Following Up on My Goals

Throughout my blogging days I have made several resolutions, announced goals, and shared habits I'm trying to change or implement. I think it's about time I reveal how well some of those things have gone - and how I have miserably failed at others.

I will start with the most recent and work backwards.

My 2012 New Year's resolutions were 1- get more sleep and 2- read more to my children. Both are going reasonably well. 

When I set the get more sleep goal, I gave myself permission to not set my alarm. I figured this is the only way it would work. I believe I do some of my best sleeping between the hours of 4:30- 7:00 am. Because of this, it has been ridiculously easy to keep this resolution, one that basically requires me to sleep later. I get up when the children wake me up. We are all fairly early risers. In theory I would love to wake up before kids, exercise, read my Bible, etc. But when I do this I am stupidly exhausted and irritated. Plus I usually hit the snooze button 40 times when I try to wake up early. I think I'm better off (for now, in this specific stage of life) with the sleep.

Reading to kids more. We are doing this!!! I started off by reading to Stephen before nap and bed time. The naptime read eventually fell by the wayside and unfortunately the nap did too. But now he will spend his "rest" time thumbing through books on his own. He really loves reading before bed, and I'm pretty sure he has figured out that the more books we read the longer he can delay actually going to bed. A blog reader sent me some fantastic advice on reading to children - pick books they like with things they recognize, make it a part of nap and bed time routines. Also, another friend told me she will spontaneously start reading in the room where her kids are playing - even if they are not interested. Eventually they will hear a word they recognize and get involved in the story. It works. So yay! We are reading. On average I'd say we read 3-4 books a day. It's not much but it's more than we were doing before. Occasionally, Stephen will initiate reading by bringing me a book. Warms my heart.

Also, in my New Year's resolution post I said I wanted to do project 365 where you take one photo a day for a year and share it on a blog. Big FAIL. I got busy and dropped this like a hot potato. Though it seemed fun and a small task at first, it turned into just one more thing. I'm filing it under the do less category.

Moving on....in this post  I declared that I wanted to regularly start eating breakfast and lose 5 lbs. My pattern was to overeat during the day, feel guilty about it, wake up the next morning and try to (subconsciously) compensate by skipping breakfast. As expected, by mid morning I found myself overly hungry and downing my children's goldfish. Much like the get more sleep goal, the you must eat breakfast turned out to be an easy goal to achieve. Awww shucks, you mean I have to eat another meal??? Aww man, you mean I don't have to get up at 5 am?? See what I mean....easy, realistic goals. I dare say I have not skipped a breakfast since I first posted about this on the web. As far as attributing this goal to help me lose weight - yes, I do think eating breakfast has been a factor in losing a little bit of weight.

In this post I discussed 4 things I was working on...

1. I wanted to make the coffee at night so it would be waiting for me ready in the morning. I'd say we now do this 5 out of 7 mornings a week.

2. I wanted to exercise regularly at home. I have never been an exercise video type of gal, but in this season of life it is the best way for me to get consistent exercise without depending on the weather or getting to the gym. I started out really strong in this area, but man oh man have I been struggling. I have tons of excuses. But really there is no excuse. I definitely need to have pep talk with myself about this one.

3. I set out to spend less time on the computer. This one I have done out of necessity. I have two toddlers. They are constantly on the verge of causing harm or injury to themselves or others. They demand my attention. I can't really take credit for having self control and spending less time on the computer, but it is something I have had to do to keep my children safe. So yeah, by default I have succeeded at this one.

4. Have people over more. FAIL. I have no good excuse except that life is so full.  I anticipate stages changing and I'm going to keep at it because it is something I enjoy. *I did have a friend over last week. We had a lovely time visiting on my back porch.

So I think that's enough following up for now. I hope to post soon about last year's less is more movement. Also, I hope soon to give an update about Stephen's hand injury. Both of these posts are floating around in my mind.

Until then.... have a great week!

I found this list in a pile of old recipes the other day. It's a list I made in nursing school. One of our assignments was to go to an AA meeting. Wow, what a blast from the past. Even then I was into goals. I love goals, small and large.