2014. Wow.  

For the first time in a decade, I’ve resolved not to make any resolutions. I’m not telling myself I need to lose weight or I need to spend more time with the kids or I need to be a better meal planner.

This year I want to just roll with it – and most importantly, I just want to appreciate where I am in life. Actually where we are –me and my family.

Truthfully, I was restless and maybe a little lost at the end of 2013. I was tired after a demanding year at work. My husband had been travelling a lot throughout 2013 so I was also tired from being the one responsible for most things parenting during the week – the lunches, the activities, the morning and bedtime routines as well as the only one to get up during the night if the kids were up. The constant battle of career-mom vs needing-more-time-with-kids-mom was waging in my brain. Can I do both? Is it sustainable? Am I happy? I found myself questioning my work/ life choices a lot.

Then the holidays came and I had time to think. I actually started questioning why I was questioning everything at the end of 2013. I turn 40 this coming year – was I hitting my midlife crisis?

The answer came to me pretty quickly once I started analyzing it in my brain. For more than a decade, I’ve always had something big going on in my personal life. Something to plan for, something exciting,…the next “big thing”. We bought our first house and got engaged in 2003. Planned a wedding and married in 2004. Got pregnant in 2005 and spent 2006 planning for and anticipating the birth of our first child. I spent 2007 on mat leave with friends. Got pregnant and had our second child in 2008. Spent 2009 on mat leave again with great friends. Got pregnant again in 2010 and bought a new house – our “family” house. Had our third baby in 2011 and once again, had another wonderful maternity leave.

If that timeline were to continue, I would have had another baby in 2013. But that’s done. We have our incredible children, we have the house we’ll be in for a long time and now there’s no ‘big things’ to plan for any more . For the last ten years there has always been something so it’s no wonder I was feeling a little lost at the end of last year.

And now that I’ve identified it, I feel a lot less lost. You know why? Because as I mentioned above, it’s time to sit back and appreciate everything we’ve built over the last decade.  Our kids are all old enough that we can truly do things as a family – we can have real talks, we can share real jokes and we can make real memories together. We spent an awesome holiday laughing, baking, skiing, skating, playing in the snow, shoveling, dancing, spending time with family, eating meals together, cuddling and hanging out with friends.

So even though there are no weddings or babies or mat leaves or houses on our horizon, I actually find myself in the middle of starting the biggest thing of all – our real post-baby, post-toddler (post-diaper) family life. So this year, as I said above, I’m just going to roll with it. It’s time to be grateful for what we’ve built and appreciate where we’re going…together.