Sarah Halvorsen

Writing at MamaGlow Journal

About

Two kids, five and three, in the Chicago suburbs. The five-year-old is deep in a beetle phase specifically, not bugs in general, and he will correct you at length if you get that wrong. The three-year-old spent a good chunk of last month refusing to let any food touch any other food on the plate, three separate piles and crying about it regardless. Too much coffee gets consumed most days, and the chocolate lives in a zip bag behind the dryer sheets in the laundry room, moved there once climbing became a new skill for one of them.

Gained 45 pounds with the second pregnancy, a specific enough number that it stopped feeling abstract fast. Some of it came off in the first few months. Then the scale stopped moving entirely, for about a year, while the butcher-block island in this kitchen collected a permanent coffee ring on the near corner and the crayon scrawl on the cabinet by the dishwasher stayed exactly where it landed because nobody had the energy to scrub it off. That year, more than the number itself, is what shaped this site: knowing what probably needed to change and not having the energy left over to do it.

Trial and error happened in real time, mostly in this kitchen, standing on cold laminate floors at 5 a.m. for a water bottle before the day even started. Tried a meal-kit service my friend Bridget swears by, since opinions about meal kits are basically her whole personality: the ingredient overlap made it collapse within two weeks anyway. Tried a supplement that seemed to be everywhere online that month: jittery and strange, stopped after a week. Three Sunday batch-cooking attempts in a row where the food got eaten exactly once before going bad in the fridge. Kept a running note on the phone through all of it, what got tried, what actually happened, and eventually that note turned into a website.

What's behind it now is a phone note pages long, strong opinions about which meal-kit services are worth the per-serving math, and the working knowledge that frozen peas are currently the only vegetable one particular three-year-old will eat without a fight. No nutrition degree sits behind any of it, no certification, just a long stretch of paying close attention in one kitchen. Every body handles this differently, mine included, so anything that starts to feel like a medical decision goes to an actual doctor, not a blog post.

Written by Sarah Halvorsen

Disclosure

Some links here earn me a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. I write about things because I tried them, not because someone sent them to me. Passes the "would I spend this money again" test: it's in. Didn't pass: I'll say that too.