Hopes and Wishes for 2019

January is always a time of New Year’s resolutions. It’s a time for making a plan for the New Year and for making goals.  If you are anything like me, you probably start the year off with many of these goals but how many of them are actually realistically achievable and among those, how many are you able to follow through to completion?  Instead of setting “goals” which feel like a lot of pressure and which leave me feeling terrible when I don’t end up completing them, I’ve decided that this year I will make a list of hopes and wishes instead.  The things on this list will still require hard work and a lot of love but if they don’t happen this year they can be carried over to the next. Here are three of my wishes that I hope inspire you to make your own.  Happy New Year.

Hopes and Wishes for 2019:

• My first wish for 2019 is to become a better mother. Not that I’m a terrible mom now… but there’s always room for improvement.  I’d like to get better at juggling chores and playing with my son.  I’d like to say that he watches less TV than he does now, and I’d like to yell less.  I admit; I am definitely a yeller.  My two year old loves to challenge what my husband and I say – we’re hoping it’s a phase but it makes life difficult at times.  I plan to try to be more conscious of my parenting choices and to try to take a deep breath and think more before I yell.  I know that this will be difficult but nothing worthwhile is. In addition to yelling less I also want to try to help my family be healthier.  Weight loss is probably THE most common New Year’s resolution and also probably the most commonly failed one.  While I would love to lose some weight, what I really want is for us to be healthier.  I want to try to depend less on processed food and “quick” dinner options.  My son has recently become a picky eater and I know that getting him to eat healthier will be difficult.  It will be hard for me too and my husband will no doubt be difficult to convince out of his giant nightly bowl of ice cream but I plan to make an effort.  I doubt that we will go completely processed food free and I am OK with that but any little bit we can change will be for the better.  Wish me luck!   Regardless of how well this wish pans out though, I know that nothing will be considered a “failure” because at the end of the day, no matter what I do, the mom I am will be enough.

• My second wish to become a better wife to my husband. It’s difficult to balance roles as wife and mother while still finding some time for myself but I think I’m slowing getting better at it.  I just finished reading the book “10 Things a Husband Needs from his Wife” with my book group and while some of the things in it were obvious, I did find a few of the things enlightening.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget that our spouses need us just as much as we need them.  It’s a partnership in every sense and marriage does not come easy – it takes work and you have to nurture it!  I’m not judging ANYONE here but I feel like in today’s society, marriage can sometimes be seen as disposable and easy to end if things start to go south.  Personally, I think divorce should be a last resort.  As moms we sometimes feel overlooked and taken advantage of but I think it’s important to remember that you spouse can feel that way too.  Believe me, I am sure that your spouse isn’t perfect (none of us are) but he used to be your number one and now that you have a child has likely been knocked back a peg into the number two slot.  This is natural and all parties have to adapt to the new situation.   However, many couples find that years later they when they become empty nesters, they don’t even know each other anymore.  I want to try to do everything I can to prevent that from happening.  Now that my son is two and half, I feel like he is finally a bit more self-sufficient and I can give my husband back some of the attention that he really deserves from me.  I want to get better at planning dates nights.  Thus far, it has been difficult because we do not have any family nearby and I have not felt comfortable leaving our son with a teenage babysitter.  Now that he sleeps through the night well and is a little older, I’m finally feeling okay with that and I hope that this year will bring my husband and I some much needed date night alone time to reconnect to each other.  I am looking forward to getting to know my spouse again.  In the meantime we have started to have “date nights at home.”  How do we do that?  We get take out from a local restaurant and bring it home to enjoy with a rented movie after our son goes to bed.  Not quite as good as going out for real but it can still be equally special and I have to say – it’s a lot less stressful than an actual date that you have to leave the house and arrange a sitter for!

• The third wish that I would like to share with you is a wish to make more time for me and for play dates which allow me to talk to my mom friends. Since my son was born, finding “me” time has been a struggle.  To be honest, at times, I’m not even sure that I wanted it! Now that my son is older, I’m starting to miss some of the activities and hobbies that I loved before he arrived.  Some of my hobbies (like photography and baking) I can do with my son and it’s fun to teach him about the things that I enjoy.  Other activities like crafting really need to be saved until after he is in bed (which is highly prized time since there is so little of it).  I have noticed that my son and I have much better days together when we go out and do an activity outside of our house.  He gets to socialize with other kids and I get some much needed adult conversation when we go to toddler playgroups and events.  In addition to the toddler activities that I take my son to I also bring him to a group called Mastering Motherhood once a week.  It’s held at a church and consists of a brunch, book group, and motivational speaker.  While the mamas are busy, the kids are taken care of by background checked childcare volunteers at no cost to the moms which is amazing.  It may sound terrible that I look forward to a two hour break from my son once a week, but it’s a wonderful recharge and my son absolutely loves doing crafts and playing with the volunteers and other kids.  It’s a win-win for us both and we both look forward to it.  Getting those two hours of “me” time helps me to be a better mom.  It’s important for me to get to recharge my batteries and de-stress a bit so that I can be in a better mindset to care for my son.  I highly encourage all of you to seek out a similar group that recharges your batteries and makes you happy.  I also want to try to incorporate more private play dates into our schedule this year.  With all of our added activities it’s often hard to find time or energy to spend with our many friends that we have made from each of our groups.  I often get asked to plan play dates but I have not been very good at following though.  This year I am going to try to strike a more healthy balance of private play dates, toddler activities, activities that charge my battery, and downtime days which are a necessity too to let us have a break. It’s a work in progress and I have no doubt that this delicate balance will require a lot of trial and error but we will have fun doing it.

Happy wishing and hope setting ladies!  You can do this.  This New Year will be YOUR year to shine <3  I can’t wait to see where it takes us.