January Rewind

Can you believe it is February?! January just flew by. I should probably not mention that there is still a Christmas tree in my front room. It is in the box ready to move back to the garage but still. Just sitting there. Judging me. Sigh.

My daughters G and S attended their first school dances last week. I had to go into the school to pick up G and was able to sneak a little peek. If you haven't seen third through fifth graders dancing their butts off, you are really missing something. I happened to catch the DJ/technology teacher play "Whip My Hair" and trust me, there was a LOT of hair whipping going on. G complained later that her neck hurt from, as she called it, over-whipping.  My baby, E, had tubes put in her ears last week- our first family surgery. I realize on the scale of medical problems, tubes come in pretty low but it is still so hard to leave your baby in an OR. She's doing great and I'll be really interested to see how much better her hearing is at her checkup.

You may recall my January resolution was to be be more selfish. I bought myself Starbucks every week, picked places to eat, had a kid-free dinner with the hubs and (finally) started planning a little sister vacation. Okay, I'm still only using Starbucks gift cards instead of my real money, but it is improvement. : ) Guess what happened? The world kept turning!  My family didn't notice or care most times, and other times really enjoyed the things I wanted to do. (Hello, Ted's Montana Grill.) No one suffered any dire consequences and it brought me a much needed self-esteem boost. I feel a lot more confident in saying no to things without feeling bad that I can't do every single thing. I also learned that when I recognize my limitations and say no, the things I say yes to are a lot more meaningful. I can really enjoy talking with and really listening to my kids when I am not distracted with all the things I "should" be working on.  I'd call that a success.