The Happiness Project

I've decided to do a happiness project this year. My goal isn't quite to find constant, continual, height-of-elation happiness; it's to identify what (things, values, people, experiences) enriches my life, and to consciously bring those things into my life. Each month I will focus on one area that I've identified for myself and create several goals/resolutions to do on a daily basis. I got the idea from Gretchen Rubin's books (The Happiness Project and Happier at Home and blog). Even the process of thinking about what makes me truly happy and articulating those values and some resolutions around them has been beneficial, without even doing the tasks!

For January, my goal is to get myself together. Rather than being reactive and waiting to see what happens in my daily life, I want to cultivate more intentionality. I want to bring more energy into my life so that I'm able to be more present - and playful - with my kids (and my husband, too!). I want to carve out some time and space to get back to being me, the adventurous woman who's always out exploring, who's engaging in conversation with friends and strangers, who's ready for anything life might bring (this contrasts with how I see and feel myself now - the exhausted housewife who's just trying to keep everybody afloat and who does nothing for herself).

With that in mind, my day-to-day resolutions for this month are:

• Get enough sleep. This has two parts: 1) no screens after 9pm (new research shows that the blue light of tablets, smartphones, etc. is particularly disruptive to sleep habits and should be avoided in the evening hours), and 2) be in bed with lights out by 10pm.
• Write a to-do list every evening for the next day. I find that if I don't write a list, I let tasks linger and I squander a day looking things up on the internet and picking my toes; if I write a to-do list, and give myself clear goals, I get so much done and I feel better. 
• Practice yoga or do some sort of heart-pounding exercise every day. I do tons of walking with James and the boys, but I miss stretching and using my body in different ways, and I miss the exhilaration of an intense workout. I also miss everything about yoga - the stretching, strengthening, calming-ness of it.
• Meditate for 5 minutes every day. I have avoided a regular meditation practice for nearly 15 years, but I've always felt that it's the one single thing I could do to most improve my life. Also, there's new research out showing that a regular meditation practice can rebuild grey matter in your brain. After nearly three years now of having pregnancy and mommy brain, I could use a little brain boost! I could also use some conscious quiet time.
• Look nice (or at least try). I tend to wear t-shirts and yoga pants 90% of the time. Okay, 95%. When I leave the house, I just put on what's convenient and I never wear makeup. But I know that I feel better when I look nice, and that looking nice can be as easy as a little mascara or lipstick. It's also true that my wardrobe is so boring, and I don't enjoy getting dressed. The thing is, I loathe shopping! My taste and my budget are totally at odds, so I avoid facing that depressing situation by never shopping. I'd like to spend time this month (and year) building a nice wardrobe with quality pieces so that I can feel good getting dressed. 

I have two weekly resolutions, too:

• Have a Jodi date. Go to a cafe or a museum and spend some time doing what I like to do - thinking, writing, enjoying art or a good latte. Reconnect with myself in the world. (There are logistical difficulties with this one, being that I'm always toting around an infant, but I'm determined to figure this out).
• Write a weekly meal plan. James and I are much happier and calmer when we have a meal plan posted on the fridge - we know what to shop for, we know what to make for dinner each night, and we try new recipes. We can avoid the late-afternoon hassle of trying to scrounge something up while corralling the boys and dealing with meltdowns.

I started this on January 1, and I've been so surprised at the immediate payoff of going to sleep earlier. I already have so much more energy, and I can feel that I'm a better mom and wife because of it. It's also nice to have an hour at the end of the day when I'm not on the computer, when I can take care of odds and ends or read for a bit. It does mean that I won't get to blog as much, and it'll take me even longer to respond to emails, but it's sooo worth it.

Want to start a happiness project with me? Let me know and we can do this together! You can start anytime.

(I'll try to get some photos of the kids today! I do realize you come here to see them, not to hear about me.)

Breathing room for Mama

Today was quite a day around these parts. It began at the ridiculous hour of 5:45, when Augie awoke and popped out of the bed (leaving me behind, lying in a puddle of my own drool). His nap was almost nonexistent, because a school bus dropped off a brood of screaming, screeching, hide-and-seek playing children thirty minutes after he'd gone to sleep, and I couldn't get him back down after that. He walked around the house crying and being mad at me for about half an hour before he calmed down and gobbled down two eggs in about two minutes.

The good news today, though, was twofold: 1) I enrolled in teacher training for Music Together (the first step to opening a licensed center), and 2) I enrolled in a local gym. A gym that offers free childcare. I don't particularly like working out in gyms, but I do like getting some heart-pounding exercise, and that's simply not happening as a full-time mom. This is one of the only ways I can think of to get some personal time and get into some sort of shape (other than baby-in-the-belly shape) without leaving Augie tied to a tree somewhere.

James took Augie for a few hours to day so I could do these things (and some grocery shopping), and it was wonderful. It was the first real alone time I've had in about a month, and it reminded me how important it is that I get this time alone. After a sometimes-tearful morning, I was calmed, soothed, and excited about life again after sipping a latte and going for a walk. And it made me so excited to see Augie again after a short break.

Now, some pictures from the last few weeks.

Augie and Gwenn at the playground in Sheboygan:

The boy loves his eggs.

And Baba loves his chickens:

Walking around the Princeton campus. It looks like he's doing his sign for water here:

Mama time

James decided that we should both take Augie to preschool today. We awoke to blue skies, James was in a frisky mood, and he wanted to see what would happen if we took him together to school, told him we loved him, and saw him on his way. I was dubious about this being a good idea. In fact, my words to James were, "that's a horrible, horrible idea."

You know what happened? Two out of three of us with tears streaming down our faces, one of us screaming. An experiment not to be repeated.

They say that Augie is sort of off-and-on all day; he'll be fine for a while, then upset; he clings to his blanket the whole day. But yesterday when I picked him up he only whine-cried a little bit, then was up and about happily exploring while I talked to one of the teachers. We're working on devising a schedule that will help him adjust better.

On a lighter note, after we dropped Augie off James and I parted ways, and I walked around Norra Djurgården - a national park that stretches from downtown up to the university, where we're staying. There's major development going on in a section of the park, closer to town, with hundreds, maybe thousands, of housing units being built. We're considering buying there, though at present all the good units are taken (or are too expensive for us). It seems like a perfect mix of city and nature (as it sits in a national park, most of the area around it will never be built up), so we're scouring the available units (it seems like each building is represented by a different realtor, so it's tedious getting all the information together). If it works out, it would be about a 15-minute walk to work for James, a 10-15 minute subway/bus ride into the heart of Stockholm, and minutes away from expansive parkland and the sea. Too good to be true, huh?

I found a cafe - Selma Deli - in one of the new buildings and stopped in for a rest (have I mentioned how exhausted I get these days, with little Queequeg growing inside me?). I think it was the first time I've had quiet cafe time since before Augie was born, and I felt a little space inside open up, like I was getting a little taste of the Jodi who used to prowl the open road and listen for the soft whisper of inspiration. It's amazing how healing and restorative these snippets of self time can be.