Nearly every New Year, since I started this blog in 2012, I’ve opened with a New Year’s post, because I love New Year’s!

I know, I know. No one loves New Year’s; New Year’s Eve, maybe, but New Year’s Day is, for most, the beginning of a lot of annoying gym, exercise equipment, and weight loss service ads. For me, however, this is a time of reflection and renewal. I get to look back on how my life changed in the previous year and look ahead with excitement and optimism about what’s to come. This year, however… well, reflection and goal setting have taken a backseat to creating another human and keeping the ones I’m already charged with alive and well.

I started with good intentions. I really did. My New Year’s resolutions were as follows:

• Swear less
• Control my emotions better
  • Eat healthy until this baby arrives and then starve myself until normal
  • Attend Mass regularly
  • Listen to Father Mike’s Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year podcasts every day
  • Actively engage with my children more, instead of doing chores or running errands
  • Catch up on my family albums and have them printed
  • Catch up on my home video editing
  • Spend less time on my phone

I tried, y’all. I really did, but getting ready for this new baby, by making sure I do everything for him that I did for the others…. chasing my twin toddlers and their suddenly very mobile baby brother around the house… potty training, coping with family-wide RSV and Jake’s vasectomy recovery… and now transitioning from cribs to toddler beds… has meant that a good day is one where Mama isn’t crying. I’ll be honest. Those are pretty rare lately.

I don’t know what it is about this pregnancy, but it has been hands down the roughest of my three in the last four to five years. I’m sure my three under three are a contributing factor, but I’m also just so tired of being pregnant and scrambling to get ready for a new baby. About a year ago, I told Jake that I wanted to do an embryo transfer as soon as possible, before I changed my mind. I am nothing if not self aware. There is zero chance we’d be having this baby had we waited six more months… and I’m thrilled we’re so fortunate as to get our two girls and two boys. I’m just ready for this to be over, so I can move forward and feel like myself again. I want to stop crying and feeling like I can’t keep all the balls in the air. I want to get out of a chair on the first try. I want to look at myself in the mirror and like what I see.

Regardless of my current mental state, I firmly believe there’s always time for self-improvement. I tried for a Lenten reset, after I heard my Violet say “bag of dicks” from the backseat during a frustrating traffic moment and vowed to give up swearing entirely. I’m sure I failed by the end of the day. So, here I am, tomorrow being March 1st, pressing reset once again… with perhaps a little less ambition.

• Don’t swear in front of the kids… even while driving
• Eat healthy enough not to feel sick during this pregnancy and then starve myself until normal
• Attend Mass when no one’s hurt/sick/just had an ugly-crying mental breakdown over the Christmas ornaments the girls strung all over their play yard
• Control my emotions in front of the kids as much as possible and take comfort in the fact that they will not remember this
• Spend more time with the kids, even if it’s just looking at and naming animals on Instagram, while snuggling in the recliner
• Reallocate scrolling time to things I enjoy more, like working on family albums and videos and just listening to an audiobook
• That’s it. Pregnant with my fourth, with three under three, is just not the time to clean up my language when the children are out of earshot. This is, apparently, my largest baby yet, so I’m going to eat what I want, within reason. If I just can’t make it to church, for mental or physical reasons, then I just can’t. Breakdowns are officially allowed. I’ll try my best to limit them to nap time. As much as the girls enjoy trips to the park and being chased around the yard, it’ll have to wait until Daddy can do it or Mama has recovered from her C-section. It is okay to count the low-key moments as quality time. If my mind is fried and scrolling is all I want to do, so be it. Cuz, that’s all I’ve got in me until 2025.