aka how Haley is able to drink her coffee. and do her routines. and stick to her skincare. and and and.

but let me first start off with a few disclaimers:

you know your baby/taby/toddler better than anyone. some things that work well for KK may not work for you, either because it doesn’t interest your child or it’s something you’re not comfortable with. that’s okay! again, i’m just sharing what works for us.

Consider this a casual note more so than a formal recipe. (Here’s the recipe from which this dinner is based, if you prefer a more traditional format.)

gather round to hear how I learned to love taco night with every fiber of my being.

because I used to not understand the fuss re: crunchy ground beef tacos. now i’m like THEY DESERVE A PARADE. a freaking PARADE.

i used to be a teacher with no kids, and now I’m a stay-at-home mom with a small business.

while a lot has changed in the last ten years, two things have stayed the same: I detest making breakfast and lunch, and I detest eating the same thing every day.

while I love making dinner and spending twenty minutes to an hour in the kitchen in the evenings, I prefer my breakfast and lunches be a quick, grab-and-go situation. (and I especially don’t like to waste precious naptime making food for myself.)

so through all these years, both before kids and when I worked outside the home - and also now - it works really well for me to make my breakfasts and lunches ahead of time. but I personally need a little variety - I can’t just make one single thing for the whole week and eat it six straight days in a row.

here’s a few things that have become tried and true favorites for me.

y’all know I love my smoothies.

and - before I begin - know that I have a smoothies highlight on my instagram. i’d peek there if you’re a visual person.

i used to be horrible about making smoothies - like, i had these amazing intentions, but the smoothies themselves never got made. but then I realized the reason I disliked making smoothies was that I hated lugging my blender out from the cabinet, and I hated carrying a million bags of frozen fruit out of the freezer. so I moved my blender to the counter, and I prepped smoothie packs ahead of time - more on this in a second. once I made those two changes, my smoothie consumption skyrocketed.

i love soup. love.

and, since my student teaching days, I’ve been known to make a big pot of soup each week, and enjoy the leftovers alllll week. (unless it’s august in texas. my love for soup doesn’t extend that far.)

back when I was a teacher, I’d make a big pot of soup on Sundays. nowadays, I’m known to make a soup to go with our weekly sandwich night.

but more often than not, I can’t finish all the soup.

if you’ve read my full list of favorite things, you know my clothes philosophy.

basically a few staples of clothing I love (in colors that look best) that all mix and match.

with a few fun accessories.

so it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that kk’s wardrobe follows a similar formula.