As small children are wont to do, Sebastian is learning new tricks all the time. Some of them are more entertaining than others. For example, I could do without his latest skill of transforming into the Snot Monster and requiring me to remove the excess green stuff from his face every five minutes. (Side note: If you have germs, it's not just your imagination; we are avoiding you. We're tired of back to back colds. )
However, other achievements are a lot more fun. We've had him using various kinds of sippy cups, water bottles, etc., but the one thing that consistently eluded his toddler brain was the ability to just use a straw. Ok, in fairness, this is because every single cup he had with a "straw" required him to bite down on it (I love those Camelbaks). So every time we took him to a restaurant and they helpfully gave him a water cup with a lid and a straw, we ended up taking off the lid and letting him pour half of it on himself while he tried to drink it. Yes, I exaggerate and he has the hang of it now, but it was still not a pretty sight at first.
Anyway, after months of this I finally decided to buy him the sippy cups with straws even if they leak (and they do, every time you flip that stupid lid up and the straw pops out, spraying the liquid that was trapped in it everywhere). It didn't work. He got frustrated and asked for the "top off...top OFF peez...PEEZ!!" until I finally took off the top. So our child could now drink from a cup, but not from a straw.
Until two days ago when I treated us (and by us, I mean the adults in the house) to a banana milkshake from our local burger joint. Those milkshakes are to die for, and apparently Sebastian knew it. I immediately held up the cup and straw after he asked to "have some peez" because I figured he'd never get anything out anyway. And you know exactly what happened. He sucked that milkshake up like he'd been using a straw his whole life!
So there you have it. Today's life lesson from a toddler: Banana milkshakes can solve many a problem.
Supah's Book Club
What are you currently reading?
Just finished rereading A Wrinkle in Time for my Newbery project. Before that I read all of the Twilight books over vacation. Great fun.
When do you find the time to read?
I try to read a chapter or two before I go to bed, but most of my reading is done when I have middle of the night insomnia. On vacation when grandparents can keep an eye on the munchkin is the best time, though!
Where do you do most of your reading?
I do most of my reading in bed, whether mine or the guest room's if I'm up at 3 a.m.
How do you choose what you read?
Right now I am trying to read all of the Newbery books (and blogging about it here), which are the best of children's literature each year, so that gives me an easy list to choose from. Occasionally I follow a recommendation from a friend, but mostly I tend to (gasp) judge a book by its cover. I have rarely gone wrong with this technique, to be honest. Someone once asked me: glossy or matte. Almost always the answer is matte. That's where I start. The rest is intuition.
From where do you get most of your books?
There was a time in my life when I went to the library every week (namely when I lived in Brooklyn and commuted for an hour on the subway to Manhattan to teach every day), but now I tend to get most of my books from the bookstore even though I know I should still be borrowing them. Knowing I should not be spending so much money on books is why I have not yet bought a Nook or a Kindle; too easy to just buy one from anywhere! If the libraries would get on board so I could download one to borrow, now, that would be bliss.
What do you do with a book after you've finished reading it?
If I loved it, it goes onto the bookshelf to be reread when I'm sick, tired, or nostalgic. If I liked it, I try to loan it out. If I hated it, it goes to Half-Price Books.
What are your book (reading) quirks?
I'd say my only quirk is that I like to use books as Chore Books. I pick an old favorite that has chapters I can finish in 10-15 minutes, complete a chore, then read a chapter. Clean, read, repeat until chores are done. I am not one of those people who can work for hours and hours straight; I have to have a break or I burn out by lunchtime. Taking scheduled breaks to read a book I love like the Harry Potter series helps me keep going all day at whatever the task is. I can't pick a new book because eventually I will give up cleaning to keep reading and find out what happens next.
Perhaps that's my only other book-reading quirk: when I'm into a book, I am one of those people who will stay up half the night to get to a "good stopping point" as I say to my students. When I was reading the Twilight series over vacation, my average bedtime was 3 a.m.! By the way, those books are better than you think they'll be. As I just told a friend, 13-year old fangirls tend to be idiotic; the books themselves are entertaining. And I've decided that not reading a book just because it's popular is just as stupid as reading it only for that reason. Ok, the covers are glossy and unimpressive, but nobody's perfect.
