2014 was my first full year as a parent. Baby Carrot turned 7 months last January 1st, so the year was going to bring us a lot of milestones – crawling, walking, first words, the first birthday party, etc. – and I definitely felt a lot of pressure to get things “right.”

As I look back, I realize that I broke a number of the parenting resolutions I made last year, and in perfect hindsight, I’m glad I did.

Resolution 1: Ditch the pacifier by 18 months

As most first time parents, I’ve done a lot of reading on pacifiers and had decided that we’d work on being fully rid of the pacifier by Baby C’s 18 month birthday (in December). There wasn’t a particular reason for that specific deadline, but since Baby C was only using the pacifier for sleep, and had pretty consistent sleep habits, I figured we could easily wean from the pacifier by then.

Needless to say, my plan dissipated pretty quickly as we got closer to the 18 month marker, and in hindsight, I’m glad we didn’t force it. We had a long and rough transition from 2 naps to 1 that resulted in weeks of 4-5 AM wakeups, late bedtimes and inconsistent naps, so we needed every resource we could get to get through it. Then came Thanksgiving travel, and after things finally settled down in December, well after Baby C’s 18 month birthday, we decided to hold off weaning in case the infamous 18 month sleep regression hit.

Thankfully, so far, we haven’t seen the regression (knock wood!), but I decided to not worry about pacifier weaning for now. After talking to our pediatrician and a friend who’s a speech therapist, I was assured that limited use of a pacifier is not going to do Baby C any harm. As a very active kid, Baby C takes longer that average to wind down, so having a pacifier helps her relax for sleep, but rarely does she need it again after it falls out at night. And since she uses it on such a limited basis, there’s no danger in her speech being affected. I have a feeling that as her system keeps maturing, she’ll naturally end up needing the pacifier less and less, so I decided it’s one less thing to worry about right now.

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Resolution 2: Keep up Baby C’s great eating

At the start of last year, Baby C was eating a wide variety of purees and was exploring finger food. Since Mr. Carrot is a vegetarian, it was easy enough to take the food we were making for ourselves and puree it for Baby C, so she was exposed to a lot of foods, flavors and spices, and she seemed to love all of them. As she came closer to ditching purees by her first birthday, I assumed that if we kept offering her the same foods and flavors she already knew in puree form, her great eating habits would stick.

These days, Baby C will usually try at least a bite of something new, which is great, but unless it’s pasta, hot dogs, hummus or steamed veggies, she promptly feeds it to her dad or me. For the first few months after we moved fully to table food, I worried a lot every time Baby C wouldn’t eat something, and worried even more as her range of acceptable food narrowed more and more, worried that she wasn’t getting valuable nutrition. I’ve read every book, blog and article about diversifying a child’s palate, but over time, I realized that the best I could really do is allow her to control her own food intake and not make her feel like she’s being forced.

Despite her limited palate, it’s thankfully a fairly healthy one. We make pasta sauce weekly out of fresh veggies, so even though she’s eating pasta nearly every day, she’s getting a good range of vitamins and carbs. I worry about her protein intake, since she doesn’t eat a lot of meat and won’t touch beans, so we try to supplement with plenty of milk, cheese and yogurt, which she enjoys. We also find that she’ll eat a broader range of food at daycare, so we ask her caretakers to try and give her a bit extra meat and beans since she’s more likely to eat them there, and we keep on offering her whatever we make for ourselves to try, even if she’ll only eat a bite. I admit that I do worry about a potential slide in her eating as she gets older, but my resolution for this year is to avoid pressuring her and risk creating an unhealthy relationship with food and with us as a result.

Resolution 3: Little to no screen time

There’s a pretty broad consensus that screen time before age 2 is best avoided, and to be limited in childhood. Mr. Carrot and I haven’t had cable in years, and we had no real intention to expose Baby C to screen time, but we realized pretty quickly into the start of last year that we were going to lose that battle, since her daycare does turn their TV on for short periods. We focused instead more on controlling what she saw and how long her exposure was, rather than trying to prevent her from TV entirely, so the bulk of what Baby C watches is Baby Einstein videos, Sesame Street and the occasional PBS cartoons that her daycare turns on.

What we found as Baby C got older is that the TV she does watch has actually been a great learning tool for her. We were gifted a few different Baby Einstein DVDs, including an older My First Signs DVD, and it’s not only Baby C’s favorite, it also taught her basic sign language within a few weeks. Mr. Carrot and I haven’t had a lot of exposure to kids songs, but Elmo’s Favorite Songs has taught her (and us!) a lot of popular nursery rhymes and kids songs. And I admit, Daniel Tiger and Curious George are excellent calming influences on a naturally high energy kid, so we occasionally deploy them to help wind Baby C down after a particularly energetic morning or afternoon. I’ve been thrilled to see how much Baby C learns from the screen time she does get, and how focused and calm it can make her (ironically, since screen time is often blamed for making kids more distractable), but we continue to be mindful of limiting her watching to an hour or two max (and it’s usually nowhere near that, since we try to focus on activities rather than screen time), and everything turns off at least 2 hours prior to bedtime.

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For 2015, my resolutions are much less concrete and more focused on creating positive experiences for all of us as a family. We’re quickly approaching the Terrible Two’s, the era of tantrums and pickier eating and potty training, so instead of setting goals or markers to hit, I’ve resolved to:

Keep working on my patience, which is a continuing process for me. A level head is going to make challenges that we’re heading into a lot easier to handle, and while I don’t resolve to be perfect, I do resolve to keep trying my best.

Let Baby C set her own pace. This has been the biggest takeaway from the past year – kiddo will get where she needs to be in her own time. I’ve already had a lot of pressure about starting to potty train from outsiders, even though Baby C is only 19 months old and doesn’t have any readiness signs, but as I’ve learned with watching how her eating habits develop and how her sleep habits mature, we’ll figure out what the right pace is, and she will tell us what it is.

Are there any parenting resolutions you’re making for 2015?