Spring is my favourite season of the year. It is upbeat, fresh and full of promise and even if I don’t always feel the same myself, it inspires me to at least try. It is my season, I was a Spring baby and this year, as the seasons change and Spring shows herself in all her glorious colours, she reminds me of two events that loom ever closer on my calendar. One is that I will turn 30 for the tenth year running in early May – big birthdays are always a time to take stock – and the other is that I only have five short months before the Little Chap starts school in September.

I say “school” but it is actually a nursery class within the pre-prep department of a local prep school that takes boys from 3-13. We are both proud and excited about this next stage of family life in equal measure but…

I have to admit to a sense of some panic – that these next few months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds will be so precious – like a bubble of time that will be lost to me forever come the new term. How can I make the most of it? What do I want us to do with that time? Will I do it justice? For both of us?

While indulging in a bit of blog hopping through my lunch break earlier this week, I called in on Jen at The Mad House, where I came across her Spring Manifesto (which updates her earlier Autumn and Winter Manifestos) and I thought to myself that I could benefit from writing one too.

So I decided to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and imagine my life this Spring/Summer and write down my aspirations, my hopes and dreams and then try to make them happen.

Roughly speaking my weeks break down as follows (with the exception of school holidays):

It is so easy to drift from one day to the next and watch weeks merge into each other. That’s what the first three months of this year has felt like and that’s more than half the time I have left with the Little Chap before he leaves me for school! Even with extreme effort, planning and military style calendar scheduling, the weeks never fail to rush past and like many mothers I’m sure, I am desperate to bottle the good times to save them for posterity. We have had one illness after another between the three of us lately which hasn’t helped us get out and make fun things happen.

Already my mind is whirling with possibilities for the next few months and I look forward to getting home tonight and pulling out a blank sheet of paper to brainstorm ideas and plan stuff and put neat entries into my diary so they will really happen!

So here are my Spring Goals:

1. Book and plan (i.e. don’t just wing!) two family summer holidays
2. Think of at least one fun activity I can do with the Little Chap for each week and schedule them in my diary
3. Schedule visits/play dates with friends and family for the days I’m not working or on holiday in July/August
4. Agree at least three day-trips with Mayfair Dad that we can do with the Little Chap at weekends with Mayfair Dad or during the week with Grannie Daycare or friends
5. Remember to praise the Little Chap when he makes good choices or listens to his grown-ups
6. Organise a birthday party for my big day
7. Refocus my healthy eating goals (to eat breakfast on work days and drink more water)
8. Look into signing up to walk/run a Race for Life again this year and start training 
9. Continue to work towards my Good Reads target of at least 12 books this year
10. Put at least one-third of my Thursday afternoon “me” time to better use than sitting drinking tea, cleaning up or running errands

Some of this looks ahead to Summer as well so I will definitely have to put a date in the diary to review progress in late May/early June.

What do you want to do this Spring? Will you make a note of it in any way? How will you track your progress?

© Mayfair Mum, 2012