 

Home at Last

...oh yeah. I have a blog. Oops.

Sorry it's been so long since I've been around these parts! I've been busy nesting.
Oh, no, I'm not pregnant. Maybe that's not the right word for it. I haven't really been interacting with society lately. My vocabulary is shrinking.
But I have been using my shiniest spit and sturdiest twigs to make our new house look all Burke-y.
Oh, yeah. New house. That happened!!!

Let's rewind:
WAY BACK in November Eamon and I found a house in a neighborhood that we love on Craigslist. The NEXT day it was already taken so we were like, eh, no biggy. As we drove away from the house I turned to Eamon and said "God says He's going to give us a house in this neighborhood, just you wait." He chuckled and we drove home.
A few weeks later we found a house not in that neighborhood, but near by. It was perfect(ish). Three bedrooms, extra large washroom that could be a classroom, gas stove, shed out back for Eamon to work out of, big back yard. The paneling on the walls, along with one or two other minor things were easily overlooked. We got our deposit ready, gave notice to our apartment, got all the signatures we needed-and the day before we were supposed to hand over the money (12 days before move in) the real estate agent flaked. We were pissed, devastated, confused...it was so bizarre.
Fast forward to church that week (oh yeah, we do that too now...I basically morphed into a different person. I'm also blonde, 6'1" and don't grow pit hair anymore) and God tells me that Eamon has to take the lead in finding our house, but I have to help. Because that make total sense, right? Oh, it does? Glad you understood, bc I didn't. So I deleted my "This B has way too much time on her hands and looks up house listings every five minutes" app on my phone and restricted myself to 30 mins of searching each day (because I'm so disciplined)  and saw this weird listing on craigslist.
It had everything that we were looking for in a home, at a price cheaper than we had seen anywhere else, with some extra perks, within walking distance of the first house we looked at. It had to be a scam. I sent the listing to Eamon and just sat back.
Fast forward to one month ago- boxes packed, trucks getting loaded.

God always finishes what He starts. Remember that. And He never disappoints on a promise.

We are having our housewarming party this weekend and after that I'll post a home tour! I didn't decorate our last apartment bc I didn't know when we'd be moving and I was OH-VER it. But now, I feel so much more comfortable in my home. (Thank you pinterest!) Well, except the office. Everything that doesn't have a place is in our "office." It's the last thing we have to tackle.

Hope you all are doing fan effing tastic. It's spring break here, hubby's off all week...maybe I'll shave my legs.
Mae

Oh, and Norah's...almost ONE, so with that and lots of other fun stuff, hopefully I'll be blogging here more frequently again. Hopefully.

"Is Her Face Always Gonna Be Like That?"

( I started this post like 3 weeks ago, but I'm just so over talking about this already. Haha. Forgive me if this is shorter than you expect!)

That ^ precious gem was from a flamboyant cashier a few weeks ago before he said a single word to me in regards to Norah's cheeks. I nearly said "No, but people will ask YOU a similar question if you don't learn some manners, sir/ma'am"
While this post isn't about how I nearly lost hope in all humanity after dealing with increasingly rude people for the last 7 months, though it could be, I wanted to share the information I got from Norah's new doctor this week.
After months and months of elimination dieting, lotions & creams, sleepless nights and cheeks, wrists, thighs and ankles scratched raw, I threw in the towel [and several millions of dollars] and started looking for a doctor that would be able to help us.
I feel like every second of free time I've had where I wasn't meal planning, editing, [facebooking, pinteresting, doctor whoing...whatever] and being the general supermom/wife that I clearly am, I have been looking up dairy and egg free recipes, learning about Gut And Psychology Syndrome, and rubbing lotion on Norah. But when we came back from Rockport, it seemed like her immune/digestive system was completely shot. Every bite of everything she ate caused her to break out in hives. I'm talkin bananas, sweet potatoes, CHICKEN BROTH, everything made her break out, it was awful.

It started off as this:

Then once eggs and dairy were cut out it was good until the hives:

So here's the part where I'm supposed to get all medical and tell you what's going with Norah and the whole world goes "Oooooh, DUH!" But, guess what? Most people just don't get it. So I will briefly explain, to the best of my knowledge, what is going on, and you can do more research if you want ;]

All babies are born with weak intestinal linings. This is why they can only have liquids, ideally breastmilk, for AT LEAST six months. Around this time, their gut lining starts to heal and close up. Lots of people start to introduce solids at this point [as I did] and that's [arguably] fine and dandy. BUT- if that gut isn't healed or properly lined to be able to digest the food you put into it, it can reek havoc throughout the body. The amount of area of which this can affect ones body is mind blowing. From hives, to asthma, to psychological disorders... the list is never ending. I can't believe how one organ [albeit a GIGANTIC FRIKIN ORGAN] can effect so much of your body. Ok, so babies need their gut lining closed before starting solid food, you with me so far?

