Moms Need New Adventures

I was reading a recent post on my favorite blog by Kelle Hampton, Enjoying the Small Things at www.kellihampton.com, and she was discussing how every month she was going to challenge herself to do something new...something she always wanted to do but had always found an excuse not to. She challenged herself to run everyday. Even if it was just a few blocks, she was committing to put her running shoes on every day for a month. This stayed with me even after to folding closed the cover of my lovely new iPad (my husband thinks it's his iPad, but just because he got it for his birthday :). So I continued thinking about this and how important it is to continually add to our own personal dynamic...kind of a landscape of who we are as a person. Choosing to give ourselves a new challenge on a monthly basis changes the landscape, and adds new dimensions to who we are as a person.

I feel like this idea is central to the whole reason I started this blog...to remind mom's just like me that they are important people independent of their lovely children, that they deserve nice things that make them feel pretty, that they need to pamper themselves, and to have an identity as a person, as well as a mom. How better to find definition in yourself then posing new challenges, finding new things you love, and accomplishing things that had always been on your "someday I'm going to ____" list.

In challenging yourself every month to try something new for those 30 days maybe you'll find things you hate and never want to do again, but at least you tried. For example, I really don't think I like fish. I've tried it a few times...don't like it. My husband doesn't like it, so there's never any pressure for me to make it or motivation for me to try it. So, in thinking about these monthly challenges I decided maybe one month I should commit to making at least 5 different kinds of fish for dinner that month. Maybe I will find one or two recipes that we like and can throw into our dinner rotation. On the other hand, maybe I slave over 5 dinners and each time we are disappointed or end up bagging it and ordering takeout. Either way I can come out at the end with a broader landscape of who I am. I can either add "fish connoisseur" to my definition of myself, or permanently remove "try salmon" from my list of "someday I'm going to _____".

So this month I'm going to come up with my challenge for myself for July :) When I do I'm going to make myself accountable to any of you who may be reading this, hoping you might be out there listening. Maybe you"ll take the challenge on too. Maybe you'll share your personal challenge here and we can do it together.

A few things I have been thinking of for my first challenge in July:

• Take at least one picture of my kids every day and add them to my blog 

• Try to make a different kind of fish for dinner once a week for the month

• Finally start Ben's baby scrapbook even though he is almost 5, and complete at least 10 pages before the month is up.(Hanna's book is a beautiful testimony to her first year of life and of my creative energies...as a second child Ben is lacking any concrete representation of the first year of his life.)

What would you do? I'd love to hear your ideas!!