happy new year!
Happy new year guys!! Hope you had a wonderful one! Ours was pretty low key but lovely nevertheless. I roasted a chicken and baked my beloved buche de noel and after dinner we settled in to watch the traditional Russian new year's eve movie - The Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath. It's a long, long movie and after ringing in the new year at midnight we went straight to bed. The next morning we finished the cake and the movie in our pajamas and it was just perfect.
We've spent the past few days taking down the remaining christmas decorations (all the sadz), cleaning, organizing and cooking. I did a massive closet clean-out and we did a much needed deep clean of the house. Birdie even got to use her amazing talking broom that babushka and dedushka gave her for christmas and it was just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. We've also decided to get back to a healthy diet and eat at home more often so we cleaned out our fridge and pantry and got rid of all those "naughty" items, i.e. cookies, chocolates, chips and things that come in boxes and end up fried (also all the sadz). So though as always it was sad to bid adieu to christmas it did feel good to start the new year with a clean slate so to speak.
As far as resolutions go this year I really don't have any. Our babies are still small and demanding and so if I was to have any wish for the new year it would be fewer teary eyed phone calls to papa bear while he is at work asking him to "save us." If I can get through a week without a "mummy meltdown" I would say that's a darn good start. As always I just hope that this year I can see a little personal growth, more eating in, less heartache, more laughter and bigger hugs, fewer m&m's consumed on a daily basis, more grace and endless amounts of empathy and to always remember that we're all just doing our best (including myself, for those days when I'm extra tough on myself).
Instagram often gets a bad rap but this holiday season it has filled me with so much joy. I have loved scrolling through photos of christmas trees, family photos, doughy new babies, beautiful pregnant bellies and fireplaces galore! That's why I love christmas - it makes us focus on what it is in life that we all want, love and cherish the most. I couldn't help but think of all the care that went into picking out all those presents and then wrapping them. The love and happiness that emanated from hundreds and thousands of living rooms on christmas morning. The giggles and the finger licking that went into baking all those cookies and the satisfied tummies they ended up in. The kisses that happened under glittering trees between exhausted parents at 2 or 3 in the morning after assembling, wrapping and arranging things for their littles to tear into in a matter of hours. There's just so much good there. I feel that we were all at our most authentic for those several days, surrounded by family and so much love.
That's all we really need to do this coming year - just make sure we share our love every day, with as many people as possible as authentically as possible. And lets always remember that just because someone makes a living differently than we do, uses different vsco filters than we do, takes more selfies than we do or overgrams, is shy or brazen, popular or completely unknown, dresses their kids better than we do or takes better care of their eyebrows it doesn't make them bad/annoying/privileged/stupid/self-absorbed/stuck up/greedy. At the end of the day we all have our different love languages, goals, priorities, hobbies, likes, personalities, genetics, dreams and dispositions and they are all valid. We're all in this great big world together just trying to make a buck, feed and dress our kids, see the world and make our dreams come true. Let's cheer each other on in these journeys no matter how different they are.