First, a quick review. Every year since 2004, Jill and I have declared a possibility for the year. That sets the context, we hope, for plans and resolutions during the year. Last year, we declared 2007 the year of vitality, discovery, and fun.

I think we did an ok job this year, especially since until the end of December, I couldn’t have told you what the possibility was for 2007. In our peak year of success with this game, we actually had the possibility posted above the kitchen sink. I might try that again for 2008.)

Continuing with the review:

In terms of vitality, no one on earth has more energy than a healthy toddler. I’m feeling great and have lost approximately a pants size (but no weight) since I’ve been swimming, plus Jill’s thyroid condition is well under control and she’s started running again. All of us get full marks for increased vitality.

Discovery is probably an area where Jill has done better than I have — the whole car thing, getting an A in her Automotive Fundamentals class, etc. But I got a gift certificate for a cooking class for Christmas, and one for a “build yourself a bookshelf” class for my birthday, so there have been some discovery seeds planted in my life this year. And I think I’ll take credit for trying Curves and ultimately for rediscovering my love for swimming. And again, who can beat a toddler for discovery? (OK, a 4 month old, but who else???)

Fun? I think I have to give myself weak marks in this area. Yes, toddlers are fun, but I haven’t done much that’s been purely fun for me. There’s still room to grow here. Noah has begun telling us when he’s having fun, which is delightful. I’m not so sure with Jill — was the car class fun? It didn’t look like fun, it looked like a lot of work. But I could be wrong.

I think we did better with these possibilities when they were sort of funny and easier to remember. 2004, for example, was “unprecedented results!” and 2005 was “all about the boolings!” (Boolings is our silly family word for young children.)

What about 2008?

The first thing that popped into my mind was creativity – encompassing both the attempting to create another member of our family, writing, crafts, cooking, doing projects with Noah, coming up with creative ways to spend time together both as a couple and as a family.

I’m also thinking about mindfulness. Not exactly “planning” or “determination” or “getting organized” but really thinking about how we’re spending our time, whether what we’re doing is moving us towards our happiness or our goals, and what impact we have on one another and those people whose lives touch ours.

We could do a little better on nurturing ourselves, and also on nurturing each other. We’re pretty good with nurturing Noah, but he also demands it a lot more.

I toyed with a lot of different thoughts about this, beginning before I started writing this post, and continuing in the days since I began. Jill and I had one of those Big Talks about what’s working and what’s not working as well as we’d like it to, in all kinds of areas of our lives, and what we want to make a difference in next year.

Together, it came to us.

2008: Unprecedented Results Mach II

I’m also intrigued by BlogHer’s Lisa Stone’s approach to New Year’s Resolutions:

Heart - I’m committed to creating at least one date night with my wife, per month between now and September, and at least 2 more by the end of 2008.
Family - Continuing to help Noah grow and thrive, and add a new member of our family who is healthy.
Spirit - Electing a Democratic President, right now, I’m leaning towards Obama — and continuing with my Sunday School teaching.
Write - A minimum of 2 magazine articles, plus continuing with my blogs. Developing a plan to re-energize LesbianFamily.org.
Wallet - Get paid for my writing. I’m going to set the modest-but-stretch goal of 2008=4×2007, including BlogHer ads.
Health - Have a healthy pregnancy, gaining less weight than last time, and give birth to a healthy baby.
Create - Use my bran-new sewing machine for some kind of creative fun project. (Curtains? Slipcovers for the glider rocker? Maternity clothes?)
Work - Post-reorg, I’ve gotten some new responsibilities. I’d like to make the most of them, and have that recognized in a promotion.

UPDATED WITH BABY PICTURES (scroll to end)
I had such a fabulous weekend that figuring out where to start talking about it is almost impossible. With that, I’d better just go in chronological order.

On Saturday morning, I flew up to New York and arrived in time to have lunch with Aunt Anna and Uncle Jason before they went to the hospital for Anna’s labor to be induced! We had wonderful NY pizza and then parted ways with a promise that they’d call me as soon as there was any news.

From there, I made my way to Central Park where I met Shelli and Lizzy, and of course, Malka and Henry (and Lizzy’s husband The Mistah).

Shelli and Lizzy are even nicer and more charming in real life than in the blogosphere, and there was a near toxic level of cute going on between Malka and Henry. Especially after Henry burned off some of his “I’ve been in the car too long” energy by running laps around our park area, flirted with da ladies, and tried to chat up a group of middle aged men. Malka took on her fear of grass like a champ, and gave me hope that the clingy stage might end.

