A Whole New Year of Goals

This is my favorite time of year. I wonder if the word "favorite" loses any of its meaning if it is used to describe more than one item in a given category? I have so many, many favorite times of the year, but this time of the year is my favorite for its newness. The Second Chance feeling at the beginning of each New Year. The I-Am-Gonna-Do-It-Right-This-Time attitude that takes over me the first week of January.

This year we are training our children to clean their rooms. Re-training, actually. Ok, I know, Todd and I are not experts in this field, but the goal is so worthy. In all fairness, we decided that the kids needed to start with a clean slate. We spent yesterday cleaning their rooms and the hallway and closets between them. By "we" I mean Todd and I, and by "cleaning" I mean throwing away a year's worth of products of our children's creative endeavors, and collections of various precious items bearing a distinct resemblance to um...Trash.

It was dangerous work. Todd was attacked by a monstrous wad of curly doll hair (brunette) that had already successfully devoured several pipe cleaners, chunks of clay and a matchbox car.
I poked my fingers (without the aid of gloves!) into dark, shadowy crevices in search of Little Things and Lego pieces. Finally, I caught sight of It and called, "Carpet Ho!" And knowing the End was near, the Dragon almost slain, that we were almost done, we called it quits for the night.

So we cannot yet call this task accomplished, we cannot yet cross anything off our lists, nor can we begin to model correct cleaning behavior for our children. But never fear! It is still the first week of Second Chances! We have not failed yet! There is always tomorrow, until February anyway...