The Mom Crowd

The New Year is a great time to reflect on 2008 and set goals for 2009. But why should we add more pressure to our lives by setting goals that we may or may not obtain? Goal setting helps you focus your energy and set your priorities. You take control of your actions and time, rather than letting time and money slip through your hands wondering where it all went at the end of the year.

Accomplishing goals boosts your self-confidence and gives you a ton of motivation to make your life better. Even if you are satisfied with how your life is going, setting a goal and the challenge of seeing if you can meet them is incredibly motivating and enjoyable.

The key to taking pride in meeting your goals is to set SMART goals. Don’t just throw random resolutions into the void hoping that they will somehow be met. Create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

One goal that my husband set for himself was to read one non-fiction book a month for the entire year.  He could have said, “I would like to read more non-fiction books this year,” but how would he have known if he met it?  His goal is SMART.

The goal: To read one non-fiction book a month for the entire year.

specific: one non-fiction book
measurable: one book a month for the year
attainable: challenging to find time to read, but not too far from reach
realistic: reading non-fiction isn’t a chore for him
timely: there is a timeframe for his goal.

On New Year’s Day last year my husband and I found a family member to babysit our baby while we went out to lunch and discussed our goals for the year. We will probably do the same this year. We set goals as a family and separately as individuals.

Sharing our goals with each other brings us closer together in our marriage. He also holds me accountable for mine, but only if I ask to hold me accountable! Conversely I don’t nag him either. It is just a fun exercise to even express our goals and dream out loud to each other. We like to set goals for different categories such as physical, financial, spiritual, social and intellectual.

Over the next three days I am going to post ideas for SMART goals in the financial, physical, and intellectual categories. I hope you come back and join me as we discuss our goals in these three areas!

The Christmas cards sitting on my mantle are bellowing at me in their cursive gold fonts to have a joyful and peace filled holiday season.  I think the cards are mocking me as I run about town shopping and stressing about cookies and wrapping presents.  I do desire to have joy and peace over the next two weeks and I am determined to guard my joy and peace.

Joy stealers come with many different faces. Unmet expectations certainly steal your peace when you are disappointed and upset. Anger is a form of unmet expectations. So next time you are angry ask yourself which expectation you had wasn’t met. Then you have the choice to look at a situation logically or choose to just get over it. My spiritual mom would ask me when I was upset “What is the worst thing that can happen?” Once you worked out a situation backwards, you realize that it is just money, stuff, a bummer, or a disappointment. Then you come out thankful that you are alive and everything is relatively okay.

Unresolved conflict steals your joy when you are fighting with a your spouse, family member or a friend. Some conflicts can be resolved quickly. While others have been the elephant in the family living for years. My parents have unresolved conflict between themselves as long as I have been alive, but I decide not to take sides and not let their conflict between each other bug me. They are both wrong and my only concern is their relationship between them and me. Even when they complain about the other to me, I have to let their comments roll off my back. Sometimes putting on a hard shell and letting stupid comments roll off my back is my way of guarding my peace and joy.

There are joy stealers on the road! They steal parking spaces, go too slow, block the parking lot by waiting ten minutes for someone to load up their car and start it just so they can walk 20 steps closer to the door. One joy stealer may even be in the driver’s seat of the car! Your husband may be driving like a maniac or not going the route you would have gone. Just close your eyes and remember you will get there eventually.

Remember the big picture and keep your peace. What does Christmas mean to you? Is it spending quality time with your family? Is it remembering the Savior coming to earth so we can spend eternity in heaven? Is it being generous to others or a good time off from work? Whatever reason you celebrate Christmas, remember the big picture when something goes wrong and ask yourself if the big picture is still being accomplished. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

As you have joy and peace the rest of your family will feel it too. Don’t keep that joy and peace to yourself let it radiate from you wherever you go!

How do you plan to guard your peace and joy? Are you having a rough holiday season or this one being pleasant to you?

As many of you know, our family is adopting a child through Reece’s Rainbow and a while ago, The Mom Crowd hosted a raffle to help bring another child from Reece’s Rainbow home.  You can catch up with this beautiful family and their new daughter, Addison {AKA: Nika} at their family blog.  Is that enough “hyperlinking” for ya?

I wanted to take a moment to share with you about Reece’s Rainbow and their mission.  Reece’s Rainbow is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to raise awareness regarding the plight of children with Down syndrome in foreign orphanages and their availability to be adopted, to raise adoption grants for waiting children, to seek out adoptive families for these children, to help adopting families during their adoption process with fund raising opportunities and paperwork assistance {and emotional support-I threw that one in!}, to provide humanitarian aid to foreign orphanages, to facilitate support groups for birth parents of children with Down syndrome to help decrease the number of children placed in orphanages, and to enact social change abroad about children with Down syndrome and other special needs through the testimony of adoption.

