My Morning Routine

Its a new year and that means that I am working on shaping up my goals, focus and productivity every day! One of the most talked about ways of putting yourself on the right track towards accomplishment and progressiveness is the secret of routine....especially, your morning routine. I'm all over that. I'm a big believer in starting the day on the right foot and aiming at a steady rhythm in life. My husband A and I are really different people in some ways, one of the ways we differ is in our relationship to routine. I didn't grow up in a very regimented family culture and have a lot more connection to following my own inner yens and also to passionate spontaneity. Your spouse can be one of you best teachers in life if you let them into your inner world. I have taught A about the power of spontaneous moments and open spots in your life, he has taught me the warmth and steadying power of routine. I will never be a person who schedules my whole life or slavishly follows the routines I do use but I have learned to really, really love having a Morning Routine to lean on in my life.

This is how I stay steady, how I get the day kicked off and how I maximize my productivity.

My Morning Routine

• 6-6:30am Get up early before the family: For me, this part is key. I like the quiet, early part of the day because I have to it to myself, I am more productive if I have a headstart on the crazy, noisy, insanity. Also, its so peaceful to be up in the calm hours. I feel happier when I get up early.
• 6:30-7:00amPersonal time (Set my MIT for the day [my 3 Most Important Tasks for the day], read, do art, sip tea, write....etc.)
• 7:00am Boys Up: A few of them need to be shaken awake usually.
• 7:15am Breakfast Prep: I have a breakfast schedule and I check the list and put out what I need to get out and pull together. I have optimized for a fifteen minute cook/prep time. Simple, fast, nutritious....that's the goal. Dee sets the table.
• 7:30am Breakfast Together: We try to maximize our time together as a family and even though A works more than 40 hours and that makes it harder, one of the ways we've pushed our edge is by prioritizing eating together as a family at breakfast, not just dinner. 
• 8:30am A, Leaves For Work: A walks to the train a few blocks away which means he is able to leave our single vehicle family with wheels and the boys and I can focus on staying in our groove while he takes off.
• 9:00am-10:00am Chore Hour: We continue to wrestle with how we're executing chore time but at the moment each boy has a set of chores that are his duties and I have one big household job I'm working on every day (Monday is bathrooms) and during this time we all work on getting things squared away. The early finishers have free time until school starts!
• 10:00-12:00 School Time: I am working on one subject a day with the boys and during this time I work on projects with them, do read-alouds, research things we wonder about and also help out A with the math that he is teaching by working with one of the boys a day to take some of the load off of him.
• 12:30 Lunch: Morning is over! Time to eat. Lunch is leftovers. No cooking! Nib sets the table.

How do you plan your morning to set you up for success? This schedule is only what I'm doing right now...things change and I print up a new schedule at least quarterly to put on our fridge. What do you do to 

The Year of Self-Inflicted Terror

I have never been super good at facing difficulty and ponying up to failures or possible failures. Man, I'd like to kick that one! This year I am planning to expose myself to lots of things that scare me, work hard on things that seem insurmountable, chip away at jobs that take a looooooong time and seem like they will never end and learn to hear and handle and use criticism.

Whew. Its a big year. 

 My focus word for the year is "Grit." It feels really good and I have lot of ideas for making it happen.

One thing I am doing, for instance is planning to take surfing lessons. I love the ocean and I really like to swim (although, I am not any kind of proficient) but surfing looks terrifying. The major deep water, the being out so far away from any help or land, the giant board that could clobber you silly, the Godzilla strength surf, not to mention the social intimidation of trying to hang with the tanned and the muscled. Long Island has a surfing school and I am plan to enroll. Lucy tells me she will come too and I plan to push through the shakes and the hesitation and learn to surf. This is the year. I  will do tough things.

I also plan to organize, purge completely and beautify our hoarders stash of a basement. I am telling you guys this so that I will have public accountability and will feel like I have called myself out. I'm gonna sort through all the boxes of junk and random papers and old photos stuck together. I'm gonna take load after load to Goodwill and the dump and jam things into our recycling bin until they won't fit anymore. I will have systems and know them. I will look all my ridiculous mess in the eye and I will stop doing it. When company comes I will not run madly around shoving everything into a box or a bag and then throw it on the scary heap in the basement. I am done. This is the year.

Its gonna be a good year. I'm excited. 

Also, I am heading off on these challenging, scary adventures with so much in my corner. I have good books, pretty spaces, certainty that I can do it and an adorable baby with the cutest static halo around.

