March 22

Today I am grateful for sunshine and balmy afternoons, for class outside and driving with my sunglasses on and the windows down.

I am grateful for the joy and wonder of new life-- new babies freshly arrived, the snuggly weight of a borrowed baby on my chest.  I am grateful for the camaraderie of motherhood, the sharing and laughing and connecting that comes from common experience.  I am grateful for the chance to give and help and use some of what I have learned in these past five years of my own motherhood journey.

I am grateful honey roasted peanuts and chocolate.

I am grateful for my students who work so hard and always inspire me with their spirits.  I am grateful for the chance to impact their lives and be a champion for them, to build them into stronger people every day. I am grateful for differences and the way they can bring us together.

I am grateful for a smooth week and the excitement of a soon-to-be weekend filled with friends and resale events.  I am grateful for the richness and beauty of my life.

March 19

Tonight I am grateful for sunny evenings and muddy parks, for playgrounds and neighbors and friendly little boys clambering for attention, for children getting along together, so purely, so without guile.

I am grateful for a good run at the gym this morning, for the slight ache in my legs that reminds me I ought to do this more often.

I am grateful for sweet snuggly sun-kissed tired darlings and I am grateful for quiet send-offs to bed.

I am grateful for one last quiet day at work before the madness of a testing week begins.  I am grateful for my students and for the pleasure of working in tandem with talented co-workers.  I am grateful for the people whose smiles make my day.

I am grateful for blueberry tea.

Off to file my taxes, fold some laundry, and mindlessly surf the internet for 20 minutes.  Tonight:  on target for a 10pm bedtime.  Wish me luck.

March 18

A wonderful weekend again.
 Again, hard to get to bed early.

 It's nice to watch movies with my husband.

 It's nice to look at pictures of our day, at blogs, at facebook, at random things on the internet.

 It's nice to have a clean house, or at least a house with slightly less chaos.

 And all of these things only happen after the kids go to bed. With the boy getting tucked in at 9 most nights, there is not much time left before 10:30.

 Apparently, I just need to get the kids to bed earlier.

 Except...

 It's nice to spend time with them in the evening.

 It's nice to let them linger in the bath.

 It's nice to share some time watching videos, everyone snuggly and warm and clean.

 It's nice to read books and talk and put away laundry together.

 It's nice to doze in the rocking chair.

 It's nice to snuggle with my boy.

 I don't want to give anything up, that's the problem.

 Apparently, I just need to win the lottery so I can sleep in everyday, instead.

March 13

Early bedtimes continue to be difficult.  This time I blame daylight savings time.  And tonight, choir.  I will prioritize sleep but not at the expense of singing Bach for two hours on a Tuesday evening.  Nor, apparently, at the cost of a clean kitchen.  Now at 10:30 I am just sitting down to recap the day, and this is important too.  So, bedtime at 11 tonight...

Gratitude.

I am so grateful for warm weather and sunshine, for slow walks down the sidewalk with an enthusiastic chatty girl.

I am grateful for music, the way it works my brain and my body, for the fact that I feel like I am actually singing this music, making music-- and we still have over a month of rehearsals.  It will be glorious and I am grateful in advance.

I am grateful for the fact that my children both ate well at dinner tonight.  I am grateful for Boston Market for inspiring this impulse in them.  (Jack even at a green bean.  Seriously.)

I am grateful for food with flavor, for carbohydrates, for coffee.  I am already planning my immense gratitude when I can re-introduce these things to my life in two more days.

I am grateful for the structure and rigor and challenge of following this diet, how it allows me to prove my will to bear discomfort.

I am grateful for hot tea and television with my honey and the comforts of my home.

March 11

Bed at 10:30?  On the weekends?  Totally not happening. :)

Especially tonight, as we spring forward... sleeping in til 8/9 then having coffee after dinner then having it feel like only 9:30 leads to a pretty perky Amanda.  Which is good as we just finished dishes from Sceond Sunday Soup and I have LOTS of pictures to download and kiddo blog to update (check in soon for details of our fabulous weekend...)

Tomorrow Nat and I start what seems to be now an annual tradition of dieting.  It's going to be a good thing, it really is, but the next 4 days are going to be rough.  If anything, I will need even more to stick to this "early to bed" resolution.  So, the blog may go quiet for a while....

Oh, and as an aside, we also got rid of a few toys, some mismatched markers, and quite a few books from Jack's room (which is an ongoing project, it seems).  I still do like my plan of purging my life of all that is neither beautiful nor useful, whether it makes for interesting writing or not.

On that note, let me wax poetic for a moment about gratitude.  There is much to be grateful for this weekend.

I am grateful for sublime sunshiney days in March, warmth and breezes and not a bug in sight.  I am grateful for our open back door and 26 people wandering in and out and gathering on the deck, eating soup and playing with children and the sun shining through it all.

I am grateful for  curly blonde pigtails, for the cutest 3 word sentences and crinkly nose smiles and hugs and "Hi Mommy" said in that soft sweet voice.

I am grateful for my big boy, my hiking buddy, fearless climber and deep thinker and lover of chocolate and light sabers.