Next, I hauled off to meet Brandi, Alister, and Heather (and their charming daughter Lily) for fabulous Indian food. Lily fell asleep at the table while the grown-ups ate and laughed ourselves silly. When Alister and Heather headed home to New Jersey, Brandi and I had a drink and then crashed in anticipation of our class Sunday morning.

(Oh yeah, and in my delayed realization that I had to cross Central Park to meet them for dinner, I managed to hike “all over” the park and come out 3 blocks south of the exact spot where I started. Doh!)

Sunday morning started out colorfully — at least 3 of the Puerto Rican Day Parade marching bands stayed in our hotel, and busily warmed up while we tried to get the bell hop to store Brandi’s bag.

Then there was The Class.

Catherine Orenstein’s class, Opinion Writing (How to Write to Change the World), was fun, intellectually stimulating, and inspiring. There were about 25 of us, ranging in age from 20 to 60s (?), including students, health care professionals, lawyers, academics, business women, clergy, writers and activists, including Cooper and Emily!

I was especially excited to meet them since Cooper and I had a great email exchange last week, about the initiative they just launched with BlogHer — to organize around a single global issue and make a substantial difference, and to identify the top 4 issues of concern to women bloggers in the 2008 presidential election. They are getting fabulous participation!
The three things I most enjoyed about the class itself were:

1. Exercises to identify our areas of expertise, and find ways to articulate them in a short, persuasive way.
2. Clear decriptions of the core elements of an op-ed piece and how to pitch it “cold.”
3. The other women in the class. Amusingly, one is working on an initiative with my old boss!

I have a few op-ed ideas percolating already — and I would encourage any of you who can to take this class the next time Woodhull offers it. Don’t use the excuse that you live too far away — we had a participant who flew in from Sydney, Australia!

Last but certainly not least, I left during the lunch break and flew up to the hospital to meet my new nephew Max when he was a couple of hours old.

Max is adorable and perfect, and it was wonderful to get to meet and hold such a new little person. I’m glad I was able to help welcome him into the world.

Don’t you hate it when writers say “First, XYZ” and then never get around to making a second point?

Me too.

The second point that I meant to make, before getting on a long and navel-gazingly interesting discussion about social class, is that my high school was an International Baccalaureate school.

At the time, not only were there not very many in the US, but there were really few IB programs in central city public schools. There are more now, but I think it’s still a program mostly geared towards elite international schools.

For freshmen there were “regular” and “honors” classes. But as you began selecting sophmore classes, the selection involved also deciding whether or not you were “pre-IB.” Then as a junior and senior, you could be “full-IB,” take some IB classes, or take regular and maybe also some honors classes. I don’t actually remember whether or not there were honors classes for juniors and seniors that weren’t IB.

To my 14 year old geek self, there were 2 primary benefits of being full-IB, meaning that you took at least 3 IB classes per semester. First, you didn’t have to take gym physical education, and second, you didn’t have to take the notoriously uninspiring class “College Skills 2.” No boredom AND no gym PE??? Sign me up!

As it turned out, there were other benefits too. We had great intellectually engaging classes, and terrific teachers.

I was well prepared for college. In fact, I think it was law school before I had another set of exams that were as long as the IB exams. But if you learn to take 3 or 4 hour exams at 17, they aren’t as intimidating.

Personally, I wienied out on the IB diploma. I was intimidated by the math, and also the idea of having to write a 4000 word paper. But I still took a bunch of rigorous, creative, surprisingly fun classes.

LONG DIGRESSION:

I figured out a couple of years ago where my fear of math came from. Would that I could go back and explain to my 8 year old self what was actually happening.

I was an unbelievably dorky 8 year old. We’re talking thick glasses, poorly washed hair in a gender-ambiguous cut, nose picking, if not reading then acting out scenes from books, afraid of the ball, thought a Fiddler on the Roof birthday party was a great idea, in other words, a top quality outcast.

To make matters worse, I was in 5th grade at the time, not 3rd or 4th. My classmates were on the verge of puberty. They were picking new crushes and I was picking my nose. And they were also picking on me. I was pretty cotton-picking miserable.

That’s the context in 1978 in which I was pulled out of class to do “math programs” on something called a computer.