That's about it for me. Head over to visit MommyBrain or Supah to read more interviews!
The first obstacle
Resolution Number One: 5 days down, 25 to go!
Today is the beginning of what I hope will be my sixth day of getting all of my daily habits done, but I ran into a problem three days ago that I probably should have foreseen.
It started with a few bad nights in a row. Having to get up in the middle of the night twice to go to the bathroom is enough of a pain, but it also wakes up the cat who wants to be fed, bangs some doors, knocks over some things, wakes up the toddler, and wakes me up enough that I have trouble falling back to sleep. For HOURS. By the time I do try to get back in bed, it's usually about 10 minutes before my alarm goes off.
Needless to say, it's incredibly difficult to drag myself out of bed an hour before SP gets up in order to work out or do the other habits I'm supposed to do first thing in the morning. Which finally brings us to our problem, which I shall call:
The All or Nothing Conundrum.
Since I am counting days only in which I have completed all of my tasks, as soon as I've missed more than one, the moment I know that there is not enough non-toddler-time left in the day to do all of them, my motivation goes straight out the window (after doing a lap around the soon-to-be-messy house and laughing at me). That day I missed four tasks that really should have been done.
I reasoned with myself that this was better than having a day like I'd had a few days before in which I'd done all but one task, which was incredibly depressing. Because really, I'd given up time to nap, rest, read, or do any of those sorts of re-energizing things in order to get everything done, only to be thwarted by the fact that my husband came home late and I couldn't do the dratted vacuuming before SP went to sleep. ARGH.
So there are the two sides of the same problem. If it's an all or nothing reward, it's hard to gear up for those tired days, and even harder on almost-perfect days to look at my sad chart with its one smiley face missing and have to skip counting that one after all my efforts.
I can't think of any solution for this because once I start making exceptions, well... slippery slopes and all that. So I think this is one problem I'm just going to have to be sad about.
(Yes, I ended my subject with a preposition. I know some of you out there are gasping that a grammar nerd would do such a thing, but that is a ridiculous rule based on Latin and not English, so I choose to ignore it.)
Today is the beginning of what I hope will be my sixth day of getting all of my daily habits done, but I ran into a problem three days ago that I probably should have foreseen.
It started with a few bad nights in a row. Having to get up in the middle of the night twice to go to the bathroom is enough of a pain, but it also wakes up the cat who wants to be fed, bangs some doors, knocks over some things, wakes up the toddler, and wakes me up enough that I have trouble falling back to sleep. For HOURS. By the time I do try to get back in bed, it's usually about 10 minutes before my alarm goes off.
Needless to say, it's incredibly difficult to drag myself out of bed an hour before SP gets up in order to work out or do the other habits I'm supposed to do first thing in the morning. Which finally brings us to our problem, which I shall call:
The All or Nothing Conundrum.
Since I am counting days only in which I have completed all of my tasks, as soon as I've missed more than one, the moment I know that there is not enough non-toddler-time left in the day to do all of them, my motivation goes straight out the window (after doing a lap around the soon-to-be-messy house and laughing at me). That day I missed four tasks that really should have been done.
I reasoned with myself that this was better than having a day like I'd had a few days before in which I'd done all but one task, which was incredibly depressing. Because really, I'd given up time to nap, rest, read, or do any of those sorts of re-energizing things in order to get everything done, only to be thwarted by the fact that my husband came home late and I couldn't do the dratted vacuuming before SP went to sleep. ARGH.
So there are the two sides of the same problem. If it's an all or nothing reward, it's hard to gear up for those tired days, and even harder on almost-perfect days to look at my sad chart with its one smiley face missing and have to skip counting that one after all my efforts.
I can't think of any solution for this because once I start making exceptions, well... slippery slopes and all that. So I think this is one problem I'm just going to have to be sad about.
(Yes, I ended my subject with a preposition. I know some of you out there are gasping that a grammar nerd would do such a thing, but that is a ridiculous rule based on Latin and not English, so I choose to ignore it.)
Bye bye, doctor
Monday morning Sebastian and I donned our raincoats and headed out for the exciting adventure of... going to the doctor! Ok, not so exciting. Though I love to hear official pronouncement that he's healthy, I hate when he has to get shots. I was feeling especially sad for him since I had gotten two flu shots a couple of days before and my arm (only one of them, curiously) was still sore.
