I'm with Brittany at MommyWords in that the New Year really feels like it starts today.  We're really conditioned to begin things anew on Mondays: jobs, diets (yech), exercise plans, schedules.  When was the last time you started a whole new routine on a day other than Monday?  It doesn't happen too often.  I even started my 101 in 1001 list on a Monday.

So I felt little motivation to think about New Year's resolutions before yesterday, as I began to ponder the new week (and, really, new year) ahead.  I have tended to make New Year's resolutions in the past and, like many other people's, they usually include behaviors or goals that fall in the "life-betterment" category, like: eating no fast food, quitting soda, exercising more, spending more time outside, and so on.  But a lot of those things are already on my 101 in 1001 list, so I don't have the usual resolutions this year.  It's a big year of big changes coming up, so what would I resolve to do?  Be the best mom I can be?  Well, duh, clearly I'm going to do that; I don't need a resolution to remind me.

But there is one thing I want to dedicate significant time and attention to this year: making our house into our home.

We rent the first floor of a house, so in a way we have both an apartment and/or a house, terminology-wise, and we've lived here for almost a year.  However, there are only two pictures hanging up, both in the living room.  The rest are either unframed, not yet printed or not yet hung.  (Getting that done is one of my new 101 in 1001 changes.)  When someone walks in, I don't think there's much that says, "Hey, Tom and Candice live here" (other than the stacks of schoolbooks, multiple stacks of school papers, and growing stacks of Mustang 5.0 magazines; guess which of these items isn't mine).  So the whole home-making idea is going to go beyond just hanging things, but that'll be a part of it.

The first impetus for this is, of course, The Force (and, just to note, dictionary.com defines "impetus" as "a moving force," so there you go).  We're changing the "office" into the nursery and I have some very definite developing ideas about how that room is going to look.  I want the rest of the apartment to have that same purposeful feel - that it was designed specifically with the inhabitant(s) in mind.

The second impetus for this is:

Is that not the cutest pupper face ever?

Meet Buster, the half Yorkie/half Cairn puppy that my parents bought my husband for his birthday.  My parents just picked him up on Saturday (Buster will be two months old this Wednesday) and he is currently residing at my parents' house since my mom isn't working and can watch/feed/play with him all day.  He's little and young so he needs someone around to make sure he gets his mid-day meal, gets to do his business on the newspaper (he's already trained!), and gets to play.

Going nose-to-nose with my mom . . . look how wee tiny he is!

We're going to see how he progresses, grows, eats, et cetera, and determine when he'll move over to our house full-time when it seems like he is (and we are) ready.  Before that, though, we need to cover up our outlets (apparently puppies like to lick outlets), shampoo the carpets, and make sure anything dangerous is out of his reach (which, admittedly you can see, is not that high - lol).  But we need to do a bit of baby-proofing anyway, so this kind of blends with impetus #1.

(And, yes, it is relatively crazy to get a puppy when you're expecting a baby.  This isn't news to me, but he was a gift so what could I say.  Actually, I'll tell you what I will say - this is the hubby's dog primarily so if the time comes that he's an issue, it's the hubby's issue to handle.)

So there are those two little wee ones.  Then there's me.  I hate being in a home that feels like it's without character, without organization, without peace, and with clutter.  I hate it.  I also hate that if you look around, the ratio of my stuff to the hubby's is about 9:1.  I have, admittedly, run the place over with my things (err, mainly my books), so I'm setting out to give my closets and dressers a serious going-over (charity donation coming up) and I'm also going to pack up a bunch of books that I don't foresee needing for school or teaching (those will go in the basement). 

I've only ever had my own room (well, since I was a teenager) or my own apartment, so it's new to me to blend my belongings with someone else.  Not unlike learning to blend our finances, this is taking time but I finally feel ready to take it on.  It's not easy to pack up items you're attached to or used to seeing regularly.  My books feel like friends, honestly, and so do some of my clothes.  When I pack them up, I actually tend to say good-bye (or bye for now) to them.  (Am I the only cuckoo one that does this?  I'm kind of scared to even know.) 

But perhaps the pregnancy is helping me move along with this.  My life and home, in large part, are clearly going to belong to someone new now.  They'll be mine, but ours - and that "ours" is all three of us, so I'd like our home to at least accurately reflect the current two - yours truly and the hubby - before we two become a three.  I don't expect to finish this resolution before my due date (May 19), but maybe the nesting will kick in and I'll be in super-future-Mom mode in April and get more done than I anticipate.  If I don't, that's okay.  I'm giving myself the year for this.  I hope it takes less than a year, but it's okay if the year is what we need.