New Years' Resolutions

In the ultimate irony/bad omen of the year I have already LOST my New Years' resolutions (along with almost every single Christmas present we bought for Naomi this year...ok, those were all simply left in Utah, they are for the most part not technically lost...and they are dinky presents anyway, but still, they were the presents we got) and ....voila! I can no longer remember what I was hoping to do differently this year.

I know not everyone likes New Year's Resolutions, but I think they give a great opportunity to reflect on what we might do differently, and better, in our lives. Most of the time, when I have some impulse or thought that I should improve in some way or another, my impulses seem so short-lived. Change takes time, and if I take the time to reflect and write out some of the things I would like to do more in life, then keep these goals written somewhere where I can read them over and over it really helps me to focus and not lose sight of the good impulses I have had. Some things are brought to fruition. Others aren't. But so what. In the words of Oscar Wilde, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” I am never going to be perfect. But I really do want to be a star-gazer.

So anyway. I don't think I am going to write out all the specific intermediate goals and so on at least here online, but I do want to write down some of the categories I would like to work toward.

1. Exercise. There is not enough time, and not enough energy. But I feel better when I at least do *some* amount of jogging/gym time/whatever, so the goal for this year is to just do some regularly, 4x a week, and not worry about the quantity so much as the consistency. The goal is also to run a marathon in late October/November of next year, but that is quite a ways away.

2. Eat healthily. I am not making a goal this year to eliminate junk food...other than to stay off caffeine for the rest of this pregnancy. Instead, we are focusing on just eating plenty of healthy foods and hoping this will help me eat less sugar (so far it seems to be working somewhat). I was really impressed with the book Anticancer over break, and have been wanting to make some changes based on that...as well as the desire to save some money by really relying solely on groceries rather than picking up food at the hospital, on the street, etc. We have been very ambivalent about organic foods over time, but this book has me convinced to at least commit to 100% organic animal products, and organic "dirty dozen" fruits and vegetables. (According to this book, "meat and dairy products...furnish over 90 percent of human exposure to known contaminants. These include dioxin, PCBs, and certain pesticides that persist in the environment even though they have been banned for several years." -p79) We are also trying to avoid sugar or high fructose corn syrup (we were already doing this, though), partly because I feel like when Naomi is around sugar she won't eat anything healthy, whereas when she isn't around it, she will eat almost anything we give her (fresh vegetables being the exception...but she will eat them if they are cooked, so fine, I can cook them).

The down side is that this really drives up our grocery bill (but since we are buying less food outside of groceries, our total food costs may be down). Also, the book has me convinced that we should get organic grass fed/free range dairy products because the fat content of corn-fed (the norm) animals is poorly-balanced and pro-inflammatory in humans. Problem is, they do not even sell these products (other than eggs) at our local grocery stores or on Fresh Direct. What to do?...one solution is to subsitute sheep's cheese (I'm not sure if sheep are fed grass, but I think they are, and it turns out their cheese is very high in calcium and cheaper than comparable cow cheese) for some of our usual cheese. The other solution is to say oh well on the milk and be happy with just plain organic. (For what it's worth, our extremely, extremely overpriced organic milk is really delicious compared to the very reasonably priced non-organic alternative...a silver lining?) I am also trying to include more fresh herbs and a wider variety of vegetables, and better oils, in our food, all of which adds to the financial burden. The solution we have come up with to this is to eat less meat, and to get more of our protein and fat from nuts, oils, beans, legumes, eggs (good source of cholesterol also), and whole grains. We aren't going 100% vegetarian (we'll still eat meat if other people are eating it around us), but it turns out we can recuperate essentially all of the money we lose on buying organic by turning to plant sources of protein rather than even MORE expensive grass-fed organic beef, chicken, and so on. Also, it is better for the environment (Did you know farting cows in the US contribute more harmful greenhouse gases to the environment than the entire US transportation system combined? I didn't), and allows for more efficient use of land resources (in a world where billions of people still go with too little nutrition). All of this I'm sure is very boring for anyone to read, and no doubt makes us sound like complete freaks (wait, wait...I had cheesecake at book group this evening, followed by ice cream at home PLUS several hershey's hugs...I am normal, I promise!---either that or hypocritical. Or both!). But it is something we are trying to work toward.

3. Date more, get together with friends more, have a life outside of parenting and med school. I don't really want to be a hermit, but sometimes I end up a little bit of one. Which is too bad because I know so many great people I should get together with more often.

4. Work hard and do my best in school and on the boards.

5. Take some time for quiet and reflection every morning to start off my day a more mindful and appreciative person.

6. Read to Naomi (and to the new baby when she comes) 30 minutes a day. This is actually an old resolution and one of the very rare few I have done well with. It's a good one. I read The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease (one of my favorite parenting books) a while ago, and this book makes the argument that you should read to each of your kids separately unless they are very close in age, mostly because kids of different ages get more out of different types of books. I think anything is good, but I think as a working parent it might be a nice way to guarantee some alone time with each child, so for me I think it is a good thing to try for.

7. Do some type of service once a month.

8. Live in the moment.

9. Figure out how to either (a) get Naomi to stop being so obsessed with sitting on the potty all day, or (b) finally toilet train her once and for all! More on this later. The short story is, apparently she has been sitting on the potty every time she has her diaper changed at daycare since the beginning of September. She doesn't do anything, but she insists on going. I was not really aware of this until her teacher wrote a note in her little daycare diary about how independent Naomi is getting with toilet training. What?! Naomi is toilet trained?! Unfortunately no such luck. Every night since we came back from Utah, we have had some sort of incident involving Naomi taking off her pants and diaper unnoticed, then wanting to sit on the potty, run around, sit on it again, run around, and finally pee in the middle of the living room/hallway/bathroom rug/poop in the tub/pee anywhere OTHER than a toilet. *sigh*. It has not actually been THAT bad, but we are in serious need of a coherent strategy here right now (preferably one that dovetails well with the daycare's approach of easing in to toilet familiarity and comfort leading to "training" over many months). I think we cannot put off addressing her desire to use the toilet any longer. Oh well.

I can't remember any more, and I am tired, so that is it for tonight.
Btw, on the school front...I had my first conversation about this pregnancy with an administrator at my school. It was wonderful. She was all congratulations and supportiveness. It looks like I will be able to piece together a plan to delay third year by three months, start out with a geriatric rotation followed by internal medicine (geri because it is the lightest schedule-wise, internal medicine because it gives the broadest background to help get me up to speed on everything), and still graduate on time. This means essentially 4 months at home with baby #2, followed by a month of "easing in" to third year via geriatrics before any hard-core rotations hit. I couldn't be happier.