But anyway, the stats for the grandparents:
He weighed in at 29 pounds 1 ounce. This shocked me, as I was sure he'd have tipped 30 pounds by now. Apparently he, unlike others who shall remain nameless, did not gain weight over the holidays. Ahem.
He stands 33 1/4 inches tall, but he was squirming and screaming, so I'm not sure how accurate that measurement was. Also the nurse asked me to help with it, and when your child is squirming and screaming, you have a tendency to just try to finish the task, not be perfect about it.
His head is a whopping 49 cm around, but that figure is more or less meaningless to me beyond making me grateful I didn't have to deliver a baby with that size head 18 months ago.
All the stats were around the 75th percentile. So there you have it. Big, healthy boy. Yay!
Dr. Schrier pronounced him to be healthy with excellent language development. She was kind enough to say this because he talked to me constantly throughout the appointment. In response to HER, he shrieked his head off and acted like she was torturing him instead of offering him a tongue depressor toy or listening to his heart and lungs. Ah well, he did cheerfully call out, "Bye-bye, doctor!" when she left.
He then spent all of lunch - the time in which I was saying, "Dr. Schrier is NICE," in hopes of making our next visit more pleasant - saying, "Bye-bye, Doctor Schrier!!" Oh well, at least he can say her name now, right?
Life with this little guy is rarely dull.
But anyway, the stats for the grandparents:
He weighed in at 29 pounds 1 ounce. This shocked me, as I was sure he'd have tipped 30 pounds by now. Apparently he, unlike others who shall remain nameless, did not gain weight over the holidays. Ahem.
He stands 33 1/4 inches tall, but he was squirming and screaming, so I'm not sure how accurate that measurement was. Also the nurse asked me to help with it, and when your child is squirming and screaming, you have a tendency to just try to finish the task, not be perfect about it.
His head is a whopping 49 cm around, but that figure is more or less meaningless to me beyond making me grateful I didn't have to deliver a baby with that size head 18 months ago.
All the stats were around the 75th percentile. So there you have it. Big, healthy boy. Yay!
Dr. Schrier pronounced him to be healthy with excellent language development. She was kind enough to say this because he talked to me constantly throughout the appointment. In response to HER, he shrieked his head off and acted like she was torturing him instead of offering him a tongue depressor toy or listening to his heart and lungs. Ah well, he did cheerfully call out, "Bye-bye, doctor!" when she left.
He then spent all of lunch - the time in which I was saying, "Dr. Schrier is NICE," in hopes of making our next visit more pleasant - saying, "Bye-bye, Doctor Schrier!!" Oh well, at least he can say her name now, right?
Life with this little guy is rarely dull.
Birthdays
So you can imagine how shocked I was to discover that I couldn't think of a single one that really stood out. It wasn't that I couldn't remember anything from any of them - the funny and sweet surprise party my college friends threw for me sophomore year, my husband and sister coordinating so we could all have a birthday dinner together halfway between our homes (2 hours and a border crossing apart), or the countless cards and gifts my lovely students have given me. Those all floated back to me, but somehow no one year really jumped out at me as the Best Birthday Ever.
But as I thought about birthdays even longer ago, I realized that the reason I love birthdays isn't because I've had one or even several stand-out years. It's that my mom has this amazing gift for making every special occasion important and meaningful. The kind of day for which I waited, counted down, and laid awake wondering what excitement would come.
Every year on my birthday, my mom would decorate my chair so that it was my special place the moment I came down to breakfast that morning. Usually there'd be some small present waiting for me, too. She would let me take a day off from school and we'd spend the day together, just the two of us. Though there were only three kids in my family and my mom spent a lot of time with us, it was always a special treat to get her all to myself. We'd usually go shopping, pick out a gift and have a birthday lunch at a restaurant. At some point just before or after the actual day, we'd have a family party, usually tied to going apple-picking together, so my birthday is also inextricably linked to lots of laughter, crisp apples, fresh doughnuts, and hot cider. Mmm...
This may all sound to you like par for the course or even like not so much when I think of the outrageous birthday parties some of my students have. But being made to feel like I was the most important person in her world for the day, and being part of that family tradition were the greatest gifts my mom could have given me.
