fresh start

i'm a few days late to the blog resolution party, but better late than never, right?

last year, i had one resolution: survive 2012 (with grace).

i'm not joking. that was my one, bona fide, write it down resolution. i had seen the writing on the wall and knew that 2012 was going to be a ride. so, i had realistic expectations and didn't set my usual more detailed list of resolutions.

the good news is, i survived 2012. i think i survived it with a little bit of grace. i'm going to pretend i did.

2012 at a glance:
randy had a masters recital in february. we had a baby at the beginning of april, randy graduated in the middle of april, and we moved at the end of april. we weren't planning on moving until july, but our landlady gave us an offer we couldn't refuse ("i'm moving back in, you have 30 days to move out"). we moved to seattle and randy started his piano studio. it's been a little slower going than we planned, but the students are coming, slowly but surely. i have a hard time with the infant stage and feel like i have been sleep deprived and hungry since june, but jonathan is almost 9 months old, so i'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (i am slowly ramping up my dairy intake, hurrah!). we are making new friends and enjoying time with our little family in the longest house in kenmore. we survived.

but now it's 2013. on to bigger and better things. i'm still keeping it pretty simple because i do still have three small children, one of which is still an infant. my two big resolutions for 2013 are:

1. more purposeful screentime; and
2. work on the tone that i take with my children.

screentime
i started out thinking that i would say "less screen time," but decided that that's not really what i meant (although i do think that the final version will definitely result in less screen time). i love my iphone and actually think that's it been my sanity with three small children and very few friends. it allows me to keep in touch with far away family and friends and also allows me to remain productive without having my back to my children at a computer. but it also means that i goof around a lot on it too.

most of all, i've found that it's become a thought replacement. all too often i find myself pulling out my phone automatically during quiet moments (and some not so quiet moments) instead of sitting and thinking. it's become a way of avoiding thinking about what i should be doing or dealing with the stresses in my life. i'm sure that i miss moments with my kids because of it, but i also do it when they're asleep and i'm winding down and just don't want to think.

i don't think this is going to be a huge change for me. it's not like i'm constantly on my phone and i don't think my phone's evil. i just want to change some mental habits associated with my screen use.

tone
similar to the other resolution, i've worked on the wording on this one. originally, i thought i would work on my tone of voice, but i think that it needed to be more broad than that. tone includes not only the volume and edge in my voice, but the words that i use and my general attitude toward them. it's not like i'm yelling at my children all the time, but i do raise my voice more often than i'd like and i am way more impatient than i should be. i know that everyone says you should have high expectations of your children, but i often have far too high expectations and need to remember that they are five and unders (trust me, i have plenty high expectations in most areas of their development).

i like to blame my current shortcomings on the fact that i'm not getting any sleep, but that's probably not going to change for the next twenty years, so i should learn to control myself regardless. i know that if i can control my tone, it will have a trickle down effect on my family interactions in general, so i'm choosing to focus on that and enjoy whatever else comes along with that.

here's to improvement in the coming year.