New Year's Resolutions, 2015

"Dear, Darling New Year.....I love you! Thank you so much for coming!" <3 p="">

A new year is the perfect boost to have planted in the middle of winter. I am making lists of resolutions, thinking about what I want to accomplish, what areas of my life need addressing and planning what I want to let go of from 2014. So much hopeful material for the 365 tomorrows ahead!

I believe fervently in making resolutions at New Year's. I think its a good exercise to evaluate where you stand, what progress you're making and how your life choices are lining up with your hoped for goals. Its hard to end up where you mean to when you don't keep re-focusing!

I also find that sometimes there are surprises, things I didn't plan for that are wonderful gifts....even in catastrophic form. Its really healthy to be able to notice and call out the good things in your life. We all need to grow and improve but we also need encouragement and that's part of why we need to review and digest our lives sometimes.

I want to be the kind of person who is never stagnant but always growing and improving, trying to learn and change. In order to make sure that my resolutions aren't just ignored or weakly tried for a week and then dropped, I always make certain to make measurable, concrete goals that are specific and achievable. Instead of  "Get Healthy" I might resolve to: "do yoga three times a week,"   "drink a glass of water first thing each morning," and "eat a salad four times a week."  The things I am working on this year are big and small....all kinds of stuff but they are all specific:

My much loved year workbook. You can get one too at Leonie Dawson's website. 

 Resolutions 2015

1. Make an ancestor wall with framed pictures of our parents, grand parents and great-grandparents.

2. Get two professional massages over the course of the year. (I've never had one before!)

3. Start a monthly family movie night.

4. Paint my bedroom.

5. Fly a kite.

6. Finish the brickwork on our front walk.

7. Go visit the Alcott House.

8. Take the two older boys out for a fine dining outing alone with Mommy.

9. Make tissue paper flowers.

10. Sort and cull the sports box.

11. Prune my clematis.

12. Buy a new juicer.

13. Go visit three far away friends.

14. Take our family Christmas photo in October.

15. Have my grandpa's paintings re-glassed.

16. Get one of my orchids to bloom.

17. Attend my book club 8 times.

18. Make two meals out of my Thai cookbook.

19. Have five hot baths.

20. Make shell art!

Not all your resolutions have to be life-changing, they can be funny or trivial or indulgent. There are so many aspects to life and so many things that we need to remind ourselves to include. I feel like the new year is a chance to tweak and focus in on intended direction. What do you want more of in your life this year? What did you never get around to last year? What needs changing? What parts of you need letting go and what parts need watering?

Happy Clean Start, everyone!

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.

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

Run Carlie, Run

Well friends, I can't rightly believe it myself but, it's true...last night, I went running by myself, for the first time in my life.

I had made an amendment resolution that besides just doing yoga in the mornings, five days a week, I'd  do one aerobic workout on the weekends. A huge, huge thing for me to promise. I hate aerobic workouts. But friends, there are lungs and a heart, not just leg muscles to stretch and a mind to relax so I bit the bullet. It's a new year, it's a new me.

And yeah, my friend Sam has been inspiring my eyeballs out, AND my friend Anna, two non-runners who suddenly positively athletic. I had told myself that once it was warm out, I'd run outdoors like Sam was. (Barefoot running! So exciting!) Yeah. Barefoot running will be cool, and I sure can't wait for outdoor warmth again but if I'm doing an aerobic something anyhow...why not run now. And then I forgot about it. Heh.

And then there I was last night, reading a book in which a woman makes positive life-changes (one of which is exercise) and I remembered..."Oh crud. I was supposed to run this weekend. I blew that." And then, I realized it was still Sunday night and before I lost my nerve, I dug my old tennis shoes out of the closet, pulled on a sweatshirt, a scarf and a hat and bolted out the door.

I didn't do anything impressive. I went around the block. And I don't mean I ran around the block. I ran down one side of our block and I walked the rest, in slight pain from the running bit. It hurt and I felt fat and pathetic and super uncool but, I also was so proud of myself and the night wasn't nearly as painfully cold as I'd imagined and there was Orion winking brightly over the corner of our neighbor's roof. So, that was something.

I'm trying to block the memory of the searing burn in my lungs and just ride the high of finally being big enough to do something good, even if it's hard and scary. Next Sunday night, you know where I'll be.

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?