Tough standard for my poor husband to live up to, isn't it? Oh well, Freud was right in this one case - it's my mom's fault.
In any event, now that I am a mom, and this summer will bring the first birthday that my son will really understand, I am going to remember the lesson. Someone once asked me when I was pregnant if I was going to continue the tradition of letting my child take the day off of school to spend together. Having taken a while to get pregnant and being due in JULY, I was unimpressed with her question. But I am still going to make sure that Sebastian and I get some quality time together and that he looks forward to his birthday every year of his life. I hope he will be reminded that he is VIP that day and that I love him beyond words (and yes, beyond the cake and ice cream and presents I'll be sure he has because it's not JUST about the love, right?).
So happy birthday, MommyBrain! I know it's memorable if for no other reason than that you are spending it with your TWO girls for the first time.
Speaking of which, this year should bring me two more special birthdays. A brand-new one in July... which will mean that in October, for my next birthday, I'll be snuggling another little one as well. :-)
A year and a half
{Note: I started this post yesterday on the 8th, and am just finishing it up this morning.}
Today my baby is a year and a half. I love that for one brief moment I get to count his age in a way that makes sense to everyone, not just those of us with children. So sure, he's eighteen months, but doesn't a year and a half sound older somehow? It does to me. And he looks older and sounds older to me today, too.
As I have to do when Sebastian hits any age milestone, I looked back at pictures to remind myself of how far we've come since July 2008.
From here in which he didn't do much besides eat, sleep, and go through diapers:
And though I know that even kids who don't talk until they are 3 or 4 often turn out to be some of the brightest ones in the bunch, I'm oh so grateful that Sebastian didn't keep me waiting that long. The days go by much faster now that we understand each other better. I don't know about you, but trying to sort out one infant cry from another was a lesson that was months in the making for me and incredibly frustrating. It's a lot easier and more fun when he can just say, "Hi, mama! Milk, peez," and I can say hi back and give him his cup.
But when I look back on that picture and remember his hand wrapped so firmly around my finger or his little sleeping body nestled against mine, I feel just a little nostalgic and wonder where my baby has gone. Well, he's only in pictures now. In real life he's been replaced by this crazy, funny, miraculous boy. Happy half-birthday, Sebastian!
Today my baby is a year and a half. I love that for one brief moment I get to count his age in a way that makes sense to everyone, not just those of us with children. So sure, he's eighteen months, but doesn't a year and a half sound older somehow? It does to me. And he looks older and sounds older to me today, too.
As I have to do when Sebastian hits any age milestone, I looked back at pictures to remind myself of how far we've come since July 2008.
From here in which he didn't do much besides eat, sleep, and go through diapers:
to this toddler:
My big little boy who walks, talks, dances, and laughs with me most of the day. He does still eat and sleep, though his refusal to eat foods like pizza or macaroni & cheese still baffles me. And no, it's not because he loves vegetables so much that he trades the pizza for asparagus. He just prefers breakfast foods, with the exception of his beloved PB&J. But his eating habits are a subject for some other early morning rant.
At eighteen months Sebastian loves music and any toy that will play him a catchy tune gets enjoyed on a daily basis. He also continues his obsession with anything that "goes," so our floors are littered with objects that have wheels of all shapes and sizes. He loves bubbles and books and slides, but isn't sure yet about Playdoh or crayons.
Sebastian can follow simple directions like, "Put the train in the drawer." and more complex ones like, "It's time to clean up." Yes, he actually knows what that means and starts putting the toys away! Not consistently or anything, but once he did it that first time, it was all over for him because now he can't pretend he doesn't understand (insert wicked mom laugh here)!
The teacher in me loves that he so obviously enjoys learning, and I'm not talking about just getting ready for school stuff (though he does know most of the alphabet, all the basic colors, some shapes, and most of his numbers up to 20 - he has some strange bias against 4 and 14 and usually skips those). He just loves any new piece of information, no matter how mundane it may seem to the adults. Yesterday he was enthralled by the notion that shampoo is for hair and food is for mouths and these two things should not be mixed up. He had to ask me about it for half of lunch and all of his bathtime, testing to see if I meant it by holding pieces of his sandwich up to his head and saying, "No hair?" Though I get tired of the repetitive conversations at times, I never tire of seeing his puzzled, thoughtful expression as he tries to sort out the new bit of information, or the glee with which he repeats the idea back to me: "Sam-poo...hair!...food...mouf!!"
