Have you watched the documentary on social media called Social Dilemma? If you haven’t I HIGHLY recommend it! Prior to watching it I wondered why I couldn’t put down my phone and would literally loose hours just scrolling through social media watching others live their “perfect” lives. Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of social media to stay in contact with those who do not live close to you, the specific groups, etc., but the addictiveness to it is mind blowing! Anyway, this brings me to I guess what some would call a new years resolution? Of being present and in the moment. I set a timer on my phone that allows me to scroll through social media for a total of 30 minutes a day and often times a bulk of that is used to create and post content on my myoddinary Instagram, but it helps me keep my time in check. I also, removed the Facebook app from my phone completely I figure out of sight out of  mind right? So on my quest to be present in the moment and try and remove a majority of social media from my life I also made the commitment to read more, I noticed since the introduction of social media I tend to use my time scrolling and watching other people live their lives instead of bettering my own which sounds ridiculous writing it out, but it’s the truth unfortunately. 

A big eye opener for me was after having my son, no one posts or tells you about the nitty gritty of pregnancy, birth, postpartum all of the things that are REAL. They mask it, and it made me wonder what was wrong with me, why was it so hard to loose the baby weight, why was it so hard to keep my supply up, why did I just want to cry every moment after having him after creating and bringing this amazing miracle into the world. Well, it is because no one talks about real life on social media, the filters and computer or phone is masking reality. 

So here I am more than halfway through January and staying strong! Being present, using my time to grow and learn and better myself. Not just for myself, but for my family, for my kids, remember they are always watching! After reading on a more regular basis I have started noticing my son picking up books more and looking at them and talking. 

So I guess my moral of this quick little rant ties back to a post from last week; You were born to be real, not perfect. Be you and embrace it, you are unique and that is what is so great!

x0_meagen lea

I am not really sure how I want to do this, or how it will end up, but I figure you have to start somewhere right? So here we are! One of my New Years Resolutions is to continue to detox our home. I thought I would share my tips, tricks, failures, learning experiences, whatever it may be! So bare with me as I figure out the best and most practical way to share all of this! (I will eventually make this more visually appealing, but for now here is just the barebones info!)

These are a few of the things I have swapped from and to over the last few months and honestly looking at the products it’s been a few years! It has not been an easy process and has definitely taken some time and a lot of research. It can be very overwhelming as well when you are reading labels. One thing my mom always taught me was if you cannot read what is on the label, should you be consuming it? Well here we are many years later finally understanding what my mom meant by that statement and why she did what she did! Marketing is a very powerful tool and something that is easy to fall for, good marketing especially, but when you read the fine print you begin to see that is it not all that it is cracked up to be.

Product	Old	New
Makeup	Dior	Crunchi
Cleaning Products	Mrs. Meyers, Honest, Clorox	Melaleuca Line
Protein Shake	Shakeology	Truvani
Daily Vitamins	Whatever I could find at the drug store	Ritual
Body Lotion	Drugstore Brands	Alaffia
Body Wash	Drugstore Brands	Alaffia
Home Air Fresheners	Bath and Body Works Plug Ins	Essential Oil Diffusers
Drinking Products	Plastics	Glass and Stainless Steel
Baby Plates/Bowls	Plastics	Bamboo

Of course there will probably be things that will be hard to find good swaps for, which is okay. As long as I know I am doing my best and trying to detox our home to the best of my capability without making life miserable.

x0_meagen lea

When you know you know. I think there is something to say about a mothers instinct and intuition. We were beyond blessed with our son who was born February of 2020 and knew we wanted at least one more kid. I was an only child so this was very important to me. I lost my Mom who was my best friend a little over 2 1/2 years ago and going through that without a sibling was hard. I was going through a divorce at the time, changes in friendships, and felt alone. It brought my dad and I much closer, but there are just some things that dads just don’t need to know. So my husband and I decided two kids would be perfect. We had wanted them close together in age so they could be best friends, but also so we could get them to an age were we could go and travel and homeschooling them together would be much easier. In August of 2020 we had a miscarriage. It was heartbreaking to say the least. The emotions you feel from that are just so hard to put into words. We had a perfectly healthy pregnancy with our son, so I didn’t understand why my body failed me. But now I know, my body didn’t fail me, it just wasn’t the right time or the right fit for our family. 

My husbands birthday is in September, he wanted to go up to our cabin with family and have Grandpas clam linguine so that’s what we did! It wasn’t a long trip, but a good weekend get away. On the way home I felt so nauseous, like hungover nauseous, but after only having 2 glasses of wine the night before it didn’t make any sense….let me back up a little bit here. 

I had plans to meet with a dear friend for lunch earlier that week, I believe it was on a Wednesday. Before I went to meet her I stopped by Target for a few last minute thing before my husbands birthday. I felt all out of sorts, flustered, I started to get really bad anxiety, I just felt off…something was off. So I grabbed a pregnancy test (a set of 3 to be exact). At lunch I told her something was off, and I got a box of pregnancy tests. 

I came home from lunch and took one, negative. So thought eh maybe its just lingering miscarriage hormones. 

So on the way back from the cabin, I thought probably just miscarriage hormones lingering and my body would eventually settle back into a normal rhythm again. When we got home, I took a test just in case. Negative. 

The day went on the nausea hung around, just chalked it up to bad wine? Not enough water? Miscarriage? 

On Monday, my son and I went on a walk around the neighborhood still feeling off. As we were walking a hummingbird (which is a symbol of my mom-more on that in the post The Hummingbird Amongst) followed us and went on a walk with us. I felt her presence and knew she was with us. 

Monday night/Tuesday morning, I had the most vivid dream. My mom was in my dream and I took a test and it was positive. Tuesday morning I woke up before my alarm at 5am and just had this urge to take another test, I knew it would be negative but the dream was so vivid and vibrant it felt so real. 5am on a Tuesday morning I couldn’t help but cry and was beyond shocked. I looked at the test and it was positive! I woke up my husband and told him you wouldn’t believe it! We were pregnant with our rainbow baby! 

Fast forward to recently, we decided to do all of the genetic testing just like what we did with Anchor just to make sure everything was good. Along with this test you can find out the gender of your baby earlier than 20 weeks. I had always dreamed of having a girl, I always wanted to have a girl and have the same or similar relationship my mom and I had. She was my best friend. 

On a Friday morning I was getting ready to go shopping to get ready to have some family over to break in our new formal dining room table and I got an email that said, “Your Results Are Ready” we weren’t supposed to get them back until the following week. I opened it and….It’s a girl! I ran downstairs in tears beyond shocked, dreams do come true. Growing up I had always envisioned myself having a boy and a girl….<3 

Dreams do come true.

x0_meagen lea