New Year, New Me

I gave up making formal and specific New Years' Resolutions years ago.  I do, however, come up with general ideas of ways to improve myself around this time of year.

This year's general idea is to be better to myself.

We're trying to eat better this year, little by little.  Over the past few years, we've cut out many processed foods, but this year we're going to take it a bit further.  To start off the year right, I made brown rice to go with gumbo and the kids not only didn't complain, but they didn't even notice.  This is a miracle.  And Evan has decided that he'll now eat my new favorite breakfast:  homemade yogurt with fruit and homemade granola.  Now if I could just get the other two to eat it instead of the store-bought kind....

I've been toying with the idea of cutting out all corn products because I've read that helps with asthma and if we could cut back on Liam's daily nebulizer treatments, that would be absolutely awesome.  Have you noticed how corn and corn products are in absolutely everything?  We've been pretty good about avoiding high fructose corn syrup, but I've been on the hunt for a kids' daily vitamin without corn starch and am coming up empty.  Apparently corn starch "holds together" all the other stuff crammed into those little Flintstone people.  And then there's the Mexican food we like to eat - enchiladas, tacos, chips and salsa, all of which use corn tortillas.  I don't know that I can convince the kids to give up tacos.

I'm also trying to work on cutting negative people out of my life.  After a six week self imposed Facebook break, I decided that life is too short to put up with people who are mean-spirited or just plain ugly on the inside.  I cleaned up my "friends" list upon my return and decided to not subject myself to such people in real life if I could help it.  I quit one of my book groups (the one with the "Santa Claus is not Christian" lady).  Of course, I didn't come out and say that's why I was leaving; I just told them that I'm so busy I don't have as much time to read as I used to (which is true).  And when we were forced to spend part of our Christmas break with a relative who turned into a Grade A jerk during election season, I kept repeating my new mantra, "God give me strength to not stoop to their level" and ignored them as much as possible.  They ignored me as well and I'd say it worked out well for everyone involved.

Next on my agenda is to get back into yoga.  It's been years since I've had the opportunity to take a class and now that we've joined the local rec center and Evan is in pre-K, I just might get the chance.  I know I'm going to hurt after stretching some muscles that I forgot I had, but I also know I'm going to feel better in the long run.

After that.....well, who knows.  Maybe I'll start taking long bubble baths again.  Or maybe I'll buy myself another canister of the awesome cocoa mix we've been enjoying.

What do you do to pamper yourself?