The math programs were basic arithmatic and incredibly boring. Plus the UI had the numbers going across the screen and I could only do math vertically. And the teacher watched over the shoulders of the 2 or 3 of us being subjected to this torture.

I drew the obvious conclusion — I was being punished for being so horrible at math.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and telling someone this story that I Got It.

No one was putting the kid who sucked at math in front of a computer in 1978.

I was good at math, and unlucky in that the programmers and teachers picked a math program that wasn’t a good fit for me.

Sadly, I can’t go slap my 16 year old self upside the head and make her stay in Advanced Math II or enroll in IB Pre-Calc.

I have been thinking recently about goals and dreams and plans and missions and all of that, in various contexts, Then I stumbled upon this meme on a personal finance website: List 101 things you want to do in the next 1001 days.

Here’s the idea: Everyone needs goals. Our lives are more successful, more satisfying, we are more engaged in them, etc, when we have goals towards which we are actually working.

Most of us think of a bunch around New Years and drift away from them by mid-February. Some of us take another, narrower stab at them for Lent. (I think my money mindfulness is getting easier, by the way!)

But many goals take longer than just a few months, some even longer than a year or two. But you can make significant progress on any goal within 2 years and almost 9 months.

For example, 1001 days from today is Wednesday, December 23, 2009.

I thought when I first read this that it would be great to play this game, and I started writing goals. I thought I was doing great getting to 101, and that most of mine were at least semi-reasonable in the 1001 day timeframe. But I was organizing them in clusters, so I wasn’t sure exactly how many I had.

I popped over to SuperViva to enter them in my “Life List” and discovered that, in fact, I’d only managed to come up with 43. Hmmm. More than doubling that and staying within the 1001 day time frame was just not realistic.

Then I noticed an interesting link, Ted Leonsis 101 Goals. Now, it happens that Susie of SuperViva and I both formerly worked for Ted Leonsis, but somehow I had previously missed the fact that he has a famous list of 101 life goals (77 of which it looks like he has achieved), which he wrote at 25.

101 life goals looks a lot more exciting to me than padding my next 1001 days list with hollow goals like cleaning the bathroom or the garage. Not that these are not worthy tasks that I need to work on — I’m just not sure I want to call them goals. (The garage, maybe. But not the bathroom.)

Anyway, I’m now working on that list and I’ll share it when I get it into good shape. And I’ll designate some portion of the list to tackle in the first 1001 and 101 days.

If you want to play too, check out SuperViva for ideas and community and structure, and also Triplux, which lists people who are doing 101 in 1001 and provides this guidance:

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Some common goal setting tips:
1. Be decisive. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it.

2. Stay Focussed. Any goal requires sustained focus from beginning to end. Constantly evaluate your progress.

3. Welcome Failure. Frequently, very little is learned from a venture that did not experience failure in some form. Failure presents the opportunity to learn and makes the success more worthy.

4. Write down your goals. It clarifies your thinking and reinforces your commitment.

5. Keep your goals in sight. Review them frequently, and ensure that they are always at the forefront of your thinking.

JD, on whose blog I found this idea, also recommends:

I encourage you to make a list of your own dreams. What would you like to accomplish in the next few years? Even if you don’t list 101 things, you could surely list a dozen. Make that list. Print it out. Post it someplace prominent so that you’re reminded of your goals daily.

What, you might ask, has this got to do with cloth diapering?

Before Noah was born, I planned to use a mix of cloth and disposable diapers. I felt bad about the landfills full of disposable diapers, but I knew I was too lazy to use cloth exclusively.

I ordered some fancy high-tech cloth diapers from the Internet, and one day a few weeks after Noah was born, I gave them a try.

Within 20 minutes, he had one of those horrible breastfed baby, every 3-4 days, toxic poopsplosions.

Bye-bye cloth diapering. At least for now.
A month or so later, I tried again.

Astonishingly, the exact same thing happened.

Well, motherhood has made me smarter. I know a pattern when I see it, and that pattern was over.

But during our recent bouts of thrush, the diaper rash has been awful. Combine that with having a bigger boy who drinks a lot of very watery “Jooooose!” in the evening, and who (knock on wood) doesn’t really poop overnight.

I started inserting the absorbent inserts for my fancy pocket diapers into Noah’s disposable diapers at night. And they worked! Until the morning after sushi, when we didn’t change him as soon as usual, so I found myself washing seaweed poop out of the cotton insert.

“Hey wait!” My brain slowly realized. If I had the fleece part touching the poop, like it’s designed to do, this would be much easier.

