Children and adults alike thrive on routine. My kids know that after lunch, it is naptime. I  know that after lunch it is naptime. In some ways, we both look forward to this quiet time in our house and we seldom fight over it because it is just the way the day goes.

Routines that work are seldom tinkered with. I play with the kids in the morning. I work from home in the afternoons while they sleep. We go to the park or to the library when they wake up from their naps. Dad gets home. We play outside. We eat supper. We pick up. We go to bed. There are variations of sorts every day, but mostly we stick to our routine.

Even though I have moved to a new state since my second child was born, the furniture layout has remained mostly the same, too.  When our first son started walking, we changed the furniture around to accommodate his newfound talent (and to protect some of our more-loved possessions). Three years later in a new house, the floor plan was still in place, accommodating another walker, protecting the same loved possessions. There was no real need to change it, so we didn't. I even hung the pictures in the same pattern as they had been in our previous home.

Then one day, as my kids and I were looking at pictures of the last three years of our lives, I realized that I had stayed much the same, too. When Joe was born, I had gone for the ever-important new mom makeover. I changed my hairstyle to meet the needs of my new, busier lifestyle. And that was the last time I had bothered to update my look. I had kept up well enough with new clothing styles, but the me of three years ago and the me of today were distressingly the same. Same makeup, same hairstyle, same routine for getting ready in the morning. No wonder I was bored as of late! I was so used to my routine that I was routining the joy out of daily life.

Never one to take such a self-revelation lightly, I started combing through magazines and searching online for a new hairstyle that would still fit my hip mom lifestyle but would breathe some new life into my look. Then I chopped off six inches of hair. "Cut quickly before I change my mind," I told the stylist.

When I came home from the salon, I changed up the furniture in the living room and in the office. Not a major home makeover, but enough to alter the physical landscape of my life. I even switched up the routine for my boys. What a difference little changes can make in our outlook on life. They have something different to look forward to and I have a new perspective and a fabulously hip haircut.