Mendolonium

I realize that the calendar says that this is the second day of the new year, but here in Pasadena it feels like today is the real beginning of the new year.  You see while Pasadena usually goes all out with the Rose Parade every January 1st, the parade is never held on a Sunday and so this year the parade had to wait until a Monday, January 2nd.  Although the parade is about as far from environmentally friendly as possible, I rather enjoy a ridiculous display of flowers shaped into objects on moving vehicles  along with marching bands and random assortments of people on horses.  I was supposed to be at the parade this morning.  Every year Pasadena residents can enter a lottery for Rose Parade tickets in the official grandstands at the beginning of the parade route.  I’ve entered every year for the past nine years and this year I finally won!  Four tickets, perfect of our little family.  But as I stood up and swaddled and sushed and bounced my fussy baby to sleep again and again this past weekend I realized that I was probably going to have to spent the entire time at the parade walking behind the grandstands with Anna.  And you know what, that’s just not worth getting up at 5:30 am and walking 2.7 miles.  I am a little sad though; Thomas and Theo are so excited.  Theo’s never been to the parade and I would have really enjoyed seeing his amazement and hearing his little voice say “Wow!” over and over again at the sight of the floats; and I am sure he will be dancing to the music of the bands.  But overall this situations typifies my first New Year’s resolution:  to soak up my baby.  Anna is clearly a sensitive soul and completely loses her little marbles in loud, chaotic situations.  (Gee, I wonder where she gets this from says her mother who has a tendency to retreat into a corner with a book at parties).  But before I get ahead of myself with new resolutions I like to look back at the ones I made last year.

1. Make more chocolate mousse:  I only made chocolate mousse a couple of times in 2011.  A big part of that had to do with me being pregnant; as soon as sperm meets egg I lose my sweet tooth.  I’ll just have to make chocolate mousse twice as often in 2012 to make up for it.
2. Take risks:  I thought that this would be the hardest, yet most important resolution for me to keep and I am quite rightly proud of myself for keeping it.  I took a huge leap and started pastry school.  I would have finished too if those running the damned school hadn’t fired and failed to pay our excellent chef-instructors.  Ah well, I got in enough classes to figure out that the life of a professional chef is not right for me.  I also spent many hours over the summer interning for a great start-up, mapping out local farmers markets, photographing markets and farms, interviewing farmers and food artisans, and writing blog posts.  The experience was great and I learned something totally new about myself – I loved taking photographs of the farms and market and beautiful food and animals – and I was quite good at it too.  And the biggest, most unexpected risk of all was adding a third child to our family. A risk that I could not be happier about the outcome.
3. Exercise at least three times a week:  I didn’t keep an exact tally (although I thought about it – I do love a good spreadsheet) I did a good job of fulfilling this resolution.   I kept running on the couch to 5K program until I was 17 weeks pregnant and until and kept going to Cardio Barre twice a week until I was 36 weeks pregnant. I’ve never been more than a few feet away from Anna yet but once we can convince her to take a bottle the first time I leave her, will be to go to Cardio Barre.
4. Go karaoke:  Fail.  I did not karaoke, but I did do some country line dancing at a friend’s wedding.  That was awesome and brought back some fond high school memories of driving to Lincoln (Nebraska) on Saturday nights to go country dancing.
5. Take a college class:  I tried! finding an available class – given all the budget cuts to education and limited classes at the local community colleges and Cal States made this impossible.  While I was accepted to enroll at a couple of local colleges, as a non-degree student, by the time I was allowed to register the classes were entirely full.  This means I am most likely going to have to decide on exactly what program I want to pursue and then just take the plunge!

For this year I thought about simply making the resolution to keep us all alive and reasonably clean and well-fed.  Today was my first day alone with all three kids for the entire day and as much as I love our family three kids is going to be tough, very tough.  It feels like someone is always crying (thankfully it’s not usually me), someone is always awake, and someone is always bored.  That said, Jeff is holding the baby so I can type the rest of this post with two hands (such a luxury!) so I should come up with a few good ones:

1. Soak up my baby:  Anna is almost certainly our last child and just want to soak up every minute of her babyhood.  She is a fussy little thing (I think that I actually call her “Fussypants” far more often than “Anna”) and I think it’s entirely possible that she has cried more in her six weeks that the boys did in all of their first year – combined.  But…knowing that Anna is my last baby makes all of her fussiness so much easier.  I often find myself thankful even for her middle of the night wakings.  I look at her nursing by the light of my ipod and I am just so happy she is here.  I am going to enjoy her babyhood.
2. Find my non-childbearing body:  I have been pregnant and/or nursing since February 2006 and while I expect to be nursing for at least another year – hopefully more – I am ready to find my new, healthy body.  I don’t expect or even want my pre-pregnancy body back, but I do want to be healthy, strong, and to look good.  I feel like I am off to a good start..the first 20 pounds of pregnancy weight are already gone.  Yea for nursing!
3. Learn to use my camera and research digital SLR cameras:  I’ve known since Thomas was a baby that I enjoy photographing and editing pictures of the kids and the garden but I learned this summer that I am actually a pretty good photographer.  I want to develop my skills and see where it takes me.  This resolution will be a challenge for me.  I am generally an old curmudgeon when it comes to technology
4. Spend one-on-one time with each child every day:  This will be easy with Anna (again, yea for nursing!), but perhaps sometimes challenging for each boy.  Even if it’s only five minutes reading a story while Jeff wrangles the other two kids, this is important for the happiness of the entire family.
5. Find a cause I am passionate about and engage politically:  It won’t be hard to find a cause…could be breastfeeding, informed childbirth, maternal/child health, protection of open space, public education reform.  But with three young children I need to find something that I can make a meaningful contribution to that doesn’t take me away from my kids too much (see resolutions #1 and #4).
6. Emphasize experiences over material goods:  I can’t remember exactly what I got each boy for their birthday or Christmas last year but I have fantastic memories of our trip to Disneyland, music classes with Theodore, camping in the Sequoia National Forest, the boys finger painting naked in the backyard.  With the help of some generous relatives we now have memberships to The Huntington, Kidspace, the Arboretum, and the Aquarium – we have no excuse (OK – maybe one named Anna) not to get out and experience life.

Do you have any resolutions for the year?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 at 6:04 am and is filed under Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.