Happy New Year! (Replete with Links!)

My most fervent wish on this last day of 2005 is that Pearl gets her tooth in already because the poor girl's crankiness is driving me loopy. That's right, on top of Christmas insanity, dairy-induced reflux, and her first cold, this week Pearl is getting her first tooth. That means that is week is in the running for Worst Week of the Year, along with "The Week I Experienced Preterm Labor and Was Sentenced to Bedrest", and "The Week (Two Weeks Postpartum) That My Kittums Died, My Family Dog Died, and My Husband Cut Off His Long, Gorgeous Hair".

Other than those few bad weeks 2005 was a wonderful year for me. There was our honeymoon in Cozumel, the experience of carrying a big, active baby in the womb, becoming an aunt, and giving birth to my daughter, and the whirlwind of motherhood that followed.

Looking forward: I have a few resolutions for the coming year. Usually I don't "do" New Year's Resolutions but we have a few things we've decided to work on and it's the start of the new year, so why not?

• Mostly Meatless, More Organic - We are making the move to eating less meat, for a variety of reasons. Pearl being a big one. It's easier to make healthy choices for yourself when you want to model those choices for your child, and give her the benefit of eating the healthiest food we can give her! We personally both love to eat meat, but we want to avoid the hormones and antibiotics as well as the nasty process of raising animals for slaughter so we're trying to cut back on our meat consumption and ideally eat only organic, preferably locally grown meat. Since that is so pricy we're going to be cutting back on how much we do eat, which brings us to the next resolution:

• Finances, Finances, Finances - Oh, how we have struggled with finances. We must be the most irresponsible couple in regards to money. We moved into this rent-free home with the idea of saving and putting back money, but it has not worked out that way at all. Quite the opposite, some months. Of course there has been the switch from two incomes to one, but still! It hasn't gone well. We really, really, need to bite the bullet and go frugal. More frugal anyway, it's not like we're up to our ears in debt and things we don't need - we just don't have a lot of money to toss around and we're tossing it in the wrong direction. This is especially important now because:

• Moving - We want to move. Mr. Peach especially wants to move out of here, and I want him to be happy, but I want to move too. I would like to own our own home but I don't think that's going to be possible any time soon, so we're going to look for for a duplex or apartment or house for rent back in town. I personally love living in the country... but where we are now, we are sandwiched between chicken houses and cow pastures, and in the vicinity of fields where farmers spread hog manure. It stinks. Literally. I grew up on a mountainside, in a forest. That's the kind of country I like. This is not it. Also, we want to homeschool Pearl, and I want to have quicker access to the library, and art classes and activities, and other homeschooling parents. Time is probably the biggest factor for me - I want to put to better use the time spent driving an hour any time I want to go anywhere, the time spent washing dishes by hands and arranging a trip out of the house to do laundry - when I was pregnant and unemployed I found it all charming and quaint but that is no longer the case. So, for several months we are going to put back the amount of money we would be spending on rent, to see how well we manage with that reduction. If it looks like we'll be okay, we'll move! I might even get a part-time evening job to help out, since I wouldn't worry about being so far away from Pearl if we lived in town.

So wish me luck with my resolutions! I'm gonna need it!