2016 Reflections + 2017 Goals

It seems unreal that another year has come and gone. We are hurtling towards 2017, ready or not. I wanted to take some time to share some reflections of the past year and some goals for the next year.

2016 Reflections:

Home: This year has brought about many personal changes for me. I became a mom to a sweet little girl earlier this year and that has proven to be wonderfully challenging. Sleepless nights, bottle refusal, figuring out nursing, hormonal mood swings, and living far away from family tested me almost to my limit some days. Our apartment has quickly become overrun with baby things and doing the daycare drop off and pickup has become the new normal. Watching my daughter grow up has been amazing! She is definitely a talker (our phonemic inventory currently consists of /m, b, d, g, w/), she crawls like a madwoman from point A to point B, and is now pulling herself up on EVERYTHING. It’s truly amazing to see how much these little ones change so quickly.

Work: As with any life changes, some priorities shift. I still feel that I’m doing quality therapy, but this year I don’t have all the bells and whistles that I have in the past. I find myself pulling things that I’ve made from my shelves and using those rather than always having something new to do. My students don’t seem to mind, but I notice it. I suppose this is just a natural phase and was bound to happen (<—blog post coming on all this later). I do still enjoy going to work and my mind stays present at work when I’m there. As soon as my contract hours are up; however, my mind switches to mom mode and I no longer linger after work because I am eager to get to daycare and pick up my little girl.

Business: Learning to balance work and home, while also maintaining my blog/TPT store has been quiet complicated. Admittedly, I haven’t made as many activities as I would’ve liked because I was focusing on my family. As my daughter has gotten older, I see that shifting a bit so I hope to return to that, as it’s a good creative outlet. This area has probably slid the most, but with good reason!

2017 Goals:

My goals are a little different this year. I don’t have as many as in previous years and they aren’t all focused on my career.

1. Pay off my student loans. I’ve worked super hard these past few years and I’m close to meeting this goal. I hope that by the end of the year, I can accomplish this one.
2. Learn more about speech therapy for cleft palate. I have one little friend who I am sort of stumped with and I need to do some more research to figure out how best to get better bilabial sounds out of him. It’s an area that grad school didn’t really provide too much information on.
3. Take some “me” time. I think all moms struggle with this, but I really want to try to do this and not feel guilty about it.
4. Try really hard to make it to ASHA this year. Not sure that will happen with it being on the west coast this year, but I’m going to do my best to accomplish this.
5. Make memories with my family. My daughter is growing so fast that it’s crazy!

What are your goals? How was your 2016?