Why I'm Doing This Blog

Here's a little background on this blog:

This is my family.

My name is Adria, and my son, Emory, is 2 years old. Iris is almost 8 months. My husband's name is Kevin, and we've friends for 15 years and romantic partners for 5. We both feel very strongly about having a healthy lifestyle, though we were not brought up this way. Kevin definitely practices what he preaches when it comes to diet, exercise, recycling, and all kinds of other very desirable habits that seem to come naturally to him. I, on the other hand, have struggled to adopt the lifestyle that we want to pass on to our children. As much as I HATE to admit it, I've been a frequent patron of McDonald's. I love fast food, and even though I've tried to keep it away from our kids, Emory sees and imitates what I eat. He notices when I go through the drive-thru. He even pretends to order large diet Cokes when he plays in his kitchen, which was a bit of a shock to me. Cute, yes, but also a bit disturbing.

The stakes became higher for us recently, as we've been struggling to find a dietary cause for our son's gastro-intestinal problems. Emory has had unusual bowels since he was a baby, alternating between diarrhea and constipation. Since he's been eating the same foods as the adults wherever he is, his problems have only gotten worse, to the point where we've become very concerned about it. After multiple doctor's visits and a lot of anxiety on my part, we've decided that for the moment we need to eliminate dairy (for the constipation) and sugar (for the diarrhea). We also know from a previous incident when Emory was about 15 months old that he also has a severe, possibly life-threatening peanut allergy.

So, because of all these issues, and just to benefit our overall health, we decided to cook vegan dinners at home. Just to be clear, we are NOT vegans! We feel that, barring some change from the doctors we're working with for Emory's diet, that some meat and fish are okay. Our ultimate goal is to eat meat only two or three times per month. We feel it's important for our kids to learn to graciously accept food that is served to them at other people's homes, so we don't want to forbid anything other than things that they may be given other than things like peanuts, which would make Emory extremely ill. I guess we just want to be as healthy as we can without eliminating any specific food group unless it's necessary for our specific health needs. Seems like there are so many fad diets out there telling people to cut meat, cut gluten, cut carbs, blah blah blah blah. Kevin and I feel that in very strict moderation, we should be able to occasionally enjoy all the different foods that we like.

This blog is really meant to inspire a person who never, ever thought they'd even consider a vegan diet. If I can do it, anyone can. I'm lucky to have an extremely healthy husband who keeps me motivated to eat right and discourages eating fast food, and loves to cook and makes us delicious recipes all the time. I can honestly say I thought vegans were kinda weirdos, and even after I was with Kevin (he was a vegetarian the first few years of our relationship) I never thought I'd make the switch. But the most important thing in the world to me now that I have children is to keep them healthy, and keep myself healthy so I can be the best mom possible, and be around to see my grandchildren and beyond.