2008 retrospective

I thought about writing an introspective post summing up this year and my hopes for next year.  I tried to whip up some deep thoughts, but deep thoughts are apparently not on the menu tonight.  Instead, I will write a very superficial summary of the highlights my 2008:

-After being in our family for a year, in 2008, L really started settling in to the family and we got used to managing 2 kids.  I started to cobble together some semblance of a life that did not involve having her physically attached to my body every second of the day.  The freedom!  As the year went on, with the exception of a truly difficult two months in late summer/early fall where whining and tantrums seemed to be her only form of communication, we have been in a good groove togther.   This fall, we finally left L with my parents overnight 1 or 2 times a month and it has been heavenly.  I survived and I am NO LONGER IN BABY JAIL!  HALLELUJAH!! (And if I ever had any doubts about going for kid #3, rereading that baby jail post just reminded me why I do NOT want to do that!)

-I can not overlook the drama Mr. A whipped up for us this year.  Last January, he got a bug in his bonnet about making us move for a stupid job he wanted.  There were several miserable  months of trying to get ready to sell our house and figure out what cities we would be willing to live in.  Then we decided we really didn’t want to move, so he withdrew his applications and we stayed.  Yay us!  It turns out we really like it here!  And it turns out that Mr. A really liked his old job for the most part until …. (there is a additional small something to be noted on this topic but I can’t talk about it for another day or so*).

-M started kindergarten.  She loves it.  I love it.  All day school was definitely a good thing for her.  And thankfully, lunch has not caused any major drama.   It even turns out M is a bit a teacher’s pet, which is shocking to me because I was more of a pain in the teacher’s ass.

-In January, I started my first annual shopping haitus, which was repeated and improved/expanded in June/July. In two months of mostly not shopping, I really got out of the habit of shopping for entertainment.  I think we do a lot better at not wasting money now than we did before.  We are preparing to buckle down again for January and February and I am actually looking forward to it.  Except the cutting back on eating out part.  That part bites.  But the good news is I have managed to stash away a little over a third of the money we will need for our trip to China/Taiwan in 2.5 years.  Yay me!

- One of the more surprising things that happened this year is that I accidentally started being more social.  You may or may not know that I am actually very shy and I tend to be very self-consious and uncomfortable when I first meet people.  I don’t know what happened, but sometime this year, I started being more personable and act less shy than I really feel with new people.  Amazing how well that works!  I made a number of friends in the neighborhood, just by talking to them (!!!).  I even invited several people I only knew vaguely from the internet to meet up and I really liked them too.  (And I didn’t even die from the stress of meeting them in person.)   I have always had a number of good friends, but now I have a big chunk more and a lot of friendly acquaintances on top of that.

So yeah, there were a few stressful points and I only achieved 2 of my resolutions for 2008, but this year has been a really good year.  At the risk of jinxing it, I dare say we got happier, wealthier (in friends as well as slightly improving our finances), and wiser this year.

I am heading into 2009 feeling like I finally have a good handle on parenting two kids, I learned that I love the town/neighborhood where we live, the girls and Mr. A is happy and so am I.

*Yes, I am a terrible secret keeper.  If you have a big secret, don’t tell me because I can’t keep my big mouth shut.