Starting Over

January. The time of year when you can start fresh. A clean slate, a crisp calendar, and new resolve to actually improve all of those things that you planned on improving last year. For me, it meant seriously sticking to routines.

Fresh out of the holiday merriment, and with that the complete and utter lack of any semblance of a routine, this Type-A driven person was about to lose her marbles. I enjoy the holidays just as much, if not more than, the average person; but, with children, lack of structure can drive one to insanity in the form of 20 hour road trips and teething toddlers overtired from lack of sleep and hyped up on attention from family.

I like to imagine I'm one of those free-flowing moms, who just goes wherever the wind takes us: exploring, gallivanting through fields on the side of the road...you get the picture. But what I've realized is, I like to be that type of mom if I've planned to be that type of mom. My weekly calendar will say something like: 'Thursday, Gallivant.' And then I'll feel as though I'm wild and free...I may even plan to wear a flowy dress, for effect.

So, fresh off the holiday high, like many people do, we experienced a few sad days of mourning known as 'The Holidays are Over.' Also entitled 'Where Did All the Parties Go?' 'Why Can't I Just Sit and Drink Wine?' and 'What Happened to All the Built-In Babysitters Family?' After about 3 days, we started to rally. We were going to get this new year started off right, dang it! And then I got the stomach flu. Like, the for real, gross, everything-you-think-about-when-you-say-the-words-'stomach-flu' flu. 2 days later, Graham had allergy testing and FPIES diagnosis. The next day, daddy got the stomach flu. 2 days later, I got a concussion.

What was that? Oh, yes. PSA: baby gates are out to kill you. Really. I was just minding my own business, holding some poop stained pants from my non-napping son, when it jumped out of nowhere and tripped me. (Nowhere actually happened to be in the door where it was supposed to be at the time, and tripping was more like 'I have short person legs'). Cue dramatic head over heels fall where I cracked my head on our hall clock. Like any wise person would do, I decided the best way for Graham and I both to move past this was to have a dance party and also lift him above my head 50 times. 2 days later I was in the ER getting a CT scan. While I was in my time of 'utter darkness' as I fondly refer to it, the next week, our overly-zealous son reached for Jim and scratched his (Jim's) cornea in 2 places. (I joked with Jim that our first routine could be weekly ER visits. He didn't find it as funny as I did.) And there's a lot of other uncertainties that are popping up, like jobs and where we're living and you know, minor life changes. (I have to pause and say we have the absolute best friends and family who we can not thank enough for caring for us for the past 2 weeks!! Seriously.)

So, here it is, January 27th, and we're kind of-sort of starting our routines. Believe it or not, 2 weeks of extreme quiet allows one to do a lot of thinking. I'll write more about that some other time, as I actually learned a lot. For now, we're starting over. New resolve. New perspective. New routines.

2014, here we come!