I love new year's resolutions. In fact, I am a resolution junkie...most turning points in the year garner at least a handful of "I am going to" new starts. Bizarrely, I am actually quite good at keeping them. But then I don't pick anything too strenuous or unrealistic. No, I am not going to find the solution to world hunger or lose 50 lbs this year--though I did lose about about 15lbs all of the sudden on March 26th ;).
This year, I drew up a list. And then crossed some things off. And then added some others. THen went back to some of teh originals. But nothing and everything fit. And so I left it.
In retrospect, I think I was too caught up in my pregnancy to think aoutside it. Or maybe I couldn't believe that I would have a baby at the end of that hard time.
But here we are, 7 weeks into our joyous life as a family of 4 with our beautiful girl and life really feels like its beginning. A new leaf. A new start. A fantastic time for some resolutions.
1. Improve my photography. I wnt to
After last year, it feels false to write a to do list for change. As a friend as said in a few situations, I want this new year to be full of hope, but hope without expectation.
1. Get out of debt. Like many people, we carry around a small amount of debt. While much of this is related still to my move to the UK and various stints of unemployment by the both of us, its been a hard load to shift. The tide is turning, but we need to buckle down and get stuck in. My goal is to return to work in 2011 essentially debt free.
2. I want to improve my photography. I love taking pictures of the small moments of our lives and I want to do that as well as I can. In order to achieve this, I have decided to participate in Project 365. While I am a bit worried about my ability to take a photo a day with our new arrival, I am going to give it a shot, because, hey, I take so many pictures anyway it may not be that much of a difference.
My main focus for 2010 is of course welcoming a new life into our family in February/March. This in and of itself is an enormous undertaking...something that feels me equally with excitement and fear. I can not wait to meet this new soul and introduce her/him into the exciting world of South Street. But I am under no illusions that the expansion of our family will present a number of challenges.
The only person I can control is myself (and even that is questionable at times) and so, my goals for 2010, for my maternity leave, for this dramatic period of change is to:
- Test out home-based early years education. While initially Ellis will be remaining at his nursery 1 day a week to ensure we have some outside support if baby is preterm (Ellis was 5 weeks early), we envision he will be coming out sometime in March