While on vacation at the beach recently our kids repeatedly were saying “I’m so hungry I could eat my foot!” Not exactly sure where they picked it up, but it was funny. Then, after a morning in the sun and sand my littlest who is 4 exclaimed “I’m so thirsty I could drink my foot!” We all laughed and then he thought it was funny that we thought it was funny. Ah, precious moments with kids.
Since today marks the half way point of 2009, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back at my resolutions from my New Year’s 2009 – My Resolutions post and check in to see how I’m doing. While there is always room for improvement, overall I think I’m doing great.
Do more
I made this resolution because I have had problems being inert in the past and not really living life. I have done pretty good here and this blog is one example. I have had periods where it didn’t get updated as often as I wanted, but lately I’ve gotten back on track.
I want to keep the ball rolling with this blog and I also have ideas for two other sites. Also, last year I had started the site drivemoregreen.com which has languished without any attention. I’d like to revamp that and get it going again.
I resolve to continue doing more and keeping my momentum going for the rest of 2009.
Spend more time interacting with my kids
This one I have done pretty well. I’ve really tried to focus on enjoying being with the kids (which isn’t always easy!) and finding more time to spend with them. I have also spent more one-on-one time with my son. We started watching Deadliest Catch on Discovery. Yes, it is a little hypocritical for an ethical vegetarian to enjoy watching them pull so many crab out of the ocean, but it is exciting and has great talking points for conversations with my kids. I just had to shoo away my daughter so I could finish this post 🙁 but overall I’m still doing better.
I resolve to continue spending more time interacting with my kids.
Stay in shape and maintain my weight
This one I’ve done great at. My ideal weight is 175 and I don’t like going over 180. So far this year I’ve only been over 180 once and have stayed between those two numbers the rest of the time. I have been biking about two times a week, which is up from last year’s one time a week average.
I resolve to continue staying in shape and maintaining my weight.
Get stronger
I don’t have an official or proper program for this yet, but about a month ago I started doing pushups every day. I have seen an improvement in my arm muscles and I’m really happy about this. I plan on continuing with the push ups and will consider adding in more strenght training if I can figure something out.
I resolve to continue working on getting stronger.
Conclusion
This has been a good excercise to write down my resolutions and track them. I highly recommend it – and even though it isn’t New Year’s right now, you can make a resolution right now and start trying to live better. Do you have a follow up for your resolutions, or something you want to start doing better now? Be sure to post a comment and let me know.
This is a really simple tip for parents of young children. When kids are first in a high chair and starting to eat solid foods they make a huge mess and it is a big job to clean up after them. We started using paper towels and odd rags, but nothing worked real great. The tip is to go to your local linen store (I don’t remember which ones have gone out of business and which ones are still around!) and get about 20 basic white washcloths. They should come in big multipacks and are very cheap. We always had a big stack of washcloths available and they made cleanup so much easier! They are soft for the kid’s faces and hands and also very effective on tables and the floor. You also keep all those paper towels out of the landfill. Keep a bag of dirty washcloths near your laundry machine and when you get low just wash the whole bag of dirty ones. It saves paper towels and is much easier and cleaner. This one tip has saved us a ton of time over the years with three kids in high chairs. As the washcloths got completely frayed and worn out we periodically picked the worst ones and moved them to the garage for use as dirty rags and bought another multipack to replace them.
Now as our kids have gotten older and we don’t need them for mealtime, they have turned into general purpose rags and are still useful. Whether they are being use to clean up the cat throwup or if the boys missed the toilet, they are still so handy.