Changes We Made this Year & Hopes for the Next

I took a lot more leaps based on instinct this year. After my second baby, there was a time when I thought I would not be having anymore children. However, sometime after, I began to feel a pull toward the experience of unmedicated childbirth. Clearly this is an odd calling for someone who is no longer having babies, but ultimately I did have another baby. I did experience that unmedicated childbirth I’d been drawn to just over a year before. That blog is coming, but not today.

In the lead up to my unmedicated home birth, I gained a better understanding of the holistic world through my midwife. It was a world I was interested in, but one that had seemed so overwhelming to me. I was given the encouragement I needed to trust my instincts as well as the education I needed be grounded in my decision making. I was able to feel that my choices were valid even when they were beyond the realm of what is commonly done. I took that confidence in my own instincts with me into other parts of mine and my family’s lives. Many of the changes we made this year were out of the ordinary, but were things that just made sense to me. All of these things will probably need their own blogs in the future. That is another thing that will have to come another day. For now I will plant the little seeds I can, so that anyone who comes across something that could be helpful to them can research for themselves. My deep dives would simply be my opinion anyway, which may be of use, but isn’t the ultimate authority on what would work in the households of everyone. Take what you wish and leave the rest.

The change I will start with is our Tooth Pillow adventure, because this is possibly the most important to me. I have not had much awareness of tongue ties, lip ties, or mouth breathing nor its effects on overall health until this year. The free assessment and the treatment applied after, have been life changing. I do hope that we have learned enough through this process to execute treatment ourselves for any of our other children who need it in the future, because the cost was heavy. Still not as heavy as braces would be in the future, though, and that’s part of what we are trying to avoid. Only a few short months in, and I have seen the difference it has made. I see the strengthening of the jaw structure, the expansion of the mouth, the movement of my child’s teeth, and the nose breathing through the night. I am a believer in this process and especially the myo munchee which came with the package we purchased. If your child has crowded baby teeth or is sleeping with their mouth open in the night, look into this! If this whole tooth pillow thing feels like a gamble or you find treatment to be too pricey, please just look into the myo munchee at the very least! Click here for more information.

The second change to get into is also related to oral health. We have replaced your typical toothpaste with toothpaste from Zebra. While it did take a second to grow accustomed to, I have come to genuinely love this product. My teeth feel cleaner and stronger than before and I know my kids are not taking in any nasty chemicals as a result of simply brushing their teeth. It is not anywhere close to a cheap product after shipping however, so I will be checking out other products on their site to see if I can make the shipping cost easier to swallow.

Now, stepping away from oral hygiene to talk about The Good and the Beautiful homeschool curriculum! In all honesty, the math curriculum is not my favorite. I feel as if it has some unnecessarily confusing ways of presenting certain problems. I will be looking for a different math curriculum more than likely. The language arts curriculum on the other hand has been fantastic for our family! We started with the preschool course book and have flown through it, with great results! We will be moving on to Kindergarten Prep soon and then on to the level K course book. I can not say enough about how seamlessly and naturally the progress has unfolded for our little crew. I highly recommend this language arts curriculum. The handwriting curriculum has been similarly helpful. I purchased some beautifully illustrated board books as well as booster books that I have also been very happy with. I can not speak for every product The Good and The Beautiful has produced nor for every grade level. I can say that we have been pleased with this company more often than we have been displeased. If you are interested please click here to watch an introduction video from the company.

On to other health and wellness products, water quality has been a huge topic in the wellness space, but recently air quality has taken center stage. Air purifiers are sold by every major company on the planet it seems. Air quality is something that has been on my mind for a long time, but I did not want to buy a money grab of a creation that was actually doing a bunch of nothing. That’s where Jaspr comes in. It is also where a Black Friday Sale, stacked with a random influencer’s promo code also came in! (Thank the Lord!) It’s not just an air purifier, but an air scrubber. My husband went from snoring heavily and consistently to snoring lightly and rarely after four days of us using the Jaspr air scrubber. That’s really all I have to say about that. It is working fabulously for me, and the air in our room smells different than before. I have been pleasantly surprised by truly seeing and hearing results. Click here to learn more!

I mentioned that I have had another baby in the opening paragraph. My goal was to breastfeed that baby and I did, for a total of four days. I am in awe of the breastfeeding mamas. I think it is absolutely amazing what they do and such hard work! Unfortunately it did not work out for us. Learning what I have since having my first baby about breast milk verses baby formula as well as American made formulas verses European made formulas, we had to do things differently than before. So, we turned to Bobbie. Bobbie is a company that makes organic baby formula. Baby formula is expensive on a normal day, so I was terrified of what an organic formula could possibly have us paying weekly. Thankfully, after receiving a discount by setting up a subscription on the Bobbie website, we were relieved to find that we were not paying much more for formula than we had been while using lower quality formulas. I am very grateful to have the options now that I did not have as a first time mom.

Beam and Beekeeper’s Naturals are two companies that are helping me take care of my kids on a day to day basis. I have found it difficult to keep my picky eater healthy and Beam Kids has so many of the good things you want your child to take in with none of the bad! That paired with Beekeeper’s Natural Kids Immune Support Spray got us out of a pretty sticky illness toward the end of the year. Both Kyle and I have used the adult version of the Immune Support Spray and Kyle has used the Nasal Rinse Spray. I am very hopeful that they have other products that will be helpful to us going forward.

The final change we have made this year is more specific to me. I wear less make up these days than I once did and when I do, it is not a lot. If I can get away with just throwing on mascara, I will. Because that is what I use the most, I switched to Honest Mascara a while ago. I still had not switched my other products, but this year I finally did. A’del Natural Cosmetics has been the most natural cosmetic line that I have been able to find up to this point. (Although, I was recently made aware of Jenny McCarthy’s Formless Beauty. I will look into that more in the future.) I purchased the blush, the foundation, and the powder from A’del some time in May. Everything was true to color and exactly as I expected it to be. The coverage is great! It goes on very smoothly, but the products do rub off quite easily. For me, that has been fine. I have just trained myself not to touch my face while wearing it. If you are someone who needs something to stand the test of time no matter the weather, I do not think you will be satisfied with these. The Honest Mascara would still be great for you though!

Finally, my hopes for next year sound simple enough. I want to spend more time outside. Be more organized concerning my family’s things and time. The big one, I want to start making my own bread from freshly milled grains. I bought a bag of 4th Generation Farms Butler’s Gold Hard Red Organic Wheat Berries a couple weeks ago, in preparation for this goal. Updates to come. I am hopeful, maybe naively so, but we will see. No matter the way this year unfolds, this will be the year that I make my house as well as my heart, a home. Stay tuned for more on that!

If you are still here at the end of this long list, thank you for taking time out of your day to read something written by little old me. All of us here at The Serenity Household have the highest hopes and best wishes for you in 2026. Happy new year!

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