So we are now using cloth diapers at night. And have been (mostly) for the last ~3 weeks. I think this is a good balance for us, and I’m feeling good about my goal to be a reasonably environmentally responsible family.

I know that some of you are huge cloth diaper experts. Right now, we have 6 wonderalls with a variety of inserts.

I want to get a few more super-easy pocket/all-in-ones, but that are cuter and more fun than the basic white I have now. And I want to get a bunch more inserts. The big fat cotton babies inserts with the snaps are pretty much unwieldy. I kinda like the hemp babies, but he drenched through 2 last night.

Do you have any specific recommendations for lazy moms with a big hard-drinking boy?

It turns out to be hard! I thought it might be, but it surprises me.

Day Two of my being disciplined about money during Lent: I thought that I had to go to traffic court this morning. When I arrived at work, I realized that I forgot to bring a book. The very first thing I thought was, “oh no! how can I get to a bookstore before court?”

(Yeah, I’m a geek. But the point here is the very first impulse was to buy an answer to the problem. Never mind that there is in fact a library 2 blocks from my office, and no bookstore between work and court, or nearly that close.)

Also, I spent half my drive to work arguing in my head about rationalizing a stop at the bagel place, or at the grocery store to buy donuts. Happily, self-disciplined me won. It helped that I had half a loaf of bread and half a box of cereal at the office. But my inner Queen of Rationalizing made some very good points, and I worry that she is not taking the coup well.

Does paying for parking ($3) at traffic court when I actually had the court date wrong count as frivolous spending?

Atlanta tickets must have been designed by the same people who created Florida’s butterfly ballots. Half the people in the courthouse atrium were wandering around asking each other how to figure out where you were supposed to go, and nearly every employee could be heard saying, “Your court date isn’t March 7th, that 07 is for the year.”

Sure enough, still closer inspection of my ticket showed — on a different line, nowhere near the March or the 07 — the number 28. My court date isn’t for another 3 weeks.

I did get two things in the mail that were post-bonus, pre-practicing financial discipline Internet purchases: Moo Cards and T-Shirts.

Thanks, David Brooks! I wouldn’t have gotten the t-shirts without your encouragement.

I’ve been thinking about Lent since Sunday at church.

This is new, I’ve never really thought about Lent before. I had vague childhood ideas about “giving something up for Lent,” mostly acquired from books I think. But I never really bought into the idea that God wanted me to suffer by giving something up, even if it was just for awhile. When I try to think of “God” like that is when I am most unbelieving.

I heard something different in the sermon about Lent on Sunday. I got it as an opportunity to practice some area of self-discipline, not because I should suffer, but actually because self-discipline is valuable and will help me to be more of the person I want to be. And to take on such a practice during Lent is to take it on as part of a global community of people all trying to become more disciplined and better able to be the people we want to be, or in some cases, that we believe that God wants us to be.

So here is what I am taking on for the remaining 33 days of Lent: I am not going to make any frivolous purchases, including but not limited to anything at Starbucks, any books, anything from the Internet, or any more toys for Noah.

Right now, I just don’t have a very mindful relationship to money — at least not the ebb and flow of day to day money. I’m pretty good at long-term planning and money. Our retirement accounts are in good shape

I’ll be reporting back on my results.

Day one, good with one exception: $20 worth of lottery tickets, pot estimated at $370 million.

As has been discussed extensively in the comments on other money related posts, I have a longstanding commitment with my parents and sister and Jill that we all have shares of one another’s lottery tickets.

To get the banner back, I had to delete all these files on the host, which still looked like they were there on FTP, making me a confused and annoyed puppy. S. patiently helped, as usual, in spite of my panicked email.

Incidently, what actually worked was closing FTP and then launching it again — starting over, basically, but doing exactly the same thing.

Now I have the right banner there, and it works, and it looks fantabulous.

Crisis averted.

Study break justification also completed. I’m feeling less worried about the test than I was. Either I actually do know a lot about privacy, or the test prep materials are worthless.

For the next 66 minutes, please think “Noah, don’t wake up during Project Runway” with me. He’s making little noises, but if we all hope really hard, they might not turn into him being awake.

(HE SLEPT ALL NIGHT LAST NIGHT! Well, from 11:30 pm to 5:55 am, but that beats also waking up at 1:20 am and 3:45 am, which is what life has been like for the last couple of months.)