My Word For 2025: Priorities

I already feel like a hypocrite writing this and I haven’t even started yet, but I figure the fact that I’ve already been failing at this and it’s not even two weeks into the new year makes this post all the more real. It also just points to how important this New Years resolution is.

       I’m not really a huge New Years resolution person. The last few years I don’t think I had resolutions at all. Not because I thought I was perfect and didn’t need to better myself in any way, because that’s definitely not true. I just didn’t really have the energy or motivation to set a goal to better myself, I guess. I was still in the thick of survival mode with two very small children. This year I saw someone post on Facebook about having a New Years goal setting session with their husband, and I thought that sounded like a great idea.

      If you know me, you know I’m very much an all in kind of person. “Go big or go home” is an understatement for me, it’s more like “go unrealistically ginormous or die trying.”  So, after we got the kids to bed and Jakob and I sat down, I presented him with my 21 resolutions. Pause for you to imagine Jakob’s face The list was as follows: (I excluded some more personal and financial items)

Couple:

• Hour of quality time (no phones) every night

Family:

• Activity once a week (park, zoo, children’s museum, hike etc)

• Breakfast and dinner at the dining room table every day as a family

Extended family:

• Go on a walk with my dad once a week

Me and the kids

• Outside once a day even just for a short walk

• Quality time in the morning after basic chores

• One on one activity with Stella before workout during Elliot’s nap

Fitness

• 10000 steps a day

• Workout 6-7 day a week

• Start doing cardio every other day

Personal

• Bible in a year every night

• Get off Facebook and read more

• Meal prepping

• Make to do lists at nap time

• Stop eating when not hungry

All great things, but definitely a lot to add at one time. As I was going though this list with Jakob I realized something.  A lot of these things have to do with my order of priorities.

      I’ve always been a very type-A, don’t stop until the work is done, keep things neat and tidy type. In a lot of ways, that’s served me well in life. The problem with it is, it’s hard for me to not prioritize my to do list over other things that should be more important. Everything gets pushed aside. Quality time with my kids, quality time with my husband, self care, working out, reading my Bible, even eating. I literally skip meals because I’d rather complete my to do list. The irony of this is that somehow the to do list still never seems to get completed….

       One of my New Years resolutions was to make to do lists to do during nap time. On one hand, that’s been really helpful and has resulted in a lot of things getting done that have been put off for months. The bad thing is, it’s made me even worse about “just let me finish these things I ‘need’ to do first…” I haven’t completely usurped my new pyramid of priorities. I have been good about doing an activity with Stella once I get Elliot down for a nap! One of her favorite things to do is use the snow man building kit she got for Christmas to make a snowman. Then we have to take a photo of it every time. We have a lot of pictures of snowmen… the cover photo snowman inspired the conversation:

Me: he’s a flat snowman!

Stella: Yeah. He’s kinda like a frog.

Which I don’t know that I’ll ever forget.

        Stella hasn’t really gotten any one on one time since Elliot was born. I know they say you’re supposed to devote 20 minutes a day or one day a week to one on one time with each sibling, but on the rare occasion I have done something with Stella without Elliot she usually is just upset because she misses him and jealous that he gets to hang out with whoever is babysitting him. With that said though, I do think a lot of her misbehavior comes from lack of attention

       Generally, Stella’s pretty easy going. She plays by herself with her baby’s, she plays nicely with Elliot, she plays happily with the other kids at play dates while I hang out with adults… until she doesn’t. She’ll get this wild streak that comes out and she’ll refuse to listen and does everything in her power to be as disruptive and obnoxious as possible. Usually to the deficit of poor Elliot.  My gut reaction is to yell and punish her when she does that. I try to stay patient and ask her nicely to stop and redirect her attention but even when it gets to the point that I’m yelling at her or making her sit one stairs because I need a break, she still continues to act out until I explode and she starts crying and then I have to comfort her because she’s crying. I know what she’s doing, she’s acting out to get attention. It always happens at the most inopportune times. When I’m in the middle a conversation with a friend. When I’m in the middle of doing the dishes. But that’s the thing, it’s inconvenient for me but to her I’ve been busy for at least an hour at that point and she needs a little attention now. What I need to start working on with her is just saying, “hey mom I need some attention right now” and then I need to finish what I’m doing and actually take the 10-20 minutes to foster our connection. When I don’t give her that one on one time during nap time, she spends the entire nap time all over me. When I take that first bit of time to spend with her, she goes and plays for the rest of the time while I get things done.

       This one on one time with Stella has also has given us a chance to start dabbling in some home schooling activities. The Lovevery toy subscription we do has sent an alphabet puzzle, a color lab for learning about primary and secondary colors, a board for looking at days of the week and weather, and some numbers activities we’ve started working on when she’s interested. I don’t plan to do any “lessons” until she’s 5 or 6 but introducing her to concepts through these toys is a great foundation.

         The other resolutions are hit or miss. I have been reading more and scrolling Facebook less, but I have not been doing my Bible in a year. By the time I lay down at night (when I used to do it) I’m too burnt out and tired and don’t have the brain capacity or motivation to do it so I need to start doing while I’m getting Elliot down for a nap. I fell out of my working out routine, but I did get caught up on most of my to do list from last year. Now that I’m caught up I need to get back doing my workout as soon as Elliot’s down for a nap (well right after Stella’s one on one time) so that it doesn’t get pushed off and forgotten after a long list of chores. We haven’t gotten outside every day, but we have been outside more than we had been last year at this time. Again, it’s just something I haven’t been prioritizing like I should. No breakfast at the dining room table, but we have been doing dinners there. Jakob and I have had more quality time in the evenings, but haven’t made sure to get at least an hour without phones. Everything is definitely moving in the right direction, but all of these changes haven’t happened over night like I thought they would in my head. The best laid plans…

       I’m with my kids all day everyday, so the quantity of time they get is more than enough. With that said though, I know they deserve more quality time. I’m sure they get more than I give myself credit for. We often sit down and talk while we eat breakfast and lunch together. I can’t count how many books I’ve read them over the last few years while they’ve gone potty. We fold laundry together, we turn cleaning up toys into a game, I get them dressed and brush their teeth every day during which we talk and laugh. It may sound like I’m trying to convince you, but I promise I’m just trying to convince myself. I just want to make sure when my kids grow up they don’t look back and say, “mom was often too busy cleaning and organizing the house to spend time with us.” And I don’t want to look back and feel like I didn’t spend enough time with the kids. It’s hard for me to focus in the moment on long term, but it’s true that I won’t remember a clean house in 20 years I’ll remember the times I spent with the kids. I’m not saying let the house go to hell, but I do want to work on spending time with the kids first and taking care of the house second. I’ve also got to get better about cutting it off at the end of the day to prioritize time with Jakob. Instead of looking around and thinking, “I need to finish all this then I can relax” I just need to a accept “good enough” and spend time with my husband. Some nights there’ll be a lot of unfinished things I’ll have to catch up on the next day, some nights everything will be done but I need to stop letting time with my husband hinge on that. And yes, if you were wondering another resolution is to be better about writing and posting a blog post every week, but if I’d added anything more to the list Jakob would have had an aneurism.

        Are you like me and struggle to let the house go and choose fun instead? Are the opposite and can’t stop having fun to take care of the house? Let me know your thoughts and if you want to hear more of my thoughts scroll to the bottom of the home page and subscribe!