Well, it turns out, *I* have leaky gut. My gut never fully healed. My mom said that my cheeks were just like Norah's were until I was about 2. I was vegetarian for many years [vegan briefly, but I liked cheese too much] and shortly after starting that, I became lactose intolerant. [It actually makes perfect sense to me now.] I was severely depressed during these years [leaky gut and a severe lack of vitamin D with no iron didn't help] I was still vegetarian during my pregnancy with Lily. To get enough protein, I ate peanut butter every single day, at least once but usually twice. Leaky gut gets worse with pregnancy [hello, your intestines are being pushed and stretched by another human] I found out early in my third trimester that "some studies show" children whose mother ate excessive amounts of peanut butter had children with peanut allergies. Lily has a life threatening allergy to peanuts now. It's essentially my fault, NBD. [studies actually do show that of every woman observed, those who did not eat any peanuts during their pregnancy had 0% peanut allergies among their children, interesting, huh?] I also had a six month long, terrible, marriage crushing yeast infection that was impossible to treat.Take a look through Lily's first year- still vegetarian, severe post partum depression, Lily has dangerous peanut allergy. Lily turns a year old, God tells me to start eating meat, I find out I'm pregnant with Norah. But this time, I'm armed with a year of extensive foodie research and know a lot more about how to keep me and my baby healthy. So every day I eat lots of lean protein, very little carbs, very little sugar, 2-3 hard boiled eggs and 1-2 oz of cheese. Yeast infection arrives at about eight/nine months, so MUCH later than it did during the first pregnancy. Norah is born, face is clear for a few days, small dots start to come around when normal baby acne does, but never goes away. Her face gets really bad when my PPD kicks in again. She shows signs of being ready for solids much earlier than Lily, and since now I know everything there is to know about baby nutrition [sarcasm] I start feeding her.

Can you see where I'm going with all of this yet?

So since she was 3 months old I have been on a strict diet of no eggs or dairy- which is in a LOT of food. No butter, no goat's dairy [FETA] all and any food that has even the tiniest trace of eggs or dairy. It's been very tough. But, her body hit it's breaking point. About two months ago it just kinda gave up on trying to digest food. It's allergy alarm went off to everything she ate as if to say "No way man, I'm not ready" even though she'd been eating food for a while. It was then, after giving her benadryll after everything she ate, then essential oil baths, I decided I needed to find some help.

If you'd like to know the doctor we decided on, please feel free to email me [mae annette at gmail dot com]/message me on facebook. He is locating in Arlington, Texas [also sees patients in Plano once a week] and is very kind, knowledgeable and I believe that he cares about Norah. We tested positive for major egg, lactose, and casein allergies as well as a mild soy, sugar, wheat, gluten, and red meat. So...I've eliminated all of those too, with the exception of red meat, I am allowing myself some of that. And we are both Vitamin D deprived [insert me drinking a quart of chicken broth a day] It is down to just meat and veggies around here. And Norah is starting to show some improvement as well! She can now tolerate some chicken, green peas, banana, sweet potato, coconut anything [she LOVES coconut!] and chicken broth, which she proudly drinks from her sippy cup.

I never knew I had so much self control. This has been VERY hard for me. But, it's not like dieting. It's not like I can say, "Oh screw it! I'll just do some extra minutes on the treadmill tomorrow to make up for this butter in my oatmeal" [ya, let's not use brownies as an example...I am lightyears away from brownies right now...] no, any slip up costs us dearly. Scabby red face, itchy thighs and ankles, up all night screaming. That my friends, is not worth it. Eamon also DESPERATELY wants to take me out on a date to a nice restaurant. He wants to romance me with some of my favorite food [He knows just exactly what I would do for a lemon square, ladies. My standards are not that high.] and get me out of the kitchen for a break. But...I just can't right now.

STOP THE PRESS.
SUSHI. If I get sashimi...this might work out. Can't get any sides, but I may be able to eat a whole raw salmon filet. So sexy.

Anyway, there's that. And there's my size.
Every pregnant woman gets really sick of hearing "LOOK HOW BIG YOU'RE GETTING" every time she walks out the door. It's always said with good intention, but, it just kinda wears you out. [Or maybe it's just me and I'm taking this generalization of females too far. My bad.] Let's talk some numbers here. I was 205 the week before I had Norah, 185 [almost my Norah weight]at 8 weeks, and now I'm 145...I feel like a bag of bones...and boobs. It's bizarre. We won't discuss the fact that my clothing size kinda freaks me the hell out. I'm not a Betty or a Peggy people, I'm a JOAN. ...Right? Ugh. I don't know how long it's going to be like this, but I'm trying to find the awesome in being a size that I used to associate with prepubescence. [Insert major self loathing for realizing my double standard on size issues] When I read this, I had no idea what size I was, got pants a week later. Now I know that I am "Very Very Skinny"

From Tina Fey's, Bossypants.

Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny

• I was cold all the time
• I had a pair of size-four corduroy short shorts. That I wore. To Work. In the middle of Manhattan.
• I loved it when people told me I was getting too thin.
• I once took a bag of sliced red peppers to the beach as a snack.
• I regularly ate health food cookies so disgusting that when I enthusiastically gave one o Rachel Dratch she drew a picture of a rabbit and broke the cookie into a trail of tiny pieces coming out of the rabbit's butt.
• Men I had met before suddenly paid attention to me...and I hated them for it.
• Sometimes I had to sleep with a pillow between my legs because my bony knees clanking together kept me awake.
• I had a lot of time on my hands because I wasn't constantly eating.
• I ran three miles a day on a treadmill six days a week.
• I felt wonderfully superior to everyone.
• I didn't have a kid yet.

We should leave people alone about their weight. Being skinny for a while (provided you actually eat food and don't take pills or smoke to get there) is a perfectly fine pastime. Everyone should try it once, like a super-short haircut or dating a white guy.


Now that I've convinced you to go buy Bossypants, I should add, THERE IS HOPE for us!
All of this dieting, and supplements, and being able to see my hips will eventually stop. We are eating only these foods bc they are easily digestible. So over time, when our gut is healed, we may be able to start adding in some foods we weren't able to before. I'm sure that will be the day Jesus comes back for us as I can't see how that day could possibly get any better. Norah's face looks so fantastic, and that does make me very happy. Here is the latest not phone picture I have of her. No retouching of her little face needed!

If your child has food allergies, asthma, eczema or any of the above mentioned problems, I would highly suggest getting this book and finding a doctor near you with some experience in healing leaky gut.
Thank you for reading all of this [or just skimming through to find what looks like could be funny/informative/held against me in a court of law.] I hope it gave some good insight into what we've been dealing with lately.


Happy Monday!
[We get the keys to our new house today!!! More on that later ;)]
Mae

Dirty Little, Ahem, Huge Secret | Prov 31:27

This post is pretty difficult for me to right, but for the sake of having some accountability and share some truth...here it goes.

When we visited Austin in October, I noticed that my friend's house was like...immaculate. My husband said something about it to her and she said "Yeah...I'm kind of obsessive about it."
WHEW!!!
For a second, I thought I was a total slob.
I watched her clean up her kids toys as soon as they were finished with them, she wiped down her counters as she was cleaning, her dishes...I mean, WHAT DISHES? They were no where to be seen, except, well of course, her perfectly beautiful cabinets. She has two kiddos, the exact same age as mine, I just didn't get it.
"BUT, she isn't a photographer who was in the busiest season of her life, and she can take a break and get out of the house so it's not overwhelming, and she, and she...she isn't me." *eyeroll* Whatever, that's what I told myself. Over and over again.
Not long after, Eamon and I had dinner with some new friends at their house.
Same story. You couldn't see the vacuum cleaner lines on the floor, but you just knew that thing had never missed a day of being cleaned.
After we got home that night, I laid in bed listlessly, and tapped Eamon's arm [you know, that tap that says, "Hey, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, and I know that you are probably ALMOST asleep right now and this is probably gonna wake you up and make you think you're falling from a 30 story building, but I have something to talk about. Right now. At midnight."] After he realized he wasn't falling to his death, he gave me a very patient "....yes?"
"I think there's something wrong with me."
thinking that we were doing the weekly "Guess what fatal illness Mae has this week" game I got an "Oh yeah?"
"Yeah....why are we so messy?"
*crickets*
"Uh....are we?"
"yes, babe! We are! Why doesn't our house look like the Smith's or the Jones's?"
"Hmm...Well, we do live in apartment, ya know? We don't have any storage, you're really busy with your photography, and the kids are just messy! It's hard to keep up with them all day, no one really does that!"
WHEW!!!
See, that's what I thought. I just have a knack for picking really clean people to be friends with. Opposites attract, amiright?! *eyeroll*

So then I take pictures for these new friends of ours, sorta as just a thank you for their friendship. She loves them and asks me if she can repay me by cleaning our house while we were in Rockport.
*tires screeching*
"Uh...I mean...Is it really that bad?" She nervously laughs and acts like it ain't no thang.
I hand over the key to our apartment with way more reluctance than I thought possible.
To make matters worse, as we're leaving for Rockport, Eamon empties out our car, dumps all of everything he found in our living room, Norah has a HUGE blowout on my bed, and there's a ton of laundry that I didn't get to do that's just sitting there stinking the place up.