 

Shredded Underwear + Inner Strength

Something is crazily shredding all of my underwear. Weird, right? I think I am down to a handful of pairs now because they keep coming out of the dryer with strange marble sized holes in them. I can't figure it out. There's no way that our washing machine is selectively gnawing only my underwear. How can that be? Did I tick it off? If it was all whites I'd think I'd put in too much bleach but I like my colored undies...so that's not the issue. Mysteries.

We are still hibernating in between bouts of skateboarding classes. Lucy and I are watching our way through the first season of Sex and the City which is hilarious good fun. I am fleshing out my resolutions and my ideas for the coming year. I've been tucking away this and that scrap of inspiration and this week I pulled together a Pinterest board and a paste and scissors mood-board. So excited about having so much to draw on in a ready place.

The citrus season is in full-flush and we are galloping through boxes of clementines and having big, sunny orange slices at breakfast. I have to make a note to save some orange peels to toss in the fire some evening when we have the fireplace cranked up. I am also having a yen for Meyer lemons. Every day at naptime Nib is asking to read Amelia Bedelia and then as I tuck him in he looks at my with his big brown eyes over the edge of his quilt and begs me to make him a lemon meringue pie: justification for Meyer lemons commence! We might need a batch of lemon curd to go with it for special breakfast. I also have to remember to get a bunch of coral grapefruits and serve them cut with honey some morning.

Prunings from the fruit trees, about to leaf out in a vase on the bookcase.

Its easy to forget the happy little parts of winter when you are longing for hyacinths and lilacs but I am determined to be in now and appreciate whatever I can right in this spot. I will not succumb to avoidance and wishful thinking and wistfully imagine away what really is. Learning to be optimistic in a wholehearted way this year and also to dive in wherever things are hard and find the value in the struggle and the overcoming. Will become a strong woman this year, walking through fear and the slightly icky into adventure and resilience

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A New Year, A New Plan

Its January. My reboot button has been pressed and I get to start over! Usually I feel instant relief that the holidays are over and a new year is curling pinkly out in front of me.

This year I feel a little slow on the uptake. I think part of it is A's new job which requires his presence on the West Coast one week a month, jet-lag is our newest family tradition. Also, the boys are more familiar with Facetime and Skype already than I have ever been. Parenting together long-distance is a new skill.

And part of the fog is my Aunt Terri's death. I feel really fumblingly blue about her transition from bodily form to memory + spirit. I wanted really badly to see her one last time but instead my kids got sick and I lost my voice and we spent our time awkwardly spreading germs and mania to my in-laws in a flurry of wrapping paper and gingerbread. I hugged Aunt Terri's boys, my fabulous cousins during one squeezed-in face-to-face greeting and sent them every bit of love I could muster, staying abreast of their mom's foggy releasing and rallying by phone as the snow fell and fell and fell. So much of letting her go is kissing my childhood goodbye and taking on the intimidating mantle of being the cool auntie instead of just telling stories about mine. I am also working through a decent amount of anger and sadness about familial shortcomings, bizarenesses, and angst. Amazing what a watershed event like a death can bring out, eh?

Also we are having crazy weather...Apocolyptic snow storms, record cold temps broken up by grey drizzling rain. And yet...must survive. It is the only thing to do!

I am working on a batch of resolutions, processing out the last year, planning new local classes for the boys, perusing the local adult ed roster, and trying to find little pockets of inspiration here and there. One day this past week I called all of my aunts, one right after the other and talked and cried and laughed with them all over the phone.....for the first time in my life. Today the boys and I signed up to sponsor a beautiful little 4 year old girl in Sri Lanka per their eager requests and then spent a good bit of time reading about her world filled with monkeys, lush banana groves, emerald tea plantations and spangled elephant festivals. (We are already dreaming up a birthday package for her!) Tonight we have A's cousin coming to dinner for the first time ever after volumes of well-intending Facebook messaging over the course of years....may it be sweet. And yesterday I went to the library and cleared all the fines off my library card and picked up the first load of good reads for the new year.

I will come around. My energy is lagging but coffee is my friend, sleep will eventually get caught up and in the meantime.....it ain't nothin' that some good tunes can't cure!

Happy New Year, World! xoxo

January-ing

We're January-ing all over the place lately at our house. Pulling down the Christmas (as it is wont to do) has led to sudden and complete redecorating in certain sections of the house. The bookcases and china cabinets have been re-styled and the mantle invigorated, the art is playing musical chairs and the sunroom is being re-invented as a mommy spa space: all watercolor work, sewing, reading nook, green oasis and guinea pig haven. A and I are set to begin guitar classes together as our weekly date night. My drool-inducing reading list is overflowing, many of them in-hand thanks to Christmas gifts from A and many more on a library list in my phone and even one in audio form for when I'm washing dishes or driving A to and fro on his commute. I am tackling garden plans with a vengeance and am up to my green little ears in all the ideas and advice I am accumulating.

