A Mom's Revised List of New's Years Resolutions

It's a New Year, so a new blog post seemed fitting today.

That, and sitting with my laptop, writing a blog entry, falls into the category "Can be Accomplished while Sitting on my Couch in my Pajamas."  

Other activities in this category for today include, but are not limited to, holding my sleeping 8-month-old niece, watching the Rose Bowl and drinking coffee while eavesdropping on my kids as they fill the laundry basket with their stuffed animals and send them down the stairs.  2014 is off to a good start!

Because I am, indeed, being so very ambitious on this first day of the New Year, I figured I'd jot down my New Year's Resolutions.  They are a work in progress.

A Mom's Revised List of New Year's Resolutions

1.  Serve only gluten-free, organic, vegan, free range, low carb, unprocessed, non-GMO foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

1.  Prepare delicious, homemade, healthy meals for my family every night.

1.  Provide some type of daily sustenance for my husband and children, whether at home, at a restaurant or from a drive thru window.  Leave enough Goldfish cracker crumbs in my kids' car seats so they can snack as necessary.  

2. Workout every day for 2 hours, while burning fat and building muscle, until I have rock hard gluts and chiseled abs.

2.Lift some weights to remove the "grandma jiggle" from my triceps and run on the treadmill daily.

2.  Try to take the stairs instead of the elevator at the mall every third Saturday of the month.  

3.  Go to bed by 9:00pm each night and wake up, refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to tackle the day with only optimistic, positive thoughts, at 5:00am each morning.

3.  Actually listen to my body, crying out from exhaustion, and go to bed when I'm tired at 11:00pm.

3.  Crawl into bed before 1:00am, after finding the inner strength and willpower to actually turn off Netflix after finishing an episode of "Bones," instead of letting the next episode start automatically for the 4th time that night.
     
4.  Sort, organize and label all of the photographs ever taken of each of my children, and create unique, detailed, creative scrapbooks of each year of each of their lives.

4.  Attempt to get all of the digital pictures off of my camera, and use those pictures to make updated picture frame collages to be displayed prominently throughout our home.

4.  Snap some photos with my iPhone and add them to albums I've already created on Facebook or text them to my family.

5.  Purge all unused, outdated, outgrown items from all closets, dressers, bookcases and storage areas.  Organize all useful items into color-coded Rubermaid tubs, providing easy acess for any member of the family at any time.

5. Keep toys and clutter picked up by completing one of the 2,354 organizational things I pinned on Pinterest last year.

5.  Try to have visual confirmation that there is actually carpet on the floor in either of my children's bedrooms or our living room on a somewhat monthly basis.  

With these few minor tweaks, these Resolutions might just be within my grasp this year...

...or maybe it turns out I'm not so good at this whole Resolution business after all.  I feel like it's something I try to do every year, but as soon as the calendar flips to January 2nd or "real life" comes back into play once vacation is over, all resolutions pretty much fly out the window.   

Even if a New Year's Resolution isn't my thing, I do feel like a New Year is a chance for a fresh start.  It's a time to reflect on the year behind me, and look forward to the year ahead. In thinking about finishing one year and being at the top of a brand spankin' new one, I suppose I do have a slightly different list of things I can focus on.

A Mom's Truly Revised List of the "Me I'd Like to Be This Year-lutions"
1.  Be more patient with my kids.  And my husband.  And myself.
2.  Live in the moment, and appreciate every one of them God has blessed me with.
3.  Laugh more.  Worry less.
4.  Let go of the guilt. 
5.  Trust myself and my instincts.

The moral of this story is as a New Year arrives, don't be too hard on yourself.  In this season of Resolutions, take a minute and celebrate all that was right and good and wonderful about last year.  Cut yourself some slack, and remember that while it's good to lose 5 pounds, clean our your closets and create a budget you'd like to stick to, even if those things don't quite play out the way you imagine, you are doing the thing that matters most...You're a Good Mom.  

Every day when you wake up and change diapers, pack lunches, read bedtime stories, wash underwear, run the dishwasher, drive to basketball practice and tuba lessons and drama rehearsals, you have carried out the very best Resolution of all: loving on your kids.  The everyday, seemingly mundane tasks you are doing day in and day out, that sometimes don't feel very "resolution-y" or life changing at all, are some of the most important.  You have resolved to stay committed to the most wonderful, exhausting, exhilarating, boring, rewarding, thankless job on the planet...Motherhood.

So Happy New Year!  Bring on 2014!  May it be filled with blessings beyond your wildest dreams and may the worst days of the year ahead be better than the best days of the year behind.

Remember, You Are a Good Mom.  There is no Resolution you need to make about that.

[And to every one of you that told me over the holidays you missed my blog posts, or asked me in the last few weeks if I had written anything new, or inquired if your iPhone somehow deleted my blog from the Internet, thank you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  You can totally take credit for this post actually making it to the great big world wide web.  You were the kick in the butt I needed.  You actually read this entire post.  You rock.]

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Spelling Test

Some of my favorite moments are when I can eavesdrop on my kids and they have no idea I can hear them.  When they're playing in one of their rooms; when they are in the living room while I'm making dinner in the kitchen; when I'm driving and they're talking away in their car seats behind me.  It's like I get this little sneak peek into their secret "brother/sister world" and I treasure every time it happens.

Although maybe this one wasn't such a "treasure" in terms of sweet loveliness.  Laughs, yes.  Potty humor, yes.  Spelling prowess, yes.  But sweet loveliness, no.

As I was driving last week, I heard my son pipe up from behind me:  "Morgan, you spell poop 

P-O-O-P."

I suppose the "Good Mom" thing to do would be to remind him he was not in the bathroom and he should be using potty words, and use it as a teachable moment that he is a role model to his younger sister and shouldn't be teaching her potty words, either.  

But I didn't.

What I really did was stifle a laugh so 1.) He didn't know I was listening to their conversation and 2.) It wouldn't encourage him to continue on with a litany of potty words, which as of late, have become incredibly funny to him.

After I was done with my snickers to myself, I had to ask myself "How did he know that?"  I guess this means the days of my husband and I spelling things in front of him have now, unfortunately, come to an abrupt halt.  

I suppose he's prepared for his first spelling test, as long as the only 2 words on the test are "Parker" and "poop."  What a proud, proud moment for this mom.  

Whether you embrace the teachable moment or laugh through it, You Are a Good Mom.