Love From Maria

 I found an old playlist the other day, "Sleepy Stets" it's called. I remember making it, it was going to be what I would play while my baby fell asleep at night and during his naps. It's a beautiful playlist, sweet country songs, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper and of course, Iz.  I couldn't help but laugh when I reminisced on the making of this playlist. Little did I know I was going to be blessed with a baby who defied all baby-sleep rules and regulations. A baby who went shot for shot with the best of them when it came to sleep. My Stetson.  Today is his first day of fulltime dayhome. It's a weird day. I've spent the last 20 months with this little person attached to me, first growing inside me for nine months and then always with me for the next eleven.  In two weeks my maternity leave (God bless Canada and our maternity leave benefits) will come to an end. I look forward to returning to my Cardel Place family, I miss just being ME and having other t...

One word as a theme for the year.  D E V O T I O N To my faith - may it continue to grow and blaze, setting my heart on fire.  To my husband - my bestfriend, my partner, may we continue to love and respect each other with understanding.  To my son - may you continue to teach me things about life, and myself, that I have been so oblivious to.  To myself - may you hold strong to who you are, take time for yourself, love yourself and run. Mi fido di te.  And so I build this year on devotion. Intentional devotion in all that I do.  Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. -Romans 12:10 lovefrommaria 

Today my Stetson is six months old - if you'd asked me six days in I'd never have thought we would make it this far.  Having a child is the single most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. I've done more research since having Stetson than I did in all of my academic career and you know what? Parenting can't be written in a book - parenting comes from inside. It can't be taught or learned by anyone except you and your baby. It's different for everyone.  This is what parenting has looked like for me: • My son doesn't sleep  - okay, well he didn't. Two days in it became clear that it is completely untrue that all babies can be fed, swaddled and put down where they will lay peacefully and sleep until they need to eat again. Stetson could NOT be put down. And swaddled? Dream on. We gave up so fast on those two things it wasn't even funny. Our Stetson would only sleep on my or my husband's chest and if you even so much as thought...

I once posted about running and how I was so convinced that you could not actually love running, that those who do claim to love running are liars. I was wrong. I found my love, it was there all along, I was merely frustrated that I couldn't connect with it. It's now a healthy addiction that I feed mostly everyday, and so far the love affair is amazing. Still can't find your love? Love for running isn't about burning calories, losing weight, training your heart, etc. Love for running is a complete and overwhelming feeling of sync with your body. It is when your mind takes over, your body moves in the rhythmic motion without noticing, you stand tall, push forward off your toes and run from your gut. It's running like a kid again, fast and free like the wind, feeling the exhilaration of coming as close to flying as our bodies will take us. It's a beautiful thing. It's a therapeutic thing. I t's pure love. Now there is one large factor that M...

So lately I have been allowing a lot of negative energy to infiltrate my being. let me tell you, don't do it - it's terrible. Explaining the situation won't even make a difference in the whole of this lesson to be learned as really it has only to do with me (or you) and not allowing others to have control of how you feel. For the past few days I have allowed this to happen, I am not sure why, maybe it's where I am in my cycle, maybe it's that in my life I truly, rarely, encounter this type of behaviour . Whatever the reason, I did, and for the past few days I have felt the negative energy dragging on me. This morning it was time for a change. My Self Cleanse: This morning I decided that I was truly sick of the way that I have been feeling for the past few days - I decided . I wrote myself an email - explaining to myself the silly way in which I was allowing this situation to affect my life and for what? I reminded myself of the thing that I live for - lo...

I recently read an article that has changed the way that I think about things all the time. On highexistence.com I read an article called what would love do? I loved this article and I believe that ideas like this need to be spread. Love is the ultimate emotion in life- it is the strongest and most sought after feeling that there is. I love love. The article described an expereiment wherein the writer decided that all day he must behave in the way that love would. Everytime that something irritated him or someone was mean to him he had to ask himself, what would love do? His conclusions found that he actually felt incredible all day long- and he made other people feel good too! After reading his positive findings I decided that I wouldn't just do this for one day, I would try my very best to do this for my whole life. So far I love it. I have always been a generally positive person but this mindset has really helped me to maintain my positive feelings t...

sometimes it takes leaving home to know where exactly home is. - lovefrommaria