The Beginning of Something Wonderful.

Happy 2012! Not to be a blogging cliche, but I love the fresh start of a new year. New planner, new goals, another chance to do it all right. I have a sneaking suspicion 2012 is going to be pretty fantastic - not in small part due to the little girlie kicking away in my belly, protesting that we are out of bed approximately two hours too early today. 

2011 was simultaneously wonderful and pretty awful. We clinked champagne flutes at midnight last year already ten months into the process of trying to have a baby. And, as much as I tried to focus on everything else I had going on and count all of the things I had to be grateful for, infertility has a way of occupying every single thought in your head. 

The first eight months of last year, we were trucking through a lot of dark days. Every new page of the calendar was staring me in the face as another month failed, on top of the fact that I was pumped up on medicines that made me feel and act like a crazy person. At the time, the only bright spot I could find was that Hugh and I cleaved together during those days rather than being driven apart.

But, just as my peach of a husband would promise me over and over again as a sort of mantra, we got there. On August 15th at 6:45am, our whole life changed with one little test (that I almost threw in the trash before I realized it was positive). I spent the next four months completely overwhelmed with excitement, but also feeling like I was floating along in a fog. A fog of hormones and shock that we were finally having a baby and joy so huge it was honestly a little bit scary, and, let's not forget, the paralyzing fear that something was going to happen to take it all away. 

It's funny how much can change in just twelve months - last year we spent part of our holiday break deciding on fertility medicines and a strategy with my doctor. This year, we spent our time off painting a nursery and hanging up baby clothes and putting together a crib. Oh, life, so tricky sometimes.

And now here we are. Back from the holiday that we both needed much more than we realized, and eager to welcome all that the year ahead promises. I am refreshed and ready to go. Which brings me to my 2012 resolutions. Last year, I had a three page list of things I wanted to do differently, ways I wanted to be better. It wasn't my most effective year of resolutions, let's just put it that way. In hindsight, it is easy for me see I was grasping at straws, trying to get control over something since I couldn't control the one thing I really wanted. 

This year, I've decided on a simpler plan for my resolutions. Over the last eighteen days I have spent much of my time off reflecting on what I want the year to look like, on how I want to feel when we're toasting its end in twelve sure-to-fly-by months, and I have decided that my 2012 will be driven my a word:

Intentional. 

I want to be intentional with my energy, my time, my diet, my money, my relationships. Coming off of a year during which I feel like a bobbed along in the current and, for the most part, let my life happen, I am ready to be living with intent again.

Let's do this, 2012.