A belated, but necessary, post

I'm such a slacker. The beginning of March has flown by, mostly because we spent the last week traveling around Southern California visiting family, eating food that we can only eat while on vacation, and holding babies. (More on that later.)

But, I've also found it difficult to motivate myself to sit down and write because, while I typically write about Lola's latest adventures, lately I find myself wanting to write more about myself and then I feel this weird maternal guilt because the blog is really for her yet I'm too lazy to start another blog for myself, resulting in me just not writing anything at all. (This run-on sentence fully demonstrates the back-and-forth arguments that go on in my head.)

The overall theme of my New Year Resolutions for 2011 was to focus more on myself, and less on Lola. She is only two years old, and yet I already see myself going down that typical fateful mothering path of putting needs of everyone else at the top of my To Do list while I wait patiently in the back looking for more time and energy to (magically) appear so that I can then do something for myself. (These feelings have been solidified by the newest season of The Biggest Loser. Not that I am obese, but I can see how easily people get to that place.)

My New Year Resolutions:

1. Live a healthier life.
I want to be stronger, physically and mentally. Oftentimes, I over analyze situations and then stress out to the point of where things become ridiculous. I need to fix that. I want to become more grateful for the things and people I have in my life and less envious of the things I do not have. I want to be able to go for a 30 minute run and not feel like I am going to have an asthma attack, and I want to eat less sugar. (I am a total sugar junkie.)

2. Utilize my creativity.My profession is pretty cut and dry. I spend most of my days reading forms and statutes and regulations, and then crunch a bunch of numbers. As much as I would like to think that I use creativity while working on my cases, I really don't. Not at all. Instead, I daydream about assembling my personal cookbook, sewing new curtains, and building a corner library for the bean. This year, I want to finish my digital photo book projects (uh, wedding photos) and pull out the pattern for the purse that I bought the fabric for, oh so long ago, and actually make the purse, and work on my Amanda Bean drafts.

3. Read non-parenting books.
This is a big one. When I found out I was pregnant in June 2008, I, being the researcher that I am, began reading every pregnancy/child development/breastfeeding book that I came into contact with. Since then, I haven't really stopped, and I haven't read any other genre either. I've certainly tried, but I ever book that I picked up, I ended up putting down, unfinished. At one point, I was so frustrated that I stopped attempting to read books all together and turned to magazines. It was then that I also realized there were no magazines out there that I enjoyed. It's clear that my taste and attention span has changed. That's when I decided that I needed to make book-reading one of my resolutions. I have set a few ground rules (subsections to my resolution, if I so may):
a) The book can't involve any sort of rape or sexual assault of women or children.
b) No incest.
c) No dying dogs.
d) Josh is in charge of picking out all of my books. (So far, this has been very interesting, but I will save the details for another post.)

So far, and for the first time in a very long time, I'm doing very well on my resolutions. I'm happy that I set some this year, and if you don't mind, I will be writing some more about them here.