New Year, Old Me

I'd like to start tonight with a scene from Stop N Shop this afternoon. My three-year-old daughter is sitting in the cart. We're shopping.

Pie: Mommy! Can I get more yogurt?
Me: Sure. Would you like grown-up yogurt or kid yogurt?
Pie: Um, grown-up yogurt.
Me: Okay, would you like strawberry or blueberry or peach?
Pie: I want the brown yogurt.
Me [I pick up the chocolate yogurt and check out the 37 grams of sugar]: No, sweetie, not the brown yogurt.
Pie: I WANT THE BROWN YOGURT!
Me [trying to distract]: How about a kid yogurt? I see Dora and Diego over there.
Pie's eyes widen.
Pie: Hannah Montana! I want Hannah Montana yogurt! Please, Mommy, can I have Hannah Montana yogurt?

So, yes, my daughter is the proud owner of six (wait, she ate one already so make that five) Hannah Montana yogurts. I still don't know how she knows Hannah Montana.

All of that, by the way, is completely irrelevant to this evening's post. I had intended to write more about the Miami trip, but as the skies are clouding up and the air has that unmistakable smell of snow storm (what is that smell anyway? How is it you really can smell a storm coming in?), Miami seems years and years ago and I can only vaguely conjure up the peace of daily ice creams, on-call babysitters, sunshine on the boat, and the camaraderie of old friends.

Instead I am faced with a new year, but the same old me. Every year I make resolutions, and last year, I failed miserably on most, but made progress on a few. Not that I'd tell you all the resolutions, but I can name a few...

• More kid time: This one is going fairly well. I try to make time each day with each kid to spend one-on-one with. It's harder with the school schedule--I definitely get more one-on-one time with Pie, but I've been working on it with Doodles, trying to read more with him, have him read to me, work on his writing. But I definitely get more time reading Eloise, playing Candyland Castle, or baking hallah with Pie. I need to make more of an effort on this.
  
• Get to and stay at 133 lbs: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! 'Nuff said.
  
• Go greener: This was my most successful resolution. I kept bags in my car and cut our bag usage down by probably about 75%. I was disappointed that our remodel wouldn't allow for solar panels (we had the house evaluated and were told we don't get enough sun for solar), but I did convert both our house and the apartment to wind energy. Slowly converting our light bulbs over. Buying energy efficient appliances for the "new" house. Trying to teach the kids about conserving ("No, Pie, you don't need a new sheet of paper--just use the back of this!" Which works about as well as you'd think it would). I freecycled an incredibly amount of stuff when we cleaned out the house--I was shocked at some of the stuff people wanted: half used tubes of joint compound, the paint samples we had from when we painted our house years ago, Adam's old economic textbooks, car window tinting, a bag filled with odds and ends of paper. The only thing I couldn't get rid of was a box of Barney VHS tapes.
  
• Close e-mail and the Web more: Um, this was the year of Facebook and Twitter. So obviously, a big fat X here.
  
• Run a four-hour marathon: Hey, I'm happy enough with 4:13:36.

This year, I'm keeping the same resolutions here and adding a few more. Again, many aren't for public consumption, but a few additions this year are:

• Read 26 books this year: I know 52 is the logical number here, but hey, that is so not going to happen.
  
• Take advantage of the teachable moments: Too many times I let the great opportunities with the kids pass by, because we're in the car, I'm cooking dinner, or because I've just been bombarded with questions for the previous twelve hours.
  
• Set a writing schedule: Because I did promise all of you I'd complete the first draft of my novel.

Is that all my resolutions? No. Not even all my public ones. But once again, I can hear the Pie from the other room, so I'm going to tend to my daughter. I'm still adding to the resolutions list, so any that anyone wants to pass on, feel free!