I love that he is a sponge, delighted by the world around him, positive that we want to share every discovery and game with him, and learning new words and phrases and concepts every single day. We aren't quite used to the parrot tendency, though, so it may be my fault if you hear him repeat things he shouldn't at the top of his voice. So far we've kept it to expressions like "Holy cow!" but you know the day is coming when it will be worse.
And though I know that even kids who don't talk until they are 3 or 4 often turn out to be some of the brightest ones in the bunch, I'm oh so grateful that Sebastian didn't keep me waiting that long. The days go by much faster now that we understand each other better. I don't know about you, but trying to sort out one infant cry from another was a lesson that was months in the making for me and incredibly frustrating. It's a lot easier and more fun when he can just say, "Hi, mama! Milk, peez," and I can say hi back and give him his cup.
But when I look back on that picture and remember his hand wrapped so firmly around my finger or his little sleeping body nestled against mine, I feel just a little nostalgic and wonder where my baby has gone. Well, he's only in pictures now. In real life he's been replaced by this crazy, funny, miraculous boy. Happy half-birthday, Sebastian!
The Rules
All right, I've settled on some rules for my first resolution in order to make sure I make it to my second. While I'd love to think that I could do a month straight of getting all of my Effective (daily) Habits done, I'm realistic enough to know that life gets in the way sometimes. Rather than punish myself or have a unachievable goal that will only plunge me straight into the the pint of Ben & Jerry's, I've decided to just aim to make it to 30 days, even if they are not quite consecutive.
{All you sticklers out there are thinking I'm a slacker by not going for 31 days, but think of it this way: I could have gone with a lunar month and stopped at 28! Not that I'm going to stop with my habits at all, but... well, you know what I mean.}
Therefore, 30 days is the mark to meet in order to get started with my second resolution to start my piano lessons. One more rule, though, is that I don't want to get to 30 days after six or seven months of on again-off again, so I decided that if I miss more than 2 days in a row, I'm going to have to start over. I'm supposed to be building habits, after all.
And so.... (drum roll please)...
Yesterday was Day 1! I got all 11 of my Habits completed!
Only 29 days to go.
------
P.S. For those of you who are only here because you want to know what's going on with the munchkin, check back in the next day or two when I will have posted a whole bunch of photos and maybe written up a story or two of our Christmas holidays. I can't write more now because he's upstairs in his crib saying things like "Mama turn" and "Cago," which means "It's Mama's turn to get me up and if she doesn't I'm running away to Chicago to see Aunt Jen and Uncle Bill."
{All you sticklers out there are thinking I'm a slacker by not going for 31 days, but think of it this way: I could have gone with a lunar month and stopped at 28! Not that I'm going to stop with my habits at all, but... well, you know what I mean.}
Therefore, 30 days is the mark to meet in order to get started with my second resolution to start my piano lessons. One more rule, though, is that I don't want to get to 30 days after six or seven months of on again-off again, so I decided that if I miss more than 2 days in a row, I'm going to have to start over. I'm supposed to be building habits, after all.
And so.... (drum roll please)...
Yesterday was Day 1! I got all 11 of my Habits completed!
Only 29 days to go.
------
P.S. For those of you who are only here because you want to know what's going on with the munchkin, check back in the next day or two when I will have posted a whole bunch of photos and maybe written up a story or two of our Christmas holidays. I can't write more now because he's upstairs in his crib saying things like "Mama turn" and "Cago," which means "It's Mama's turn to get me up and if she doesn't I'm running away to Chicago to see Aunt Jen and Uncle Bill."
Simplification
I started with one blog, increased to two, and found myself with three before too long. Well, three is too many. I'd resisted the urge to have a "mommy blog" for many, many reasons, most of which have disappeared after reading so many wonderful blogs by other mothers. The main purpose in having two separate personal blogs (the third is about a book project I'm doing) was to give myself a space to be someone other than a mother.
