This was a week where two months overlapped, so I’m updating you on how February’s Eat More Plants went and how we got started with March’s Healthy Sleep Challenge. I hope you are enjoying the Healthy Year Challenge.  Most people have forgotten about their New Year Resolutions by now, but we are keeping it going all year long! 🙂

Eat More Plants Challenge

Things got a little disjointed with our Disney trip, but we got right back into keeping track of our vegetable and fruit intake this week and it went great. The biggest success in this challenge has been raising my family’s awareness of how many vegetables and fruits they are eating daily.  Tim has switched his morning meal to smoothies and has started making an effort to eat vegetables and/or fruit with his lunch.  This is HUGE.  Meghan wants to better me every day, although this is something I’m trying to discourage since I obviously need to eat a lot more than she does and she shouldn’t be keeping up with me.  But she’s making a choice to have extra vegetables and fruits each day and I love it! Luke is even coming around and it’s fun to watch him learn to categorize food. 

“Is this a vegetable?” he asked one day when eating sunflower seeds. 

“No, but it’s a really healthy plant food!” I told him. 

Even though March is here, the charts are still on the fridge and we are continuing to keep track of how many vegetables and fruits we eat everyday. The kids LOVE it, so I see no reason to stop. I’m sure we’ll tire of it eventually, but for now, it’s fun and keeps up aware of how well we are choosing our foods. 

The Healthy Sleep Challenge

In true mom fashion, I focused on the kids this week, but fell short in dealing with myself.  For the kids, I enforced an “in bed by 8 o’clock” rule.  We didn’t get there every night, but very close to 8 o’clock.  Our previous bedtime was 8:30, but I found that it was getting stretched and some nights they weren’t in bed until 9:00.  I knew I needed to make a change when Meghan was having a very hard time getting up in the morning and wanted to stay in bed. She takes a little while to fall asleep no matter what time she goes to bed, so an earlier bedtime is helping her get a little more time to fall asleep and still be asleep in time to let her get 10 1/2-11 hours of sleep, which I know she needs. 

Luke is a little different since he still naps, although he’s been skipping more and more naps.  When he doesn’t nap, he needs to be in bed even earlier. When he does nap, the later bedtime works for him. 

I made an unimpressive effort to make sure I got to bed at reasonable times this week, but didn’t focus on my sleep enough.  Here are my intentions for the coming week:

#1: Start using the Sleep Cycle app to help me wake up feeling more rested. (Have any of you tried this app?)

#2: Avoid blue light 30 minutes before bedtime.  This is going to be so hard! But I’m going to try.

I’ll report back next week on how I do with these two goals.  Ultimately, I know I need to prioritize sleep and not be working on my computer right up until the minute my head hits the pillow.  It’s hard since after the kids go to bed is an optimal time for me to get work done.  I can do this, though!  Sleep is important.

What about you?  How are you working on healthy sleep at your house?