In 2006, Reece’s Rainbow expanded from an outreach program for families with children with Down syndrome in Atlanta to an organization promoting international adoption of children with Down syndrome.   In the short two years since beginning this new focus, over 120 children with Down syndrome and other special needs have found forever families with the help of Reece’s Rainbow. As of June 2008, they have dispersed over $86,000 to adopting families and have waiting children with substantial grants ready for their prospective parents.  Many orphans around the world are not receiving adequate nutrition and health care.  In Eastern European and other countries, orphans with Down syndrome are commonly transferred to mental institutions if they are not adopted by the age of four. After they are transferred, most die within the first year from lack of basic care.

There is a special way you can help Reece’s Rainbow fulfill their mission.  Every year, Reece’s Rainbow hosts a Christmas Angel Tree Project.  Right now, you can see every child with Down syndrome waiting for a family through Reece’s Rainbow and sponsor one or more of them for Christmas.  With every $35 donation, you will receive a special ornament with a picture of the child you are sponsoring for Christmas.  Will you consider sponsoring an orphan with Down syndrome this Christmas?  In order to receive an ornament, donations must be received by December 15th.  Please visit their site today and help bring an orphan home for Christmas!

Earlier this week, McKenna gave excellent tips for giving gifts to your kids’ teachers.  It got me thinking about this time of year and how special gift giving can be.  Now that Black Friday is behind us and the holiday season is here, I’m getting things ready for the grandparents.

This is the second year that my sisters-in-law and I put together a calendar with pictures of our children for Grandmom.  There are four grandchildren, so we each selected three pictures of our children, giving us 12 for the year.  I ordered the calendar through winkflash.com, and with shipping included, each of us only had to put in $7!  Last year, the debut calendar was a huge hit, so I know this will be a tradition for years to come.  

Of course, photo calendars are just the tip of the iceberg; all the major photo processing sites offer great gifts using special pictures of your choice.  I have purchased magnets and coasters using special pictures as well.  Playing cards and jigsaw puzzles are also a cool idea.  If you prefer to go a bit more straightforward, a photo album or framed picture is always a hit.  In these penny-pinching times, I have gone for these gift ideas more than once.  I’m also fond of framing the kids’ artwork, but I’ll only do this as a gift idea sparingly.

What other ideas do you have for grandparent gifts?

Do you have a community where you can find friends who will listen to you vent or just watch your kids for an hour? I don’t know what I would do without my online community of friends and my friends who live near me. I need them to ask advice or have adult interaction that lets me think about something other than diapers and what is for lunch. We sometimes watch each other’s kids while we go to appointments. I got through my three months of extreme morning sickness with the help and kindness of my friends.

Creating a community for yourself whether it be online or physically in your local area takes work. You have to step out of your shell and possibly risk rejection. You have to keep up with people’s lives. You have to schedule playdates and make time for people. You have to watch their kids, if they watch yours. No matter how much work it is, the benefits of having friends and community far outweigh the disadvantages of not having a group of people that you can lean on.

Here are a few places to find community:

• Online 

There are forums, blogs (like ours!), and social networks. I love reading my friends’ blogs. Dawn is one of our writers here. I haven’t seen her in person in 10 years, but I feel like I have a good friend through her blog, Facebook, and our emails. I haven’t really gotten into forums. I tried Baby Center, but just never got into it. I like Cafe Mom and the Mom Bloggers Club. I just recently became active in my Facebook account. I have a Twitter account, but none of my friends use it so it fell by the wayside. I like that The Mom Crowd is a part of the Blogher community and I enjoy reading other moms in the Blogher Network.

• Groups Targeting Mothers

MOPS is an organization to help you find other moms in your community. Stroller Fit leads you in workouts while pushing your baby in a stroller. You could join a La Leche League Group for breastfeeding mothers or find a playgroup in your area on Meetup.com.

• Your Neighborhood

Meeting your neighbors can be tricky, because you have catch them while they are outside. I met one mom at the playground. I stopped another mom while she was out walking. I am sure some of them think I am nuts, but I know where I can go if I need just a teaspoon of vanilla to finish my batter (true story). Just knowing who our immediate neighbors are is helpful and may even help you find a babysitter if one of them has a teenager looking for some cash.

• Church

A local church can be a great place to find other mothers who live around you. I have at least 5 friends that I met at church within a five-minute drive from me that I know I can call on if I need some help. During Hurricane Ike my friend Kara came over at the last minute to help me clean my house to get ready for guests. Depending on the size of the church it can be hard to meet people on a Sunday morning and you may have to attend an activity, a class, a life group, or a small group. Going to a small group can be difficult with kids bedtimes and schedules, but making time for meeting and connecting with people is worth the effort to have community.

So where do you find community? Do you feel supported or this something that you have to work at?