7 Goals for 2014

I'm not a big resolution person but here are some of my goals for this year. I share these with you lovely readers so that you can help keep me accountable! We've moved into our lovely new house and soon we will have our second little boy here with us. With all the change and transition, it just feels like a good time to start building up some new, better habits. Without further ado, here are some of my goals for 2014:

• Keep the house clean enough. I'm not shooting for Martha Stewart, picture-perfect every day here. I just want to keep the cleaning manageable and not feel like I need to apologize if someone stops by unexpectedly. I'll be posting a cleaning schedule later. I wrote it out today and will start enforcing it tonight!
• No more medical debt. With all of Alex's health issues from last year and having two babies in two years, we've got more doctor's bills than I would like. We've been paying them off as we can, but I hope to have them all paid off by the end of the year! (Alex's pediatrician was paid off this month!)
• Try new recipes. I'm in a rut. I cook the same 7-10 meals over and over again. Once new baby is here and we get a decent rhythm down, I want to try one new recipe each week. Each recipe will be a whole foods recipe and will hopefully help expand my culinary skills (I'm getting better!) as well as increase our dietary variety.
• Make fitness a priority. This will be hard with two littles and a full time job, but it's very important to me! Yes, I'd like to lose some weight (maybe a lot of weight), but I really want to focus on helping my body to function better.
• Decorate the house. I am not a big decorator. Home decor is one thing that just kinda didn't get downloaded into my programming. However, I want to decorate our little house and have it looking good. I'm giving myself a year here and it's gonna take me some time.
• Build up a garden. I'm so excited to have a yard! Not only will the boys have a place to run and play, which Alex already enjoys, but we can have a garden! I want to grow many of our own fruits and veggies and herbs. Be watching for details as our plan unfolds!
• Make our lifestyle more sustainable. While our lifestyle is already pretty "green" in some respects, I'd really like to make even more improvements. One area I really want to focus on this year is eliminating one-time-use products and extra plastics. I don't think this will be a difficult goal, but it will take some time to build up a stash of reusable items to replace our commonly used disposable stuffs.

Alrighty, that's quite a bit! Check in with me and keep me honest! I'll be posting about each of these goals through out the year and hopefully we can inspire and motivate one another along the way!

What goals do you have for this year?

A Promise to Young Girls from a Mom of Boys

As a mom to a little boy, soon to be little boys, some people may wonder why I think it's important to include positive female images in my sons' lives. Why would the mom of a darling little boy who already has calloused knees and a desire to drum on everything care that her sons read about Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, or Wonder Woman?

Ms. Jane Goodall- A woman who followed her heart and changed how the
world viewed primates and what made humans human.

Self-esteem issues among young girls is a two sided coin. We can tell them until we are blue in the face that it's more important to be smart and strong and opinionated but at some point or another, they won't care about be the smartest or the strongest. At some point, most little girls want to get attention from the little boy that they like.

The smart girl, the one who can beat you as Chess and discuss the laws of Physics, she doesn't get asked to the Prom very often. The opinionated girl who will disagree with your interpretation of Poe's later works and carry her own books because she doesn't trust you to not drop them, she probably doesn't have a date on Friday night.

It's not that these girls are any less valuable. It's that we have a raised generations of boys who won't realize until much later in life that these are the qualities they should seek. We let media and peers teach our boys what makes a woman attractive and we create a feedback loop that undoes all the work we do on little girl self-esteem in primary school.

And so, as the mom to a little blonde haired, blue eyed boy, I am going to be intentional about changing this cycle on our end. I want my son to take a young lady to Prom who cares more about what's in her head than on her body. I want my future daughter-in-law to be smart, and strong, and to argue the sonnets with my son over dinner.

I will be intentional to surround my son with great stories of awesome women. Women who changed the way we view the scientific world. Women who did things they were told no woman could do. Women who followed their passions and changed everything. I will surround him with the stories of these women so that one day he will look at that special young lady and fall in love with all of her, not just her outer shell.