1. Goals:
My husband is always making and evaluating goals in his corporate job. When we got married he wanted to make goals for our first year of marriage and I thought it seemed a little silly... but then when the year was over and we looked them over, it was really nice to be able to see how we had focused our energies on certain areas. We had achieved a fair number of our goals, and our lives were moving along the way we hoped. I know you can't control life by setting goals, but it can help you focus your energy on what's important to you rather than just floating along letting life happen to you.
2. Daily Routine:
It's common knowledge that kids thrive on routine, with events like meals and naps happening at the same times everyday. My son was on a consistent Babywise eat-wake-sleep schedule
as a baby which gradually stretched from every 3 hours at birth to every 4 (and longer at night, thankfully!). As a baby, that was really all the routine he needed. Now, as a 1 year old, that 'wake' period is much longer and I want to fill it with activities that reinforce my parenting goals. I wanted to make sure we had time for independent play, blanket time, potty practice, active play, and reading each day. So I wrote up a routine that I thought would work for us ... and then tweaked it a bit to find something that really did work. Then I put the revised version up on the fridge to remind me. I am now much more consistent with making sure those activities happen each day, and my son knows what to expect when.
I've also read in Ask Supernanny that older kids will begin to refer to the schedule too and even start to set the table when meals are coming up. So this is a practice I want to keep up as our family grows!
3. Rules:
Since our son is still pretty young, our rules are pretty simple (don't touch electrical cords, don't drop food, stay off the stairs etc.), but it's good for my husband and I to be on the same page about them. For example, I do not let my son play in the refrigerator. It is a 'no.' He often hangs out in the kitchen with me and it would be a pain to have to keep pulling him away from it. He points and looks wistfully at the fridge, but doesn't bother it. Now when my husband came home from work one day and let our son play in there (supervised) because it was so cute, we really didn't have consistency and I had to work a little harder on being the fridge guard for a few days. We got some cute pictures and it wasn't a big deal, but there were some complications.
I imagine as our son's memory grows, consistency will become even more important. I am planning to write up some rules and post them in a visible location when our son gets older. That will make things easier for babysitters, as well as for my son and me.
4. Memories:
Everyone tells new parents how fast time flies... and now that our son is a year old and I look back over his baby pictures, I believe them! His baby book thankfully had lots of lines for recording his firsts as well as my own thoughts and his baby stories. I know this will be valuable to me as he grows, and hopefully he will value it too. I imagine it is harder to write down as much for kids who aren't the first-born, but it's probably worth it to make it a priority. If we don't record their childhood moments, it will be gone. Those memories help me see how far I've come.
So grab a pencil and some paper and write stuff down!
RESOURCES
On Becoming Baby Wise: The Classic Sleep Reference Guide Used by Over 1,000,000 Parents Worldwide
Ask Supernanny: What Every Parent Wants to Know
Photo originally uploaded by orangeacid
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