Coach Kirstin

My Dad makes the best salsa.  I grew up in New Mexico.  We are a bit picky about our salsa.  It is hands down my favorite.  And not just because he is my Dad.  Its actually brilliant in in its simplicity.  The ingredients are: Green Chiles Onions Canned diced tomatoes (petite if you ask his opinion) Cumin Salt Olive oil (for cooking the onions The important thing is to start with good roasted chile's.  The roasting is what gives them their flavor and allows the skin to blister and peel off.  I was lazy when I put up my chile the last time and just bagged everything with the skin on.  It actually tends to be a little easier to get the skin off once its been frozen.  For this batch I used 2 quart bags frozen chile's, 6 - 14.5 oz cans of diced tomatoes, 2 onions and seasonings to taste.   First step is to clean the chile's and chop them.  I could probably normally tolerate the chile's but now I have a little perso...

The struggle is real.  Between working and them finding time to eat some thing other than takeout pizza, do my physical therapy, spend time with the baby and the husband it is seriously hard to fit it all in. Oh and sleep.  The older I get, the more sleep becomes non negotiable. We are also trying to eat with McKenna so she sees us eat and follows suit. It also allows me to give her things off my plate, which she definitely is more interested by.  This has actually been a huge struggle as our window in the evening is so limited with her, I don't want to spend it cooking and not spending time with her.  So the goal is to keep our meals simple and do as much ahead of time as possible. The downside to this is the Husband and I usually spend time chatting and relaxing during our meals as it’s always been our alone time together. But sleep. So I came up with a plan for the week and cooked the majority of our food on Sunday.  I really only made salsa because my freez...

I'm going to start shifting away from our weekly posts and become more ad hoc, as it was before. Also because I won't be home all the time with her. I'm actually only going back part time. This makes it a bit easier on me and hopefully her. We did a trial run at daycare on Monday. I worked from home and she only stayed 5 hours.   She pretty much didn't sleep and only took one bottle. I was hoping for better sleep but it was about what I expected. Her sleep started getting off on Sunday night. She was probably feeding off my anxiety. And there was plenty of that to go around, along with a lot of tears. There were tears with the drop off and for a while. I contemplated going into the office, just to be around people. But the dogs were pretty good company that day. I checked the clock constantly waiting to go pick her up. Because of the lack of sleep and eating, she came home and we napped the rest of the afternoon. Tuesday was food prep because the husband wa...

Strange that it actually falls on the same day.  Three months really just means I'm going back to work. I contemplated more time unpaid but am choosing not to. I don't feel ready but I probably never will. I've been really anticommital these last 2 weeks and this upcoming weekend. Basically I just want to spend every second with her. I also just want to hold her constantly. I know bad habits starting. It will pass. She will go to daycare. I will cry and go to work. Cry some more. And probably cry every time I drop her off next week. Morning cocktail anyone? It was a pretty good week. We had an early morning (before it was miserably hot) walk through the neighborhood and she held her head up the whole time. She was the exhausted and needed a nap. You forget it's actually really hard for a little person to do all that. We are learning our fine line of over stimulation and then sleep is harder.  She definitely has the giggles now, which is adorable. We are w...

So I skipped week 11.  Mostly because I was in tears about having to leave McKenna and go back to work.  Mom guilt is a real thing.  It also makes me very angry about the maternity leave policy in this country.  It wasn’t something I honestly paid attention to before.  Maybe because I wasn’t planning on being a mom for a long time. Or probably because I assumed that is just a benefit you give people.  Now I am learning, we are about as good as a third world country.  We don’t even give government employees a maternity benefit.  No surprise that private companies wouldn’t feel obligated to provide that.   My time home with McKenna has been amazing.  I know so much about her, , her likes, her preferences, her behaviors and her routine.  We have had the benefit of setting our own schedule.  I don’t have to rush out in the morning.  I didn’t have to stress about pumping right away.  I have gotten to experience so much ...

The smile and the dimple make their first appearance  So 4th of July.  I had no idea how awful this holiday was as parent of young child.  As the 4th was Tuesday, there were fireworks Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and then the best for Tuesday.  Its probably most frustrating as were just getting into a routine of her falling asleep on her own.  Oh well, its passed.  I would say we are back on our routine but as I am writing this, I’ve spent the last 2.5 hours attempting to get her to go to sleep after sleeping for all of about 1.5 hours between 10:30am and 7pm.  She’s exhausted but just won’t stay asleep when I put her down.  We will figure it out. Part of that bedtime routine is books and singing to her.  Except I don’t know what to sing.  I was trying to sing lullaby’s but they don’t have any significance to me.  So I was trying to think of songs that have significance to me, that got me no where so off to Goog...