I'm overwhelmed and also very excited. This is what  a new year does to me, I'm full of 25 new projects and genius ideas on overdrive and also a little swept under by the enormity of all the wonderful possibilities. My solution is to stop thinking so much, that's when the stress and enormity of it all creeps in. Less think, more do. The world is so full of a number of things...I am off to turn my world upside-down and make all manner of sparkly bits fall out onto the carpet!

Pom says that sounds just top notch...as long as I always hold him. He got separation anxiety for the New Year and has started giving babysitters fits when we're away and even wailing top volume for me whenever I set him down although he's very cheery and sweet for as long as I can push myself to tote his 5th percentile, and yet somehow impossibly heavy little frame around on my body.

2012, Diagnosed

It was a good year.

All years are good years.

I am trying to get less attached to ideas of emotional happiness and instead learn to see the fluid beauty in all things...even the rough things, even the stuff we are tempted to label and discard.

It is so alluring to kick 2012 out with a big heave ho and stamp it on the hiney as it goes with a giant red "FOR DISCARD" like a snubbed library book.

This was the year..... A had an accident with a bike and spent months in ridiculous physical therapy trying to learn to walk again after the official diagnosis of "bruising and small bone chip," it was the year we had such a plague of mosquitoes in our yard that we basically spent the second half of the summer indoors hiding, it was the year our shower started leaking through the dining room ceiling and we shifted to using the kid shower (still are!) while we saving up funds to afford a ceiling demolition, it was the year that I spent a week, heavily pregnant with my fourth baby teetering on the edge of a hospital bed holding my third son while he cried and pinning his arms down while nurses gave him i.v. meds, it was the year my cherished midwife was no longer practicing and I had to walk through this last pregnancy and birth without her care, and it was the year of illness after illness, the boys never all well at the same time.

But you know...there are so many sides to life. So many pieces to stories and so often, its all about your spin.

This was also the year.....I discovered eating grain-free/sugar free and thus shed a shackling depression, the year we met our gentle, fourth son in an amazingly quick and smooth birth, the year we hauled basket after basket in from our garden laden with peas and lettuce and tomatoes and our first ever watermelons, it was the year I finally took an interior design class, the year A picked up Spanish in his spare time, the year we celebrated surviving an entire decade of marriage together, the year we visited Hawaii and swam under a waterfall with our children, the year we picked the first fruit from our mini-orchard, and the year we made it back to Michigan for a family reunion on my great-grandparents farm, the year we brought home two furry little guinea pig sisters to live with us, the year I had a painting up in a real gallery and then sold a piece to a genuine member of the anonymous public, the year a Raleigh  policeman went out of his way to help find my stolen phone and restore my faith in cops, it was the year we were graciously mega-loved by friends in our homeschool group, neighbors and church when hard times did hit, it was the year we had a huge flock of daffodils bloom by our front door.  This and so much more...

I want to always look for the ripe, warm, flavorful bits in my experiences...even the things that feel bitter at first bite. So here I am with the winter light slanting across the floor and a round cheeked baby on my lap, on the brink of a whole new story. This year, whatever it brings I hope for more awareness, more open-eyed seeing, more love, more unity with side portions of vision, and dreams, and spine tingling to boot. Here's to 2013, doubtless, a good year!

A Crisp New January

We are back home. We survived the stomach flu, a manic whirl of trip prep and holiday madness, and the long drive to Michigan and visits with both sides of the family. And here we are, stepping crisply into the new year. Ah! Feels so very, very good.

There's something very cathartic to me about traveling far away for Christmas and then driving back across the country together, bundled up in winter gear, munching leftover cookies, jotting down resolutions and humming on towards a whole new, fresh year together as a family. I love that drive. We talk and think over what our families are like and how we admire them and how we want to out-do them and we talk about our previous year and what went well and what we're primed to tackle next. And I always love it when we get to the part where we plan our travel schedule and make mouth-watering schedules for where and when we'll be adventuring in the coming year. This year we're hoping to see Hawaii, D.C. and New Hampshire as well as maple sugaring in the far north and a family reunion in the ancestral vineyard where we were married. Very apropos for the celebration of our 10th year of marriage together. We have genuine history!

Am feeling full of inspiration, and energy and hope today. My list is long and my spirits are high. I feel like there are good days ahead...I think 2012 is a good one.

