New Year's Resolutions

I can't find it anywhere, but I'm sure I've posted the GKC essay on New Year's Resolutions somewhere before. He says that the object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year; it is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

This seems spot on to me, and I enjoy making and keeping (with various success) New Year's resolutions more with each passing year. Among others, here's what I have for 2015:

1) Iron my pants. 2015 is the year I will turn 30, which I suppose means that I am officially an adult. And adults probably need to get up early enough and somehow suffer through the extraordinary inconvenience of locating and plugging in the iron to iron their wrinkly shirts and pants. If I were feeling particularly ambitious I could just iron my clothes after they come out of the dryer, but maybe we'll save that one for 2016. Anyhow, if you see me with a wrinkled tie, shirt, or pants in 2015, please remind me that I am failing in my New Year's resolution. And then say something to make me feel properly ashamed.

2) Learn how the boy's car seats actually work. This one is from J. I asked her a few days ago whether she had any New Year's resolutions that she was thinking of for me, and she answered that "I think it's sort of dangerous to make suggestions like that for someone else." And I told her "Yes, but if you don't give me a New Year's resolutions the it would be rude of me to give you all the good ones I came up with for you." The car seat resolution is a good one. Whenever I have to put a car seat in or take it out of the car I inevitably bring a webby, buckly, half-knotted mess back to her to figure out for me. If she were ever gone when I needed to switch a seat or if something were to happen to her, the boys would be in trouble.

3) Get up a half hour earlier. The hour and a half to two hours that I have before the boys get up is the time when I get done all the things that I would usually resolve to do on New Year's--reading, exercising, balancing the checkbook, writing, translating. But 6:00 to 7:30 goes by too soon...I'm going to aim for 5:30 this year.

4) Learn how to cook two more meals decently well. Because if J were ever gone for a week or if something happened to her, the boys would probably want to eat something besides pancakes and Spanish rice.

5) Ask people more questions. The people with whom I have the best sorts of conversation and the most natural social grace are the sorts of people who are constantly asking me (and everyone else) genuinely interesting questions. And the people with whom conversation is a either a mild bore or an outright challenge tend to redirect any social traffic back towards statements about themselves.

In the spirit of Resolution 5, does anyone have any Resolutions of their own that they'd like to share?

New Year Items

Well, my New Year's Resolutions are mostly the same. I'm going to read more and practice smarter. I ought to handle our money more responsibly and to make an effort to see friends more often. The biggest difference is that I'll be doing yoga.

Yes, I have agreed to do yoga with J three times a week, starting tonight. Since we don't have time to exercise and see each other, we've decided to exercise while we see each other. (I know...there are major flaws in this plan.) But really, this makes a lot more sense that trying to start running. It's too cold to start running, and we wouldn't be able to both leave the house at the same time anyway. So, we'll exercise at the end of the day after she's chased James around for 12 hours and I've practiced for several hours and taught a bunch of lessons. It will be relaxing. (Is yoga relaxing?) At least for J, it will be entertaining. I have the flexibility of the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz (before the oil-can) so she'll have a lot to laugh about.

Here are some new things that James is doing, as of January 1, 2013:

-Loading cans of tomato paste and a box of shredded wheat into his new sled and pushing them around the downstairs. (Sometimes he puts in blocks and Steven Bear as well.)

-Stealing all of my pens. He holds them, waves them around, puts them in his mouth (I think he's copying me...he does this whenever I hold a pen in my teeth) and "scribbles" on books, paper, his parents, etc...

-Trying to put things in the toilet. Mostly pens, although today he toddled into the bathroom holding a clock radio. To my knowledge, he hasn't succeeded yet. Still, I'm trying not to put pens in my mouth anymore.

-Jumping up and down with excitement whenever anyone mentions "brushing teeth." If he's in the bathtub, he immediately clamors to get out for teeth-brushing time. If he's downstairs, he immediately runs to the staircase. Even things that sound like "brush-teeth" prompt him to swish his index finger in his mouth. (e.g. "Christmas Wreath")

-Walking around with one of my white socks around his neck like a scarf. I have no idea where this one comes from. I tried to trade him a brown sock last night, but only the white one will do.

-Pressing his nose up to the microwave whenever anyone turns it on. We don't let him do this, because we don't want him to start sprouting extra limbs from the radiation. He is VERY UPSET about this, and won't give up trying to get back to the microwave until whatever is being nuked has finished. We need to be extra cautious about this because he has taken to twisting the timer knob and adding an extra hour to "cook time." (J would counter that our microwave is so pathetically weak that this doesn't actually make any difference.)

-Answering "Yeah!" to any and every question. I'm not sure when you can officially say that babbling has turned into actually speaking a word (does this involve a notary?) but it's consistent enough that I think it counts.

-Living in abject terror of the vacuum cleaner. Last night I did our weekly monthly yearly(?) vacuuming of our bedroom and J held him in the doorway so that we could giggle at his frantic escape attempts lovingly teach him that the vacuum isn't actually so scary. Once we were finished we sang his bathtime song but left the vacuum cleaner sitting in the middle of his room. (Thereby ensuring that he'd have to walk by it to get to his beloved bath, and, of course, teeth-brushing). He stood about four feet away from it and just watched it for about three minutes, occasionally stealing glances at the door. Then he very carefully toddled sideways around it, back pressed up against the wall, eyeing the vacuum the entire time...until he passed it and pit-patted as fast he could into the bathroom.