A brand new year is upon us, and people are declaring their resolutions all over the place. In fact, one of my friends recently posted her Challenges (she doesn’t call them resolutions) on Facebook. The “challenges” went something like this:
- Read 65 books.
- Start swimming on Tuesday nights.
- Make one (or more!) recipe out of every cookbook we own.
- Organize one room in our house each month.
Oh, and she posted these as she checked into her gym—the same one she checks into every single day. Sometimes multiple times a day. And she’s “feeling determined.”
I almost peed my pants laughing when I read her post.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think this list is a lovely list, and she’s an awesome person. I even considered adopting one or two of those “challenges” from the list. But then I remembered something very important:
I. HAVE. KIDS.
Yes, I have kids, and kids have a way of making those “challenges” really quite, well, challenging.
I mean, let’s take a look at her challenges. 65 books? Really? Heck, I’d love to have time to read 65 books. Wait. Hold on a minute. I probably do read 65 books. Actually, I probably read a lot more than that. IT’S JUST THE SAME MIND-NUMBING BOOKS THAT MY SON WANTS ME TO READ TO HIM OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
Take up swimming? At a regularly scheduled time? Well, if you count falling into the bathtub while trying to catch my phone that fell out of my hands while I was going to the bathroom while my son was bathing (it’s called multi-tasking, folks), then I’ve already rocked that one too.
Make at least one recipe out of every cookbook? Do they have cookbooks for mac and cheese, peanut-butter toast, chicken nuggets, and pizza? Because if they do, I’ve already completed that challenge. Like five THOUSAND times over.
Organize one room in our house per month? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OMG, I can’t breathe that’s so funny. I’m cry-laughing, really. I’m lucky if I can clear the table for dinner. Or separate the recycling. So if organizing means shoving all of the crap into the closet before the guests arrive, then I’m totally there too.
Clearly, this friend of mine doesn’t have kids. Nor does she want kids, and I don’t begrudge her that. And, truly, I really do love her list of challenges. They make me a bit wistful for my kid-free life, but they’re not going to work for my kid-full life.
So that got me thinking: What kinds of challenges should I make for myself—as a MOM? And here are the four that I came up with:
- Take a shower everyday. Smelling fresh and having clean hair is supposed to be a good thing. Of course, that would mean waking up early enough to have time to do this before the kids (and dog) start making giant, ridiculous demands of me. So maybe take a shower every other day. I think I can handle that. Maybe…
- Dress nicer (i.e., don’t wear yoga pants every day). I bet my husband would love that one. But then I’d have to put on pants or skirts that aren’t stretchy and comfortable like my yoga pants. And, quite frankly, the holidays were pretty indulgent so those bottoms are going to be a lot less comfortable. And more muffin-top-y. So maybe I’ll wait until after the stomach flu comes around again to make that resolution. Or next year. Whichever comes first.
- Drink more water. Water is a vital resource and is so important to your overall physical health and well-being. Luckily, water is readily available in many forms. And Jesus turned water into wine. So, basically, I just need to drink more wine. DONE.
- Exercise 6 days per week. Yeah… Let’s be honest here; that ain’t gonna happen. So scratch that.
In fact, just forget about all of those resolutions (except the drink more wine one). How about: be happy with who I am and what I’m doing? Because I think I’m doing quite okay.
© 2015 Kathryn Leehane, as first published on Scary Mommy.
Photo Credit: langstrup / 123RF Stock Photo