Here are the things I'm dreaming of accomplishing in the coming year:

Resolutions 2012

1. Call my parents weekly
2. Help my boys write letters monthly
3. Dream journal
4. Work on the boy's baby books monthly
5. Go on a private "couple's retreat" together
6. Take an interior designs class
7. Take a trip to visit a friend
8. Read three books on genetics
9. Join an art society and hang a piece in an art show
10. Call grandma monthly
11. Plant shrubs on our property
12. Hang pictures in our house (extended family, kids and wedding especially)
13. Find three interior design books that I love and learn from
14. Switch to a local pediatrician and find a family doctor for A and I
15. Put together and follow a car maintenance schedule
16. Organize our basement storage
17. Paint more rooms!
18. Register to vote
19. Join our Neighborhood Association
20. Start an easy food night (pizza, take out, frozen dinner, leftovers etc.)
21. Hire a cleaning service for the first month after Baby Four arrives.
22. Read two great books on blogging
23. Teach the boys to: brush their teeth in the morning, comb their hair consistently and wash their hands before meals
24. Teach Ru to read and Dee to write his own name
25. Potty train Nib
26. Read three new plays
27. Carve out two consistent work times in the day for me-time (one for work and one for personal)
28. Sell three or more paintings
29. Make a new friend
30. Start taking the boys out for special Mommy and Me outings
31. Start an interior design notebook with a section for each room of our house

I might have time later to read through the resolutions from last year and compare and contrast a bit but for now, I'm forging ahead...sometimes blissfully unaware is okay. I'm

Less is More, It Just Is.

Tonight A and I are going out for the night, just the two of us, our last date night alone before the zaniness of family travel and other celebratory activities hit us full in the chest. I'm not sure if that's what's doing it or if is intention to focus on what matters in the middle of this holiday season, or even just new thinking about the coming excitement of New Year's Resolutions and the clean slate that is a crispy new January.

Suddenly I'm thinking about all the new toys and sweets and "stuff" we'll be bringing home for our little ones and I'm feeling the unstoppable urge to purge. Time to go wildly through our goods and take boat loads of things to Goodwill! Time to create empty, clean spaces! Time to set things in order in our house so that we return from Michigan to a calming space instead of insanity!

I am remembering that the things children like best are the simple ones....the ones that don't cost much or anything at all. Cookie cutters, shiny pebbles, string, the wrapping paper...you know. Am off to sort the playroom, to vacuum all the corners and to take bags of stuff, stuff, stuff to the trunk of our van for a thrift shop drop-off.

Less is more. It just is.

In Which She Is Resolute

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm leisurely about my well-wishing, taking my sweet time getting around to acknowledging the calendar flip ...why panic...we have 365 days to toot our noise-makers. The holiday madness largely behind us, we find ourselves here, blinking at the crisp, white, slate of a newborn January. I kind of love January. I love fresh starts, I love stillness after madness (no holidays all month anyone??? WOOHOO!) and even the sharp winter chill feels a little invigorating. After all, we've hardly had time to enjoy the gentle sifting of a slow snow shower, try out our snuggly Christmas mittens and scarves or go stumping around frostily blowing dragon breath with our giggling two-year-olds. The year is young! Hooray!

If you know me, you know that one of my favorite things about the new year is a fresh and teetering stack full of resolutions. People always tell me that they *cough cough* "Don't really do that resolution thing themselves. It's so depressing and who really keeps their resolutions anyhow!" I don't buy it people. Really? Your plan for making sure you can't fail is that you have decided never to have goals? A pulled out his list of last year's resolutions recently and sighed exclaiming that he hadn't "done very well." It turned out on closer examination that he had made stabs at and some progress on most all of them and had roundly succeeded  on a few to boot! I told him to stop being his own worst critic and appreciate all the success he'd had instead.

An attitude adjustment that allows you be pleased with any amount of progress instead of only perfect completion is helpful, so is a goal making tutorial...practical, yea modest goals are best. Instead of resolving to "eat healthy food" try changing it to "eating something raw every day + joining a CSA." Concrete is good.

Anyhow...all that to say: Here are My 2011 Resolutions!

• Shop for Christmas presents in July
• Get back to my pre-Nib weight
• Get up early 5 days a week (so as to have a quiet space before the hordes are up and buzzing)
• Keep a dream journal next to my bed
• Record all my books on GoodReads again
• Start a Housekeeper's Binder
• Buy a jasmine plant and get it to bloom
• Switch our kids to a local pediatrician (I am sick of driving any more than I have to)
• Call both sets of grandparents on set days, every week
• Host my first real kid birthday party  (Ru, my socialite turns five in April which will be the perfect time)
• Do yoga 5 days a week in the early mornings (maybe 7...we'll see...and also consider taking up running in warm weather)
• Follow a sport (am considering soccer at the moment, although American football has an allure too)
•  Buy my bees

What's on your list?