Friday, January 01, 2010

Resolution Time!

It's that time of year again! Resolutions! I love resolutions-but resolutions don't love me. I make them pretty much every year, and like all of the rest of the 300 million people in this country, I break them within a few weeks. This year, I am hoping it will be different-mainly because my resolution is less about changing a habit and more about adding things.

So here it is-my resolutions for this year are:
1. To spend more time with my kids out of the house and outdoors. For me, this looks like in these cold winter months taking them to different indoor places. I think my goal is 2x a month-since we have preschool, park district classes and playdates 2x a month seems doable without over doing it. Once it gets warmer, this means a. taking my kids to outdoor places, but what the heart of this resolution is about is b. taking them out to play. As I've said before, we really spent way too much time indoors this past summer and I'm hoping to change that. My goal for when it gets warm is to go out most days of the week. This might mean walks in the morning ending in playing at the park. This might mean playing at the park after naps. This might mean bike rides and walks when Daddy gets home from work. Or it might simply mean taking them both out to play as an extension of our indoor play rooms. John and kiddos be prepared-I'm willing to sacrifice homemade dinners to achieve this! So it might wind up meaning premade (by me) frozen meals, boxed dinners or microwaveable meals on days we decide to spend more time at the park or on a walk instead of coming home to cook.

2. My second resolution, which is sort of an extension of the first, is to take Winnie out on walks more. Poor Winnie-at best-gets walked 2x a week. And since it's been so chilly and snowy, she hasn't gotten walked at all. My true hope is that when the weather gets warmer to walk her most, if not all, days of the week. Hopefully by combining both resolutions this can happen-taking her with us on morning or evening walks or when it starts to stay light later, taking her on a walk after dinner or right when John gets home. I even want to possibly replace some of my workouts with this-sort of my attempt to live more according to the seasons. Rather than staying inside doing the elliptical or free weights, to move my "workout" outdoors by walking Winnie or running with her more often.

3. My third resolution is to live more according to the seasons and calendar-I've already mentioned that above by moving my workouts/exercise outdoors when it gets warm and by moving our play time outside but I also want to try and cook a bit more to what is in season. I have never been any good at going to farmer's markets so that is sort of out. But every year we have had a garden and usually we plant what is "in season" (it's sort of hard not to when you have a backyard garden). So the summer will be fairly easy. I have a great cookbook that tells you what is in season during different times of the year so I'm thinking I might try and work my way through some of these recipes. For example in the winter I know (off the top of my head) that potatoes and root vegetables are in season. So I want to find recipes that star those things.

I am hopeful I can actually stick to these resolutions-one thing I am going to do is make a list of all the places we can go, and plug them into my Google Calendar every 2 weeks so they pop up and remind me to take the kids out. I have used this function for the past year and a half with great success so I think it will work in this area too. When the weather gets warmer, I am going to devise some sort of system to keep track of when I take the kids out to play and when I walk Winnie-perhaps marks or color coding on the calendar in the kitchen so I can see it every day. Again, I've used things like this in the past, again, with great success.

So here's to 2010! A year where I spend more focused time on my kids! A year where we live more according to the seasons! A year where we celebrate the outdoors, slowing down and living in the moment. Cheers 2010!

2 comments:

Farrah said...

Sounds like some good goals- reasonable and easy to stick to. Happy New Year!

Nicole said...

Good luck!
Happy New Year!