Obligatory Year End Post

The Christmas tree is still winking at me with it's faulty fairy lights from the corner of the room, I can not yet bring myself to take it down, staring at it, I am thinking that tree   serves as a good analogy for the way I seem to approach my life. I dragged my feet over putting the tree up at the beginning of December and finally after promising the kids one too many times, tomorrow, tomorrow it eventuated. Now more than a week after the big day and with  everyone else ready to move on I am desperately hanging on and again telling them, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow it will come down. 

This is a pattern I find myself repeating in my life, fearful, sometimes even incapacitated by the idea of change, and then once it happens and turns out to be a good thing, I can not stop myself from looking back, perseverating, not able to let go. I wish I could find myself spending more time in the here and now, not always looking back or fearing the future but  I'm weird like that.


 Ironic then that my word to sum up 2012 is change, even though I think it is pretty lamo to pick one word to capture a year, if I did have to do it, change it would be. I could also say, stressful, exhausting, exhilirating and confronting, but for 2012,  change trumps all of those.

We sure did pack a lot into the last year. Probably the biggie for me has been re-entering the workforce on a more premanent and committed basis, terrifying but good. And a big change.

The highlight wwas our amazing trip to Canada and Florida in the middle of the year, I blogged about it here. I am thankful our children have the chance to  feel such a strong connection to their Canadian family and to Canada itself. They all say garage ( ga-raaage) almond and aluminum with a funny accent, love Caillou and Franklin and when she went to bed on Christmas eve, Millie fully expected it to be snowing on Christmas morning. Our trip was full of so very many memories and moments and any doubts I had  about time away from school were eradicated, when I had Ben's year end parent interview and his teachers told me they knew everything about our trip ( and probably things we didn't want them to) and what a formative learning experience it was for him. They told me he learnt more in those 5 weeks away than he ever could have in a classroom.


 And I can't believe how changed my little girl has become in twelve  short months. This time last year we were freaking out about the transition into two days of day care, she was so very dependent on me and any time I was away from her was fraught for everyone. A year on and we have  a sassy little three year old who loves her days at pre-school, has a little group of bff's, is adamant that she choses her own clothes every day and barely looks over her shoulder as she heads into her classroom.

Ben has had a great year, doing well at school and Jack has settled in to the school routine.

I think life is incrementally getting less stressful for John and I, we have more money coming it  with my changed work circumstances, (although it still seems to disappear just as  quickly) and over this year we have left the baby days behind. But there are new challenges around every corner, and I am staring to realize that the difficulty factor of parenting increases  incrementally in relation to the age of your children and the juggle of everyones different needs.


With this year of change behind us,  what I am hoping for 2013 is some consolidation and stabilit.  I feel like now we have all the building blocks in place to be the family we want to be and to be in the places we want to be, now we just have to work hard to put them all together.

This year I want to

• Get on top of my struggle with my weight
• Begin and stick with an exercise regime
• Knit Millie a cardigan
• Learn how to crochet and make a dish cloth
• Try one new recipe a week
• Set a family budget and stick to it
• Get my hair done every 6-8 weeks
• Make a list of all the unfinished projects we have around the house and get them done before starting any new ones
• Meditate and learn to stop flying off the handle so much

I wondering too about this blog in 2013, I have been a bit confused about blogging recently. As a reader I know there is nothing more likely to induce an inward eye roll than a needy and insecure blogger but I know that deep down I am one. A long time ago a frenemy  told me my blog was boring. Ever since then I have suffered such blog angst and I have never really been sure who I have been writing it for and subsequently sometimes I think it is a little hot mess of a blog all over the place. When I write about my children I worry I am boring everyone but my family, when I don't write about my children I worry I am boring my family. When I write about things we have done/made, I sometimes feel like this is an inaccurate portrayal of my life and how much time I really spend time doing things with my children versus the times I am yelling or engaging some other poor mothering type behavior. But then I don't want to lay my soul bare for the whole world ( or even the 12 people reading this blog!) and talk about every time I fight with John, how much he is annoying me today, how angry/upset/irritated xyz makes me.

So this year I am going to make more of an effort to blog for myself. My blog goals are

• I am going to blog about my ongoing struggle with my weight and disordered eating
• Every week I am going to share a new recipe
• I am going to blog about my children when I feel like it
• I am going to make more of an effort to blog consistently
• Have a blog overhaul and re-organize 
• Make an effort to comment and connect with other bloggers

So there you have it, out with the old and in with the new, I am off to take down the Christmas tree.