However, in writing the blogs, I've learned that there is really no part of my life that has remained untouched by the birth of my son, so there is very little point in artificially separating my thoughts, goals, or funny stories. And so, whether you were following one or both blogs, I'm settling into Team Rasler and retiring Some Wisdom to Know the Difference. I am still aiming for wisdom, but how my Team is doing has everything to do with my quest and is the reason for it in the first place.
So I hope you will keep following along here and offering up your own words of wisdom and encouragement. I appreciate them all!
However, in writing the blogs, I've learned that there is really no part of my life that has remained untouched by the birth of my son, so there is very little point in artificially separating my thoughts, goals, or funny stories. And so, whether you were following one or both blogs, I'm settling into Team Rasler and retiring Some Wisdom to Know the Difference. I am still aiming for wisdom, but how my Team is doing has everything to do with my quest and is the reason for it in the first place.
So I hope you will keep following along here and offering up your own words of wisdom and encouragement. I appreciate them all!
Resolved
So it's the first week of January, and that means that my first post back after a very long holiday is required to be about resolutions, right? And since most of my posts have been about my goals, resolutions, and Happiness Project, this ought to have been easy. Unfortunately, my head was about to explode thinking of all the aforementioned goals and I couldn't figure out whether to pick one, keep doing the five per month plan, change the whole thing, or what.
And so, here we are on the fifth of January when I am finally figuring out what I'm resolving to do in 2010.
I am going with two resolutions. I'm going to work on the first one until I've got it down, at which point I'll reward myself with the second. Here we go.
My first resolution is to get back on track with my Daily Habits. There are just some things that I hate doing or can't remember to do but which must be done so that I don't go insane or live in a garbage heap. You know what sorts of things I mean because you have them on your list, too, and if you are anything like me you have become very good at finding reasons to do them tomorrow, Scarlett, because that is another day. But after one too many people showing up unexpectedly at my door when my house looks like I live in a hurricane zone (rather than the earthquake/volcano zone in which I actually live), I decided I'd better get serious about my daily list.
I read some great advice over on Zen Habits about choosing triggers that will help remind you to do the new habit you're trying to form, and I realized that the only To Do's I had kept up with were the ones that were completed after one of these "triggers" - things I do every day, like wake up, pass the munchkin to his dad for a half hour in the morning, put him down for a nap, get him up for a nap, put him to bed, etc. All of those events happen pretty much every day without fail, so if I can get two things done after each of those, that's already 10 items completed. So for example, when I wake up, I'm doing a 20 min workout and putting any clean dishes away so the dishwasher is ready for reloading. I wake up every day, so it's not like I'm going to forget to do those things, right? When he gets turned over to Daddy, I clean the cat litter and start a load of laundry before I shower and dress. You get the idea.
The problem still is motivation {because, really, was I forgetting to put away the dishes? Not so much.} so that is where my second resolution comes into play. I'm still using my charts with the smiley faces because I'm a dorky teacher who likes things like that, but finally I have figured out what my reward will be.
Once I can say that I've successfully completed my daily habits for a month, I'm moving onto phase two:
Making 2010 more musical.
I realized that so much of what I love to do in my free time (besides read, read, and read more) has to do with music - singing, dancing, and playing the piano. I've gotten away from all of those things for various reasons like raising a small child and quitting my job that provided income for beloved activities, but it's time to get back to it.
Once I've got my habits firmly established, I'm going to add one more to them: playing the piano every day. No, I don't have a piano yet, but we have a keyboard that can stand in, we are going to be looking to buy a used piano, and I'm going to treat myself to piano lessons so I can relearn how to play correctly and get MUCH better than I was the last time I took lessons (probably when I was 9, right, Mom?).
I'm really psyched about this, but it's going to require me to shed a lot of my Procrastinating Self to get to this second resolution. We'll see how well the triggers work at keeping me focused and on track.
Meanwhile, I'll use this blog to help keep me honest, since that's another suggestion: be public about your resolutions.
So in all honesty, I will say that I got everything done on my list except that I did not check or sort the mail today. And I have no intention of going out now in the dark and rain to do so. Therefore, it's a good thing that tomorrow is indeed another day.
Let's just hope I'm not still saying that on December 31st.
And so, here we are on the fifth of January when I am finally figuring out what I'm resolving to do in 2010.
I am going with two resolutions. I'm going to work on the first one until I've got it down, at which point I'll reward myself with the second. Here we go.
