I sat down a couple of weeks ago and went over my goals for 2008 then set out my goals for 2009. I feel good about 2008 – I accomplished my major goal of having a healthy baby, and I redesigned my site with a fresh design and clean code.

Several of my 2009 goals center around our nutrition and I’m going to share those here:

Improve our overall family nutrition to be more in line with traditional nourishing diets:  We’re starting this with our 30-day WAPF challenge (eating only from the WAPF “best” and “good” foods for the entire 30 days). I plan to maintain that eating style as much as possible this year with my main focus being on properly soaking all our grains/beans/legumes/nuts.

Keep our family supplied with homemade fermented foods: sauerkraut and beet kvass are the two I want to keep going on all the time. I’d also like to learn to make kimchi and kefir this year.

Start a small square foot garden in the spring and have it produce through first frost in the fall.  We’re hoping to do 16 squares (1 square foot each) this year as we learn to keep up our own garden

Stock our pantry: I’d like to have a 3 month food supply stored in our pantry. This is challenging to since I want it to be as WAPF/PPNF friendly as possible. It also needs to be gluten-free so no wheat!

And some minor goals I have are to look into healthy cookware and how to eliminate microwave use, as well as move towards mostly green home and personal care products!

See more nourishing resolutions and get inspired at the Nourishing Gourmet!

Learn more about the WAPF and PPNF.

These things are pretty natural in pregnancy and it’s a good time to take action. It’s also a good thing to do to get ready for your baby. Such things are not quite so easy once you actually have a little baby. But still do-able. If you’re already parenting your baby, or if you already have more than one child, you can still sit and think about these same things and they’ll still be valuable to your family. I talk about the context of pregnancy because it’s just natural.

So where do you start? As much as you find yourself thinking about what you’d like to do and who you’d like to be, you may be confused about where to start, where you are, even who you are. This is especially natural when you’re becoming a mother. So the best place to start is to figure out where you are. And to think about where you want to go.

Do you want to get the house organized before your baby comes? This is a good goal that can have a big impact. Do you want to figure out a parenting style that feels right to you?

These are two goals that don’t feel too “deep” but will help you feel more prepared for your baby. Start by writing down your goals and thinking through some steps that will help you to achieve them. Make sure your goal is concrete enough that you can put a “yes” or “no” on the completion. This is easy for organizing your house. But for something like picking a parenting style it’s not so easy. A good goal could be “I want to research popular parenting theories.” Then you can ask yourself if you’ve done that. You can plan steps – check out parenting books from the library, visit parenting sites online (like Natural Birth and Baby Care!), read magazines, etc.

It’s good to think through steps to achieving your goals. Go with managable chunks. Say you want to start your house by organizing the kitchen. Set aside 30 minutes every day for a week to work on the kitchen and see where it gets you. Small, consistent steps will help you get where you want to go.

As I said above, another natural pregnancy question is “do I want to stop working?” You could set a goal to logically examine your options and the implications of those options. Examine the benefits and the down-side to returning to work. Do the same for staying at home. Consider work at home options. Knowing the logical facts now will help you make an informed choice once the full emotional impact has arrived (in the form of your baby!)

You might think of some other goals that are not quite so directly related to pregnancy. And that’s fine. It’s a good time to think over all your goals and to decide what you want to set down and work on now. I’ll write more about setting goals and more practical considerations for helping you achieve those goals. I may also share some that I’m working on