Goals Update: January

The beginning of every year tends to bring it's share of goal setting and I'm no different from the rest of the world in that respect. I set out some of my goals in an earlier post, at least the ones that I was willing to make public, and like every other goal-setter I knew that my chances of maintaining any sort of enthusiasm past the first week was slim.

In fact I've already let one goal start and then stop, so I thought I would attempt to keep on track for the year by posting progress notes on a monthly basis. I won't be revisiting each individual goal mentioned earlier, only those that I have something to say about. So here is the first of twelve issues.

Parenting Goals:

Introduction of solid food

This one is underway. We are currently a rabbit. Carrots. Carrots. Carrots again.
We have discovered that the Watties *cram as many items into one type of baby food as possible* concept is stupid. If there are multiple vegetables in the jar, which one is causing the gripey, sleepless, gassy baby? In our case it was the sweet potato. Turns out that Mum (me) was being dim. I had read a while back that one should not be giving babies starchy foods until there are a few molars in the little mouths, as babies prior to that don't produce enough ptyalin (sp?) enzymes to deal with the starch successfully. So there I go, spooning starchy food into the little one's mouth. Carrots on the other hand could be scoffed until the cows, sheep and any other farmyard animal decide to come home. And given the chance to get her hands into the bowl, would be.

Have a happy, healthy and active daughter

Apart from the sweet potato fiasco, Miss O is generally happy and healthy. At last Plunket visit she weighed in right on the average mark for her age. She is now sitting unaided, although protected from serious head trauma by pillow surrounds and attentive Mum. This came on in a bit of a rush. From requiring a steadying hand to simply needing a catcher's mitt was a matter of about 10 days. I'm not sure if this is normally how it goes, but that's how it went for Miss O.
No major signs of crawling yet, other than the odd inverted triangle as she manages to dig her toes in and lift her hips up only to be thwarted by not knowing what to do with those things her hands are at the end of. She has begun to roll in all directions, and there is no guarantee that she will be in the same place on the floor should I turn my back for a minute. However, since we have learned to sit unaided, we are not particularly happy with being laid on the floor and we let our Mum know about it too.
On the active front, we have been going to swimming classes once a week for the past month and are enjoying the whole splashing around thing. We are very brave and manage to dive under water multiple times during the class.

Creativity Goals:

Blog consistently

I think that up until the last week of January, this was going pretty well. At very least there was a minimum of one entry per week, with 13 posts overall for the month. This is certainly an improvement over the last few months, but not quite what I had in mind when I made the goal, so there is room to improve here.

Twelve months of photography challenges

This one is well under way with a vigorous debate over what makes up a Still Life. I still don't know how much size matters Bruce. You could argue for and against the 747 parked on the M1, but I tend to agree with you that this is more like installation art than still life.
For those who have missed the debate, check out the comments on the Still Life posts, and feel free to add your opinion.

• Photography Challenge - Still Life


• Still Life Challenge: Update

Finish Noah’s Ark

So this is a bit of a joke one. Since making this goal list I have managed a massive four stitches. This might be pie in the sky for 2008. :(

Personal Pleasures, Treasures and Measures Goals:

Read 24 books or more

This has been a bit of a hit and miss so far in January. I have read two whole books and a couple of chapters or more in at least five or six other books. One of the books that I managed to get through was The Dark Room by Minette Walters. The other was a book about babies and sleeping.

Lose “X” kilograms of weight

This is the sorry goal that has been started and abandoned, and is about to be re-started again. We purchased digital scales today with the aim of keeping a rough track of Miss O's weight gains between Plunket visits, and of course I had to try them out to make sure they worked. Ah, yes. I hear you. Fatal mistake.
This one gets a full make-over starting tomorrow. Time to shift all the excess baggage.

Spend some time on family history research and break through one brick wall

This has been the hobby of choice for January and part of the reason for fewer blog entries. I have managed to get a little bit closer to breaking one of my brick walls. Or perhaps I have just managed to make it a little more complicated? Hmm. Family history research...the patience tester.

Work Goals:

Create the new website

At the moment just doing the part-time things for work is taking up a fair portion of my non-baby time, so the website update is going at a snail's pace. I have begun the process of learning how to use CSS to design the layout as well as look of a website, and I've been enjoying that. I need to create a new MindMap for the alterations and additions so that I can at least see what's needed. That's February's task I think.

[For those who may be interested in such things, I use MindManager software from Mindjet to generate my MindMaps.]

That would be the wrap up for January. Here's to more success in February.