October Updates & November Intentions.

[October Update]

Limit grocery budget to $215. I over spent by about $20, but hey! For having already pre-spent $100 of that on vegetables, it’s not too bad. I have profess my love for a store that I used to turn my nose up at but now am so in love with: Aldis. It’s awesome. All of this for $62:

(Lots of it is even organic!)

Complete 4 UFYH challenges a day. Most days, yes! And I continue to adore the app. Highly reccomned. If it had a way to have little cleaning checklists, I’d love it even more. (It’s getting domestic up in here.)

Reduce sugar by 50%. Errr, I have no idea. Probably not. I sort of stopped tracking what I ate because it was just one more thing on my plate (pun!) that was was overwhelming me. Plus, it was Halloween month. CANDY. (This is something I plan to focus on someday because diabetes does run in my family and I do eat too much sugar.)

Update Little Leaf site. I updated the portfolio…and that’s it. Oops. In my defense, I was busy working.

Get this baby a bedtime. Indeed we did! And then daylight savings ended and everything went to hell. (Not really. He actually adjusted better than the rest of us have. He can sleep in! We are all up by, like, 6 am.) Between 7 and 8 at night, he goes to bed. Some nights, he wakes up one or twice, other nights he’s up every other hour. Babies!

Continue implementing social media guidelines. Somewhat. I’m having a hard time figuring out what rules I should have for using my phone around my kids. I don’t want them to grow up thinking we interact with phones instead of people. Right now, I’m with my phone in my hand the majority of the day and I do not love that. I tried to cut it cold turkey and not use it at all when they’re awake and with me (aside from practical stuff, like getting directions), but that just didn’t happen. So, back to the drawing board.

[November Intentions]

As the year comes to a close, I find myself looking back at what I wanted from this year and forward to how I’ll wish I’d have spent my time during my baby’s first year. I know that I struggle greatly with being present (see above: scrolling through social media on my phone when I’m with my kids), so I’d like to really focus on that for the entire month of November.

First, though, I want to do some hardcore clearing out to make room for stillness. This means clearing out my physical space and my schedule so I’m not so distracted by it all and can be still. I’m really bad at not being productive and I don’t mean that as a humblebrag. I mean I have a hard to chilling the eff out and not flitting around the apartment nonstop putting things away or finishing a little client work or chopping vegetables or whatever.

So, I am going to clear out the extra in a major way to make less stuff to put away, clean up, and flit around doing.

In concrete goals, this looks like:

Sell things on Craiglist. Whatever doesn’t sell, donate at the end of the month.

Reduce visible clutter. Think about what I spend time picking up and find a way to reduce it. Get rid of most of the kids’ clothes. (We have WAY more than we need.) Be ruthless and focus. I might even get ambitious and try to document it here. Maybe. (Clearly I’m not doing so great with updating the blog since I had Theo.)

Practice mindful breathing daily. Starting with 30 seconds. I have tried to do meditation maaaaany times and it hasn’t worked. So I’m starting tiny and just with breathing.

Read a few pages of Everyday Blessings daily. I started this book years ago, but I think if I read a few pages every day, it will help me to be inspired to be more present to my children.

Create a physical space where I can use my phone and only use it there. This will *hopefully* help move me towards better phone habits.

Spend 20 minutes a day playing with Gabe.