New Year's Rissolution

I'm not usually one for New Year's Resolutions. They're just a way of starting the year with failure, and I have enough things I can get wrong, without setting myself up for any more. This year, however, we ended up trying to explain what a New Year's Resolution is to LittleBear. The best we managed was that it's something you promise to try and do better this year than you did last year, and that it's usually something that you either don't like doing very much, or is difficult, or perhaps you're not very good at. (This amendment to the definition needed to be added when LittleBear attempted to declare that his New Year's Resolution was going to be being better at building dinosaur dens. Admirable though that is, we didn't think it quite captured the spirit of the notion).

By way of an example to LittleBear, I chose a New Year's Resolution:

I will try not to shout at LittleBear just because I'm tired, when he hasn't done anything wrong.

After some thought, LittleBear then came up with not one but two New Year's Resolutions:

I will try not to do things that make Mummy cross.

I will try and make more cuddles for Mummy.

And every day so far I've had many moments in which my lovely, lovely LittleBear has thrown himself at me, wrapped his arms round my neck and declared, "this is one of my New Year's Resolution cuddles for you Mummy".

There are times I think I can't have gone too badly wrong, despite the hinted-at shouting-when-tired, if I have such a loving little boy.

And BigBear? Apparently he's so perfect he doesn't need to make any resolutions.*



* For those not actually familiar with BigBear, you may not successfully identify this as a joke. It would be hard to find anyone less arrogant than that statement implies. In fact BigBear's view of resolutions is rather the same as mine. There's not need to set oneself up for more failures than life already throws at one. And no need to jump on a bandwagon with the rest of the world either.