With the end of the year approaching, and a new one about to dawn, everyone is thinking about their New Year’s resolutions. Vows of self-improvement – whether to eat healthy, exercise more, spend less and so on – are being made at this very moment, all over the world.
Never mind the research that no one keeps these resolutions. Last year, Forbes referenced research by the University of Scranton’s Journal of Clinical Psychology stating that only eight per cent of people keep and achieve their goals for the new year. For the rest of us, resolutions are discarded by February at the latest. My resolutions don’t even make it to the second week of January. Experience has taught me to not even bother. Instead of setting myself up for disappointment, I like to look backwards instead, and reminisce. What, if anything, did I learn in 2013, as I navigated the never-ending minefield that is motherhood? I had to make a list.
• Life, as a parent, is a musical. You discover this soon after the baby is born. You spend your day singing. You become so entrenched in the singing that you start speaking in a singsong voice to your spouse, even if you’re just asking about the weather. This continues until about baby’s first birthday. I learnt, in 2013, to sing. All. The. Time.
• I truly miss the days of film cameras. Taking photos used to be a straightforward experience, using an old-fashioned film camera, which I would take to a photo studio and, an hour later, leave with a stack of photos to sift through and easily place in albums. Now, photo-taking means downloading pictures off the small digital camera, the larger DSLR camera, my phone, Mr T’s phone, the iPad; it’s endless. Thousands upon thousands of photos to go through, organise, archive, delete, print, figure out what the hell to do with. I have accepted that I will never, ever find the time to go through all these photos, which means that really, they’re all useless, taking up digital space, a permanent item on my never-ending to-do list.
• TV is not the devil’s work, as most parenting advice would have me believe. Kids do not turn into zombies in front of the TV. Likewise for the iPad. I learnt, in 2013, that YouTube is my best friend, and that babies can absolutely learn from watching videos. How else do you think Baby A is so proficient in the Itsy Bitsy Spider song, the Wheels on the Bus song, the Head Shoulders Knees and Toes song and The ABC Song? The television and YouTube on the iPad, that’s how.
• I need to stop buying silk shirts. And shirts with any sort of embellishments or rhinestones; those types of shirts just call out to Baby A as if to say, “Rip every last bead off me!” I also need to stop buying anything that comes with the “dry clean only” caveat. I need to start accepting permanent stains in my life. I don’t, however, have to stop buying white as most moms like to tell me, because bleach, like YouTube, is my friend.
• The best thing I did in 2013 is quit my full-time job and freelance, part-time, from home, so I can be with Baby A. Allowing her to drive me nuts all day is completely worth giving up a job I loved.
Priorities, it seems, shift and change with parenthood.
Hala Khalaf is a freelance writer based in Abu Dhabi
