beating January

or crushing January might work too.

I accidentally initially titled this post, "beating February" ... but the power of positive thinking does not a time traveler make. Weird.

back in December ... when the cold weather still held a little bit of its acceptable Christmas magic.

Oh, I know it's cliché to talk about and maybe some people love January because fresh starts and blank pages and all of that rap music but January is always a rough month around here and I'd like to think I'm not alone.

I need to channel my inner Theo but all I want to do is pull a Phoebe. For 31 days.

My only resolution at the start of ever year is simply: do not die during January. It's freezing (I know we don't live in the coldest climate but -10 with windchill is frigid to me! Our brand new furnace is about to have a heart attack and I'm not above preheating the oven in the morning because our kitchen doesn't have a heating vent), there's still a massive chunk of winter to go, it still gets dark at 3:50 in the afternoon - or so it FEELS, and not all the coconut oil in the world is going to save my dry skin that rivals an onion left to bake in the Sahara. Sebastian is dying to go outside ("just wear a coat, Mom!!" and I'm dying not to take him ("find me an electric coat, and then maybe, Bash!!") and Simon is always always on a time consuming rotation (which I kind of prefer - get it over with during a gross month!) so by the the time 6:08 in the pm rolls around general mayhem is rocking and rolling real loud and proud around here.

However.

I tried to come into the month doing something very foreign to my usual skill set by being proactive (did I type that naturally enough p-r-o-a-c-t-i-v-e) about the month-o-doom and not let it get the best of me so that I might not succumb to the depths of despair like some fictitious one I know. There's a fine line between ambitious and crazy and I think my little list of little goals falls somewhere three miles behind the ambitious line. Prepare to be overwhelmed. But I do promise not to use the word intentional ... not once.

Here's what I've got.

More reading: If I keep my mind occupied rather than dwelling on the aforementioned list of January grievances .... logic tells me I'll be one cm ahead in the race. I've already read a couple books this month and I'm even thinking of dipping into something less, "let's escape to the most shallow end of the literary pool" during nap time to something with a little more meat on its bones (I have this spiritual memoir) because we all know the road to success is paved with the best of intentions. I'm TERRIBLE about just stupidly zoning out on my phone when the kids go down so ... I figured out how to download e-books from the library (welcome to adulthood, Grace) which has been a total and guiltless game changer.

More exercise: I guarantee if there were some way (well, I'm sure a Fitbit could totally tell you) to show how active/inactive we were month by month ... January would be a tiny blip on my chart. I'm prone to move very, very little when it's cold which is stupid. If he's not working overnight Simon usually gets home with just enough time for me to hand off Theo and Phoebe and take the older kids to the gym for the last ~30 minutes of gym daycare at night which they love and then Theo gets some much-needed third wheel love while Phoebe is in bed and I get 28 minutes of cardio/people watching. I never want to go (end of the day! let me just drape myself on the couch!) but I'm always so happy I did. And of course, during the day ... any bonus DVD action is a big plus.

More eating not-junk: After doing Whole30 in November ... I dove mouth-first into Thanksgiving and Christmas fare and felt the wrath of the crap and jumped right back on the Whole30 train on January first. I'm making it 99 times easier on myself (details to come in an entirely different post, party hats - find them!!) by allowing smoothies with compliant ingredients (so maybe I'm doing more of a 7/8 Whole30) and not stressing about eating compliant formerly frozen food when I need to (which is sort of often) to cut down on store runs and prep time and it's a lot easier and I feel so much better. Off my Whole30 soapbox because I know 99.9% of you do not care about that. 

Getting up before the kids: I hate this one. I know it's the secret to every mom's success but I get my best sleep from 4-7 every night/morning so this is tough. But! Once Theo starts cock-a-doodling around 6 and wanting a drink of water before he (usualllllly) goes back down for a bit, I'm alert enough (okay, back on my Whole30 soapbox for a sentence) thanks to a good night of sleep and lack of processed food hangover to get up and start getting breakfast ready and maybe even take a shower if the stars are aligned correctly. It makes the morning run SO much smoother than waking up to crying kids. But you already knew that, you early birds and your mouths full of worms, didn't you?

Anyway, no one has ever used the words "impressive" and "Grace Patton" in the same sentence so let's hold my Clydesdales and stop with four pillars of hope for the time being.

Anyway, aren't you glad I shared? Surely! You must be!

Any other feasible tactics I missed? I'm all hungry eyes.

And so is she.