1. Stop procrastinating!
This has always been a terrible habit of mine. This week was especially bad because it was my week to start out our topic! (We each have "assigned" weeks to start the topic.) I really dropped the ball on that one! The sad part is, I really have NO excuse. This wasn't a terribly busy week - no one was sick - nothing out of the ordinary. So, thanks Leah and Hollie for picking up my slack! I am not just saying this because of my delinquency with posting. It extends into many other areas of my life!
2. Be more consistent with my "5am Club" membership. (Remember our discussion from the Shopping for Time book club?) It's actually the 6am club for me, but I've not been consistent. I actually get up that early maybe 3 days a week? Those are ALWAYS my best days too. I get more time in the Word and get things together before the kids get up.
3. Improve my housekeeping and homemaking skills in order to get more done during the day and have more time spend with Jacob when he gets home! With three kids here during the day (I keep a one year old along with my two) - its been a challenge to get as many chores done during the day.
4. Find a new balance with bargain shopping, coupon clipping and money saving habits. Jacob has never complained about the amount of time I spend with my coupons and grocery lists. Mainly because he's seen the savings and loves it. But, I'm starting to grow weary! I want to continue sticking to our greatly improved (lowered) grocery budget, but shorten the time I spend doing it. I have definitely seen that my couponing is taking less time with more practice, but I want to spend even less!
5. Be more intentional with our friendships. Jacob and I noticed a sharp decline in the number of Christmas cards we received this year. I do think it may be partly due to the fact that we don't send one ourselves. However, when we looked back through stacks of cards from previous years (yes, I keep them all in neatly labeled baggies) we realized that many were friends we had simply lost touch with. Neither Jacob nor I have ever been very good at this and it takes a great effort. Many of the friends that we have made since being married were from our wonderful Young Married Sunday school class. Probably 50% of them have moved away and we are no longer in the class. (We teach two year olds on Sunday mornings - intense!) So, who's coming to dinner?
6. Be more intentional with sharing our faith - mainly with our neighbors. Like Hollie - we have lived here for almost 5 years and have had far fewer interactions with our neighbors. While we know and love many of them, our relationships have hardly gone beyond conversations that take place outside. Any practical ideas?
7. Get Will potty trained. Man, we're struggling so much with this! We started just before Thanksgiving and have made very little progress. He rarely fights us and refuses, so he's willing - but I'm not so sure he's able anymore. I'm wondering if this is another situation where he WANTS to do it - but physically he's not able yet. He still poops 4-5 times a day. At least! Because of that, I did go to pull ups pretty quickly. The pull-ups have halted our progress with peeing in the potty as its too easy for him to just not hold it and go in the pull up. But they sure help my sanity when cleaning up that many poops. He gets so sad when he tells me he has poopy underwear, although we've not scolded him for it yet. I just don't know what to do! We're considering dropping it totally and retrying it in about three months or so. Anyone stories or advice to stop or not? He's 2 years, 7 months right now.
8. Finish BOTH Adeline and Will's BABY books. This is ridiculous - but Will has a half completed baby book. Talk about procrastination!? My Mom just gave me my baby book this Christmas and I loved looking at it again. I want my kids to have that as well in 25 years. Interestingly - after looking at all three baby books (mine, Will and Adeline's) I learned that we all got our first tooth at almost exactly the same age! It was about 9 days difference total! I had always heard it was genetic. Weird!
9. Stop making excuses and just exercise! I used the Y before I had Will and loved the variety of the classes offered at ours. I did kickboxing, pilates, yoga, hip hop and some strength training. But now, I'm not sure I can justify the cost with the amount of time I have. I don't think I'll use it as fully as I once did. Plus, if our house sells in the near future, I don't know how close I'll live to another branch or if I can even transfer my membership. The most routine exercising I've done since having Adeline has been our 2 mile walks. We have a route through the neighborhood, but I can promise you that I have not seen that path in the past month at least. Between the holidays and cold weather - it just hasn't happened! I definitely need an alternative! We're considering a Wii fit. Does anyone have one that they use regularly for exercise? Is it lame? That's my main concern.
10. Officially begin the process to head overseas! We've known since before we got married that this is where we would be someday. Its so exciting to see the Lord knitting all the details together! However, for any of you reading that already live overseas or are in the process - you know how LONG it all can take. I'm not really certain of how many details I should publish here, so I'll just answer the two questions that are always asked first. WHEN? At least 18 months from now. (I've been saying that for about 6 months though! Ha!) WHERE? Central Asia. Please pray for us - I'm currently a little overwhelmed at it all.
So there they are. Better late than never, right? Actually, I've never liked that cliche. Maybe because I always heard it in relation to my students turning in their assignments late. I can totally relate to them now.
One more note about New Years resolutions. I rarely put them to paper - mainly because our habit has become to evaluate our marriage, family and personal walks at our anniversary in October. This started on our honeymoon and I look forward to talking about it during that time each year. But, for the sake of the blog - I included some of them here. I also feel as though we are constantly re-evaluating our lives throughout the year. Although, the first of the year is certainly a great time to put them to paper in order to hold ourselves accountable to those tasks that we need to work on!
Anyone else have resolutions to share?
5 comments:
I posted mine over at my blog! Thanks for the inspiration. We share a few resolutions!
http://joshzseranoahlyla.blogspot.
com/
ideas for getting to know your neighbors:
*friday night pizza- invite over a couple of families and rotate whose house and who pays (papa johns $5 special, means you spend maybe $20-25 on your night)
*watching a sporting event at someone's house
*grill out
*have a walking date with other moms
Christina - the potty training is an area that I need to start working on with my Asa. He has now started to proceed to strip after he has done anything in his diaper. He's becoming quite the exhibitionist. Anyway, my sister's youngest took quite a while to train. When she started training, Claudia started refusing to wear diapers but she wouldn't go on the potty. She wore pull ups for over a year but when she finally was trained she has had no accidents even at night. So just take things slow. When you think to take Will to the bathroom do it to encourage him and yourself, that is the type of approach that I am taking with my Asa and in a year or so I get to start all over again with my Eli. Best wishes and prayers to you as you start this new year.
Christy,
Thanks for the encouragement! I think we've decided he may have been a bit too young to have the physical ability...he understood what to do, asked to do it (sometimes), obeyed when we told him to do it....but alas, he could NOT control his poops and dribbled pee in between no matter what!
He still has 4-5 poops a day and its going to take some serious learning to get all of those in the potty.
All that to say - that we made the decision to cold turkey go back to diapers. It was too expensive to keep him in pull ups!! So, we're going to try again in a few months and see where we're at then.
We just tried the ebook from www.3daypottytraining.com with our 20month old daughter and have had some great success! I would highly recommend it. Today was day 4 and our first day out of the house -- we had preschool for five hours and she stayed dry the entire day! Amazing! Praise the Lord, we have bathed this issue in prayer and He is the one who is working in our lives and our daughter's little precious body. It is a super positive way to potty train, but takes a serious committment for three days (which is a lot better than a whole year). Feel free to email me if you want! I'm new to POH, but really enjoy/learn from all you ladies!
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