New Year's Resolutions

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I feel like there's really only one New Year's Resolution I need to work on. Growing a tiny human is exhausting enough! But with the start of the new year, I've definitely been thinking about things I want to focus on, things I want to do differently, things I want to do for self care, and all the things we need to do to prepare for Baby.

My "official" resolutions were posted on Facebook and pretty much fell into three categories: writing, reading, and Baby.

For writing, I want to focus each quarter of 2019 on a different goal: editing, researching agents, submitting for publication, and writing a new story. Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I should stop doing the things that make me "me"--the things that get me excited. After all, my novels and novel ideas were the "babies" I had before Baby.

For reading, I changed the notification settings on my phone apps so I don't get alerted the second someone contacts me on Facebook. While I'll still communicate with people over Facebook, there's a lot of anxiety that comes with the pressure to read and respond instantly. Plus, I figured this can free up time to read more novels again and start modeling that kind of good reading behavior so Baby doesn't see me glued to my phone all the time and instead becomes interested in books too.

For Baby, of course there is research all Baby's possible needs (from car seats and strollers to breastfeeding techniques and equipment to sleep schedules and pediatricians and preschools, oh my!). But ideally I'd also love to learn a little portrait photography so I can take some awesome photos of Baby after arrival. Not sure if I'll have time for all that in just about four months, but with New Year's Resolutions people usually aim high, right?

Speaking of resolutions, Hubby and I agreed to do a little "Spring Cleaning" resolution of our own this week to start preparing for Baby. We both took off from work to clean out our bedroom in preparation for Baby's first six months sleeping in the same room as us, clean out our garage to make storage space for items so we can have more room for babys things, and maybe even start to prepare the nursery. As with all the best laid plans, however, things never go exactly as anticipated. Hubby got sick with a cold and I exhausted myself after only two hours of working in the garage. So our week of cleaning may end up being more of a week of napping and mental preparation (we still do have to brainstorm baby names). The plan for now is to at least pack up some storage bins before the end of the week, possibly buy a new car, bigger (I hope!), and make a little progress with our baby registry as we prepare to find out if Baby is a boy or a girl next week!

To feel productive today, I did research and finally decided to get at one thing Baby will eventually need: a crib!

I fully RESOLVE to post photos when the crib is built and in place, and the entire nursery is completely decorated too!

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