My first resolution is to get back on track with my Daily Habits. There are just some things that I hate doing or can't remember to do but which must be done so that I don't go insane or live in a garbage heap. You know what sorts of things I mean because you have them on your list, too, and if you are anything like me you have become very good at finding reasons to do them tomorrow, Scarlett, because that is another day. But after one too many people showing up unexpectedly at my door when my house looks like I live in a hurricane zone (rather than the earthquake/volcano zone in which I actually live), I decided I'd better get serious about my daily list.
I read some great advice over on Zen Habits about choosing triggers that will help remind you to do the new habit you're trying to form, and I realized that the only To Do's I had kept up with were the ones that were completed after one of these "triggers" - things I do every day, like wake up, pass the munchkin to his dad for a half hour in the morning, put him down for a nap, get him up for a nap, put him to bed, etc. All of those events happen pretty much every day without fail, so if I can get two things done after each of those, that's already 10 items completed. So for example, when I wake up, I'm doing a 20 min workout and putting any clean dishes away so the dishwasher is ready for reloading. I wake up every day, so it's not like I'm going to forget to do those things, right? When he gets turned over to Daddy, I clean the cat litter and start a load of laundry before I shower and dress. You get the idea.
The problem still is motivation {because, really, was I forgetting to put away the dishes? Not so much.} so that is where my second resolution comes into play. I'm still using my charts with the smiley faces because I'm a dorky teacher who likes things like that, but finally I have figured out what my reward will be.
Once I can say that I've successfully completed my daily habits for a month, I'm moving onto phase two:
Making 2010 more musical.
I realized that so much of what I love to do in my free time (besides read, read, and read more) has to do with music - singing, dancing, and playing the piano. I've gotten away from all of those things for various reasons like raising a small child and quitting my job that provided income for beloved activities, but it's time to get back to it.
Once I've got my habits firmly established, I'm going to add one more to them: playing the piano every day. No, I don't have a piano yet, but we have a keyboard that can stand in, we are going to be looking to buy a used piano, and I'm going to treat myself to piano lessons so I can relearn how to play correctly and get MUCH better than I was the last time I took lessons (probably when I was 9, right, Mom?).
I'm really psyched about this, but it's going to require me to shed a lot of my Procrastinating Self to get to this second resolution. We'll see how well the triggers work at keeping me focused and on track.
Meanwhile, I'll use this blog to help keep me honest, since that's another suggestion: be public about your resolutions.
So in all honesty, I will say that I got everything done on my list except that I did not check or sort the mail today. And I have no intention of going out now in the dark and rain to do so. Therefore, it's a good thing that tomorrow is indeed another day.
Let's just hope I'm not still saying that on December 31st.
The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Travel Day
Our family New Year's Resolution is not to travel more than two hours from our house for a very, very long time. It's not that we don't love you, family and friends across the country, it's that I cannot face another experience like the following until I have plenty of time to forget it. I have also resolved never, ever again to fly in and out of Toronto (we usually go in and out of Detroit) unless it is our sole destination, for reasons that will become very clear as you read on.
We knew from various reports that it was going to be a long wait at the airport to come home last Thursday, so we got there three and a half hours early. Usually reports of long waits are exaggerated, so I wasn't overly concerned. How wrong I was.
The first line consisted of checking in bags, which moved more or less quickly and seemed like it would be no problem. Unfortunately the new "no carry-on bags" rule was difficult to understand, unknown to many of the passengers, and generally caused a lot of frustration and confusion. We were told we could bring a laptop bag and a diaper bag, so we thought we were all set. However, we were then told that since our knapsack wasn't an official laptop bag, it would have to be checked. Ok, somehow we squished the laptop into the diaper bag, got our bags "checked" (ha) and then continued to wheel them to the next line.
That's right, I said we continued to wheel the stupid baggage to the next line. You see, you can't check any of your luggage at the counter in Toronto if you are flying to the U.S. You have to walk it around with you until you have cleared customs.