I am grateful for woods and streams and the smell of wet earth and memories of the places we've lived that have shaped us like the shale hills in the Bedford reservation.

March 8

Gratitude for this evening, in the face of whining children and piles of laundry... I am grateful for the warmth of a new baby to hold, for the hope and excitement and dreams bound in that tiny soft bundle of humanity. I am grateful for the existence of youth and energy and spontaneity, foolishness masked as bravery. And I am grateful that it once was mine, that I too moved across the country, rushed into things, used my boundless energy and loved it. I am grateful for teamwork and co workers and my good natured students. I am grateful for my children even when they are driving me crazy. I am grateful for the bounty of my life even when it is too much to keep up with. I am grateful that tomorrow is Friday. Off to work on my new goal. 10:35. A little better every day...

March 7

New idea.

Reading a Fitness Magazine while working out this morning, I happened upon an article about fighting the aging process in cells.  Among the various pieces of research was yet another study on the beneficial effects of sleep.

I don't need research to tell me that sleep is good.

Vital.

Forget aging cells, we're talking major effects on my sanity throughout the day.

Reading this article this morning was apropo as a 12:30 bedtime, 5:30 wakeup and a little girl who now prefers to be up for at least an hour in between those times left me with about 4 hours of sleep last night.  A far cry from the recommended 7 to 8...

I wonder, sometimes, what my life might be like with 7-8 hours of sleep a night.

Only one way to find out...

I can't control little girl's sleep patterns (would that I could!) and I can't sleep in on weekdays... but what I can do, what I can control, is when I go to bed.

New challenge-- for the balance of my 30 days, I will prioritize sleep.  I will aim to be in bed by 10:30 at least 5 days a week.  I will get 7 hours of sleep most nights.  I will wait and watch and see if this changes things for me.  I will hope that at the very least it will help me keep an even keel when Nat and I start our  annual trip down diet lane starting next week.

And in the mean time I think I 'll continue to focus on gratitude. I may need to fit in writing time in the mornings....

But for tonight:

I am grateful for new learning, for books that resonate with my own thinking and validate my passions, for the chance to talk about big ideas with people who agree with me.
I am grateful for quick evening playdates with big little kids eating together and playing together, imagining and giggling and catching and dancing and wishing they could play more.
I am grateful for warm breezy days and spring sunshine and windows flung wide bringing a breath of optimism into the house and into my soul and leaving my children's hair smelling of outside and earth.

March, in general

Apparently I am uninspired by my new 30 days.   I have, actually, been sticking to the plan.  Various unimportant, outdated, and generally useless items have been leaving my home every day.  But, it turns out, that makes for a boring blog.

Or maybe that's just March in general.

Either way, I think I need something more.

Time for some gratitude.

Tonight I am grateful for:  

Music and company and conversation and the interesting people who come into out lives; once-a-week friendships that sneak up on you over time and become real.

Tuesday afternoon coffee with my husband.

Family dinners at Grandma's house, being greeted by my two little blondies and playing and snuggling and helping with dinner and its all somehow calmer because we're not at home...

Snuggling on the couch watching How I Met Your Mother.

Audiobooks in the car.

Strange, windy March sunshine; capturing moments of fleeting spring; seeing the silver lining of climate change because what's life but a series of happy moments?

My children's smiles.

March 2

Tonight, we went to a bar.  Crazy, eh?  We spent the evening at the St. Paul's preschool fundraiser, chatting and drinking wine and munching appetizers and bidding on baskets of things we don't need.  It was really quite lovely and we even won a day trip to Detroit-Windsor Casinos.  And we DIDN'T win any of those baskets of things which is really a godsend, especially as I am supposed to be clearing things OUT of my life.

The theme for tonight's work was "recycling."  I tackled  recyclable items in the kitchen, removing a large number of Gladware lids without containers and containers without lids, as well as about half of our old sippy cups.  With a little bit of strategic restacking as I removed items, ten minutes later we had two tidy cupboards and one very full recycling bag.

I find myself roving the house making a mental note of other clutter-zones I can cull....playroom, closet, linen cupboard, coat closet, bookshelves.  And just wait until we get to the basement!

This is going to be fun.

March 1

It's been a cluttered evening, double booked and fast, Kindergarten information night and overtired kiddos and then off to book club an hour late and I hate being late and... 

I love a full life.  A rich and beautiful life, it seems, must be by its nature a full life-- full as plush velvet, as a decadent dessert, as a perfect antique store, a bookshelf, a bed deep with pillows and folded duvets. 

But there are times when a full life gets to be a bit much, a mix of paisley and damask and not-quite-right stripes, a proflagation of color that leaves you breathless but lost, that leaves you shortchanging each piece and and not quite getting your fill of anything at all. 

Tonight was just a little bit that way.

Or maybe I'm just  feeling all the emotion of having an almost-Kindergartener (when did THAT happen??)...

Either way,  for my next Thirty Days I am going to see what I can take out of my life--to see whether a less-full life, like appropriately edited interior design, can be that much more perfect.

My challenge?  Get rid of something every day.  

An object (or two or three), or a time commitment, or emotional baggage.... some way to reduce and simplify and clarify my life, to better see the beauty in it.