This week's topic on the First Year and Beyond link up is "What have you learned from the unexpected and how have you grown as a couple?"


Many believe that once they have arrived at marriage the coming years will be a piece of cake. That's not true my friends. Marriage is a journey not a destination. It's a journey with many bumps on the road that some may experience early on, some later in marriage, and others may be lucky enough to have a very easy journey. Just like other things in life, example pregnancy. All pregnancies are different and we shouldn't expect marriage to be any different.

In our first year of marriage I learned to accept reality, forgive, don't hold grudges, and move on. You have to understand that if you don't accept the reality of whatever situation you are going through is going to be very difficult to forgive and move on. And if you hold a grudge is going to be the same way. You are not always to agree on things and at times will see and want things differently. That does't mean you're marriage is in trouble, just that you as still and individual with your own mind.

Throughout the years people change. New situations are welcome in your life and you can't expect to be the same person you were when you got married. You need to be able to evolve in order to better understand and deal with those situations. Like having children and growing in family size, losing a job, moving, etc. There are many things that will happen throughout the years and it will change your relationship with your spouse, hopefully for the better. With each passing year the love between the couple should increase in intensity as well as the strength of the marriage.


1 Corinthians 13:4-8 says

One my goals in my 101 in 1001 list is to create a cook book from my most common and favorite dishes. And this dish definitely earns the privilege to be there. I'm a food lover and I grew up eating rice every day of the week and although I love my rice is nice to change it up once in a while. That's another nice way of saying that hubby is not down with daily rice dishes or too much carbs in one week. Being that we're Hispanics a lot of our foods includes rice and carbs. So I have to browse around a bit in Pinterest and one of my fave food blog skinny taste to get ideas. But I always find my way back to traditional meals whether they are Dominican or Puertorican meals. I have a dream that someday ill be half as good as my mother and mother-in-law in cooking. Especially those traditional meals I love so much. Today however, I'm taking it to South America :)

This is a Ecuadorean dish that my dear friend taught me how to make. It's basically beef stew but with lots of flavor and is cooked using their own unique seasoning. There's plenty of way of changing the flavor of beef stew just by changing the seasoning. But this is hands down my favorite and I decided to blog it to share it with the public and keep save it for future reference.

Oh boy. Back down memory lane I go.

Last weekend we headed down to Jersey to visit one of hubby's cousin who was having a birthday party for her three year old baby girl. We got there pretty late in the afternoon but just in time for games and cake.

At 4 months the pediatrician told us we could start AJ on solids. She said that just oatmeal cereal would be good enough for now and that we should give it to him once a day. Preferably in the evenings. I was a little hesitant about this and I guess she noticed because soon after she said that if we decided not to start him on cereal we had to give him vitamins. He was already taking Vit D and now she wanted to put him on iron, what?!

I didn't want him to be put on any thing else so I decided to give him the cereal. I was only doing 1Tbs once a day mixed with 1oz of breastmilk. The third week in my baby got constipated and I worried, obviously. I call the peds office and was left speechless. The nurse told me that according to his age he should be breastfeeding  between 4-7x per day and  that he was old enough for baby juice and that rule of thumb is one ounce per age (4 mos 4 ounces) and suggested I really start fruit and veggies solids. I keep thinking I'm not ready for this. He's not ready for this, he's only going to be 5 months in a few days. $ breastfeedings? Are they serious? I spoke with my sister-in-law to ask her how she introduced solids to her now 2 year old and at about what age. You see, I always thought solids were introduced at 6 mos. And for the life of me I cannot remember when we started Steven Jr. on solids.

I was a young mother with Steven and I usually did what my mother and mother-in-law told me to do. Beans at 3 mos? Sure, why not? Okay I'm exaggerating a bit but seriously. They knew better than me so I too their advice. Now I'm a grown woman. An adult. A mother of two and a wife. I need to make my own decisions when it concerns my kids and our lives. So why don't I know what the right thing to do is? I feel stuck.

As I spoke with SIL I realized one thing. My worry is not that AJ is still young, because he's only a month away from turning 6 months. My worry is that I don't want my milk supply to decline because my goal is to make it to the year breastfeeding. And it's been proven that milk supply declines once solids are introduced. That's where my problem is. Being only almost 5 mos is still too young for my supply to decrease. Make sense?

So what is the verdict? I plan to trick my body into believing that I'm still doing 8 feedings a day by pumping after a solid meal instead of skipping a milk feed. Call me crazy but by the looks of it I'm like in denial or something. I'm not really to give up that special bond between the two of us. I'm proud for making it this far so far but I'm just not ready to call it quits if the decision is in my power. I'm going to continue building up my back up stash and introduce a veggie then a fruit every 4 days and see how that works.