On to the customs line, which took us about 40 minutes. By this point we'd been standing in lines for over an hour, and the toddler who'd had a 30-min. nap in the car (as opposed to the 180-min nap he usually takes) was already sick of the whole thing, and we were nowhere near done. I will save you the tedium of reading about the rest of the ridiculous lines we stood in and summarize them thus:
baggage "check-in" - 35 min.
customs - 40 min.
baggage check in (actually putting them on the conveyor belt)- 10 min.
getting diaper bag checked - 5 min.
security line in which they checked diaper bag again- 25 min.
extended security line in which we were patted down, coat pockets examined, and diaper bag checked twice more - 50 min.
I think I've underestimated the times here because it took us over 2.5 hours to get through it all. I guess we were walking between lines here and there and convincing Sebastian that we were almost done and would get him something to drink any minute. He did pretty well considering all of this, but we were pretty exhausted and no longer in the mood to entertain him.
But then there was the five-hour flight still to come. You can see why I already won't do this again until I have selective amnesia, right? Because he didn't sleep for one second until the plane started landing. That's right, I said LANDING. Five hours later.
I could go into much more detail about the extended security mix-up in which I had to get patted down twice, the turbulence that almost made me throw up during the landing, or the hunt for my missing BlackBerry after I got off the plane and was already at baggage claim (only to discover much later that it was safely zipped into one of my husband's pockets)...but you are already as sick of this travel story as I was of living through it.
There will come a time when Sebastian can sleep on planes again, or read books, or watch movies (because I will acknowledge that Air Canada has super nice planes with individual screens for each passenger that offer a bunch of movies, TV shows, and music. Cool.). However, we won't be flying with him again until those days have arrived.
It's nothing personal. We love you all. But if you want to see Sebastian's dance moves in person, you're going to have to come visit us.
We knew from various reports that it was going to be a long wait at the airport to come home last Thursday, so we got there three and a half hours early. Usually reports of long waits are exaggerated, so I wasn't overly concerned. How wrong I was.
The first line consisted of checking in bags, which moved more or less quickly and seemed like it would be no problem. Unfortunately the new "no carry-on bags" rule was difficult to understand, unknown to many of the passengers, and generally caused a lot of frustration and confusion. We were told we could bring a laptop bag and a diaper bag, so we thought we were all set. However, we were then told that since our knapsack wasn't an official laptop bag, it would have to be checked. Ok, somehow we squished the laptop into the diaper bag, got our bags "checked" (ha) and then continued to wheel them to the next line.
That's right, I said we continued to wheel the stupid baggage to the next line. You see, you can't check any of your luggage at the counter in Toronto if you are flying to the U.S. You have to walk it around with you until you have cleared customs.
On to the customs line, which took us about 40 minutes. By this point we'd been standing in lines for over an hour, and the toddler who'd had a 30-min. nap in the car (as opposed to the 180-min nap he usually takes) was already sick of the whole thing, and we were nowhere near done. I will save you the tedium of reading about the rest of the ridiculous lines we stood in and summarize them thus:
baggage "check-in" - 35 min.
customs - 40 min.
baggage check in (actually putting them on the conveyor belt)- 10 min.
getting diaper bag checked - 5 min.
security line in which they checked diaper bag again- 25 min.
extended security line in which we were patted down, coat pockets examined, and diaper bag checked twice more - 50 min.
I think I've underestimated the times here because it took us over 2.5 hours to get through it all. I guess we were walking between lines here and there and convincing Sebastian that we were almost done and would get him something to drink any minute. He did pretty well considering all of this, but we were pretty exhausted and no longer in the mood to entertain him.
But then there was the five-hour flight still to come. You can see why I already won't do this again until I have selective amnesia, right? Because he didn't sleep for one second until the plane started landing. That's right, I said LANDING. Five hours later.
I could go into much more detail about the extended security mix-up in which I had to get patted down twice, the turbulence that almost made me throw up during the landing, or the hunt for my missing BlackBerry after I got off the plane and was already at baggage claim (only to discover much later that it was safely zipped into one of my husband's pockets)...but you are already as sick of this travel story as I was of living through it.
There will come a time when Sebastian can sleep on planes again, or read books, or watch movies (because I will acknowledge that Air Canada has super nice planes with individual screens for each passenger that offer a bunch of movies, TV shows, and music. Cool.). However, we won't be flying with him again until those days have arrived.
It's nothing personal. We love you all. But if you want to see Sebastian's dance moves in person, you're going to have to come visit us.
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