Welcome to my first blog entry. I, Jessica, am a long-time vegetarian and have been a vegan for almost a year now. I am still learning new things about life as a vegan and expect to continually. I think what is especially eye-opening once you choose veganism is what you learn about vegetarianism. I was comfortable with my vegetarianism for so long, almost 20 years.
After having my second child I started having thoughts and feelings of guilt about eating dairy and eggs. At this time my son, Hayes, and I were both vegetarian while my husband, Zach, was still a meat eater. He rarely ever ate meat at home and even tried giving it up on occasion. A few days before my daughter, Camrin, turned one, my husband gave me the book Skinny Bitch for Mother's Day. I had been curious about the book but really did not decide to read it until I learned it promoted veganism. And after reading it I decided it was what I really needed to do.
Another book I had always wanted to read was Slaughterhouse, which I read shortly after finishing Skinny Bitch. This book was extremely shocking. My husband decided to read it and pretty much immediately gave up meat. Please note he decided to read Slaughterhouse with very little push from me and giving up meat was 100% his decision after reading the book.
There we were with my husband and the kids being vegetarian and myself being vegan. The more we read and learned how horrifying the dairy industry was and how "free range" eggs were not really free range at all, the more we felt the whole family should be vegan. My husband soon dove into veganism and has not looked back since. At this point the kids were still not totally vegan. At home we all were, but the kids would still have dairy and eggs at restaurants and at friends' and our families' houses. It was definitely more convenient to just get the kids grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, or cheese pizza when away from home. This lead us to not dine out quite so much.
We decided to do more research about our kids becoming vegan. I read two of Dr. Joel Fuhrman's books, Disease-Proof Your Child and Eat to Live. That was about all I needed to convince me. It was time to have the kids join us and make it known.
For some reason I thought going to Grandma's would be the biggest obstacle in this change. Living close to my family, we often go to my family's for the day or the kids will spend the night. I had unofficially let my mom and grandma know that the kids were no longer eating cheese, but we decided to make the terms official and give some helpful tips in an email to them.
Today I took the kids to my grandma's house to spend the night. My grandma had bowls of grapes, strawberries, and carrots ready for the kids. We went over several options for meals and snacks for them. I even gave her my made-from-scratch pancake "recipe."
I just called a few hours ago to check in on the kids and my grandma had reported she made pancakes for lunch and all was well. So far my family has been very accommodating for the kids new way of eating. I'm sure it can be somewhat overwhelming for my family to have a whole new set of rules for my kids, but I am very thankful they have helped us make this transition as smooth as possible.
Tomorrow they are off to my mom's house while Zach, and I continue to remodel our kitchen. I always miss them so much when they are away, but I am glad that they have great, loving places to go and have fun.
Hayes and Camrin
