These are the socks my friends Ileen and Caswallon gave me for my birthday. I really love thick comfy colorful socks. I have never seen a pair in my favorite colors, but Ileen found them! (She also gave me green nubbly socks for Solstice.) This past Friday my friends surprised me with a few birthday things. Andrea made me a chocolate cake with orange frosting, it was soooo good – and had star candles! Peter and her also gave me orange yarn (shot of it in my photoblog) and homemade orange soda and rootbeer. Do you know how you know you are always welcome at a friend’s home? When they have a basket in their living room stocked with toys for your child. Shannon is so awesome! All my friends are made of pure love.

So my birthday definitely lifted my spirits, now comes the fight to keep them up. Shannon gave me a vitamin D supplement I have been trying out. I can’t tell if it is making a difference yet, I think so though. It has been foggy for two days (with a quick hour of BEAUTIFUL sunshine yesterday – I grabbed a quick photo of it steaming across our altar.) The news says that the stagnant air (and therefore fog) will be here at least till the middle of next week, bleh! This happens every January and gets me really down, but I haven’t felt as moody since beginning the supplement. I haven’t slept as well though, not sure if that is related.

My Aunt Ruth talked about comfort foods on her blog today, an important topic for me. On one hand, if I eat cookies, my mood improves, but on the other hand, as soon as that sugar wears off, I feel even worse then before. So I try to avoid it right now. For the most part, I eat comfort foods when I am bored, so I am trying to avoid that too. When I am stressed I tend to skip meals because I feel queasy, but the moment I run out of things to do, out comes the cookie sheet. (I don’t keep junkfood around so I have to make my own.) Recognizing that trigger is important for me, I actually have a sticky note inside my recipe folder that says “Are you hungry or BORED?” I still make junkfood of course, I just won’t let myself binge on it when I am bored. Maybe that is why I have taken up knitting, it is a defense mechanism for the munchies! Eating a decent breakfast every morning helps too.

My one other change to fight the Winter blues is that I have also seriously started indoor exercise last week, which I read can help alleviate seasonal depression. I thought it would be so hard so I set a goal to do it three times a week. I start with tai chi and then do some simply exercises (crunches, push ups etc) and stretching, and some dancing. I found that my spirits are so lifted afterwards that I have not had a problem keeping it up. In fact I find myself doing tai chi every morning now.

Anyhow Damian is waking so it is potty time. He is in underwear about 80% of the time (not as night or later in the evening) for a couple days. We have had a couple accidents but it is going much better then I expected! If we need to go back to diapers that is okay, this is more of a trial then anything else. I’m so proud of him though.