About once an hour on the trip I get a pit in my stomach.
"It IS that bad, Mae. She's not gonna want to be friends with you after she sees how bad it really is. You don't even have a sense of smell, you don't know how bad it smells like pee in there!"
Day by day the tension in me builds and I just don't know what to do. I bring it to Jesus and ask Him what on earth am I supposed to do about this? He simply tells me that it's time to start over. To start fresh. And it terrifies me.
I immediately remember the Proverbs 31 woman and start seeing "She does not eat the bread of idleness" Ouch...is my home a wreck because of this? Then I think back to looking at houses and remembering hearing in my head "You don't deserve this house, this house is too nice for you. You will trash it." I felt sick, how had I not realized that was the enemy keeping me under this bondage. And I just listened to him and accepted it as truth.

After some texts and emails back and forth to Erin, I was nervous to go home.
When I walked in the door, I felt like I was on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I didn't even know that my house could look like that. From top to bottom, it was spotless. The pee trap of a couch was gone, every stitch of clothing and bedding we own was washed and put away, every thing had a home...it was [and still is] so unreal. Eamon and I were humbled, embarrassed, encouraged, and hopeful.
Almost immediately, the Lord began to instill confidence and knowledge into me. He specifically pointed out areas of my life that were causing and allowing the filth to just pile up, led me to resources to find management systems that will work for our family, and created an excitement in me and even Lily to start cleaning every day. The first few days were easy. We even took pictures of the entire house before we unpacked so that we would both know how clean the house could be and use it as an encouragement. But after about day 3, I felt the idleness creep in. Dishes started piling up, dirty clothes weren't going in their hamper, beds weren't being made, spills weren't being wiped up right away, and I kinda just got overwhelmed. Slowly I started to build momentum again, giving myself little tasks here and there to keep things up to par, but by Thursday of last week, I knew it wasn't...great. Not bad, nowhere near what it was before, but not what it could be. I took the day to wash/fold/hang all of the clothes and diapers, and room by room just, DID IT! I wore Norah and gave Lily little tasks to do. At the end of the night, I got into a bed that had been made all day, looked around my room that didn't have anything on the floor, and no clothes in sight, laid down and sighed a sigh of relief. I can do this!! I can't tell you how freeing that moment was right then. There wasn't more mess hiding in the bathrooms or closets, there wasn't a sink full of dishes, there wasn't a pee diffuser in the living room...my house was clean. ALL OF IT! And I did it! All by myself!

There are curses that have had their hold on Eamon and I that the Lord has been faithful enough to break, and this happens to be one of them. Sexual immorality was a sinch compared to this. This was harder than probably anything we've dealt with so far. I'm so grateful to be given this time that we have in our apartment to become confident in having a clean space to live in, that way when we move, it will be a much easier transition and we'll have a clean home :]
I want to encourage you to take this time in the New Year glow of hopefulness to let the Lord grab hold of the things in your life that have become too overwhelming. The things that embarrass you, that you ignore or hide away, that terrify you just thinking about them. Let God pull them out and work through you to move past it. It's going to hurt. Probably a lot, but when it's done, it's done. And you don't have that weight over you or your family anymore!

Oh, and here's something cute and completely unrelated to look at :]

Hope you all are having a great week,
Mae

2012 Book List

So. Our house feel through. TWELVE days before our move in date. We were super devastated but peace came quick. I think God knew what He was doing there. I'll get into that later, but I wanted to get my reading list for this year so I can be held accountable!!

So, zero parenting books will be read this year. All they do is confuse me and piss me off anyway. I have read TWO books outside of food and babies since I graduated high school. DOS. So, I will be going back to that very immature reading level. Judge me if you must ;]

1. Bossypants by Tina Fey

2. The Hunger Games 1
3. The Hunger Games 2
4. The Hunger Games 3
5. Harry Potter 4
6. Harry Potter 5
7. Harry Potter 6
8. Harry Potter 7
9. The Hobbit
10. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? By Mindy Kaling
11. Undecided
12. Something Funny

Suggestions? Reviews? I'll probably have to fill up those last two things with homeschooling books. Oh God. For a minute I forgot that Lily starts Pre-K this year. Awesome.
Happy Tuesday,
Mae

Have Yourself...

A Merry Little Christmas <3

As promised,
here is a little video of our Christmas vacation. I'm trying to upload my 366 Project pictures now as well!



Hope you guys are having a blessed New Year so far!
Here's a look at what's coming up on the blog :]
A Home For The Burkes: It's Here
Dirty Little Huge Secret Prov 31:27
My Ittiest Bittiest


Did you have a good weekend?!
Mae