(Jessica sipping)
- Well this one didn't come true.
But how about my other goals and wishes of 2022?
Did they come true? Let's find out.
Hello lovely people
and welcome to my annual goals and wishes video.
The first video that I like to do
when we come back into the new year,
just to kind of reset ourselves,
think back over the year that has been,
look and take stock of what's gone on
and also look ahead to the year
that we're going to have together,
to maybe set ourselves some challenges.
Yeah, I mean I'm not big on kind of, I don't know,
setting yourself resolutions.
I think there should be some kind of,
really more kindness to ourselves
rather than attempting to beat ourselves up.
That we've got to put down hard and fast things,
and then if we don't meet them, we've somehow failed.
I think it's nice just to have
things we'd quite like to happen
and if it doesn't, it doesn't.
Except for the Diet Coke thing, obviously...
Bitter. Now, if you've been playing along with me
for a couple of years,
you will have left in the comments of last year's video,
your own goals and wishes for 2022.
So I've left the link to that video
in the description down below.
You can click through, find your comment,
see what you hoped for, did it come true?
And then come back here and let me know
whether it did or it didn't.
And if you are new,
you can put down your own goals and wishes
for this year ahead.
What do you hope is going to happen?
I also use this video to give you just a little heads up
on some of the things that are going to be happening
on this channel in the year ahead.
Something very soon is about to happen.
Very, very, very soon.
I think as you watch this I may be at an airport?
So that's fun. But we're going to begin
with looking back on last year's video
and seeing whether my goals and wishes came true.
(ethereal music)
Number one, leave the country.
Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure this is probably high up there
on a number of people's lists, hmm...
So my priority number one,
I have my goals and wishes video of 2022
was to leave the country.
During the pandemic, I developed some agoraphobia,
which meant that I struggled to leave my house
without Claudia or well, mainly just without Claudia.
And yes, throughout 2022, widening our circle
especially through having Rupert
and just needing to go places with him
as he became less of a baby and more of a toddler
who moves us a lot and needs to be stimulated all the time,
it became something that we just had to do.
You just have to go places with him and you have to do it
because it's like, "You're his mom, okay?"
And Claudia's has to do that over there
and she's just gonna drop you and Rupert off,
and so you're the one that has to take him
into the place to go and see the GP.
And I'm like, "Okay, I'll do it.
"It'll be me, let's go."
I became a lot braver and part of that was through travel.
It definitely helped to widen my little bubble,
my little circle further out.
We had a lot of fun going to a variety of places.
The first place we went in 2022 was an aparthotel,
which is like a hotel apartment with it,
which the video you can see,
which made me feel really safe and secure
because we had our own little area
and it wasn't as if we were in a big hotel
where we had to be, we just had the one room,
instead, there was kind of space to breathe
and it felt more more like ours and we had our own kitchen,
and we could feed the baby and just chill a bit.
And that felt really nice.
We just had some other trips to the lake district
and just, yeah, I think having Rupert
being able to push his buggy around out in public,
having the kind of security of that.
It's also like little Zimmer frame, 10 out of 10.
No one tells you this when you have walking difficulties
and you're about to have a baby,
but oh my goodness, a push chair it's a Zimmer frame
that you feel really happy pushing around everywhere.
It's wonderful. Also, highly recommend Cybex e-Priam,
which is their electric buggy, it's amazing.
It's basically an electric bicycle.
What an electric bicycle is but for push chairs, genius.
It has a little motorized battery in it
so when you are pushing up the hill,
it's just so much easier.
You don't have to put your full force
into pushing quite a heavy buggy up a hill.
And when you're going down the hill,
this is the bit that I found the most helpful for me,
is you don't have to hold on all of the weight
because it puts brakes on for you.
It's very intelligent, it knows what to do.
Also, if you accidentally let go of the buggy,
it will go for a little bit and then stop
because it's like, "You appear to have let go of me.
Don't worry, I've got your baby for you.
Silly, silly parent." (ethereal music)
Number two, write a book, goodness!
Those of you who may have watched this in previous years
are like, "Hmm, sounds familiar."
Ah, number two, the book.
So yes, Rupert still absolutely obsessed with books.
Yeah, he's actually even learnt now that
if he's finished eating whilst we're still at the table,
he can either sit with us and continue talking
or he gets down and goes to his own little table
that's next to ours and gets a book from his little box
and sits with it, reads his book.
His favorite books of have now moved on to the Alfie series.
If you've ever read any of those, they're by Shirley Hughes
and they are so cute, very adorable.
But as for my own book, yes, still happening, still a thing.
Still going to get there, slow process.
(ethereal music)
So I'd like to be doing that again with him.
But in winter it's already a little bit harder for me
because it's quite cold
and if it's wet that can be quite painful so...
And then number three was actually kind of parenting goals,
but it was more about going for a morning walk
with Rupert and Claudia.
Because at that time we were still doing that
and Rupert was having his morning nap
every single day in the buggy.
Which boy, is he past that?
Very much so, he has one nap a day now,
which is generally in his bedroom in the afternoon
because he's a big boy.
He is much older, it's really bizarre actually
to think back on the huge difference
between last Christmas when he was six months old
and this Christmas at 18 months,
and think that that was the third of his life.
Now twice as much time has passed as came before,
he's radically different, so radically differently.
He chats away, and he can run and kick a ball
and you're like, "Wait, who are you?"
Very, very different to the child we had last Christmas.
That was definitely a baby, you are a toddler.
And so the parenting goal there
was really about spending a lot more time with him,
but also about getting out in the fresh air
and going for walks with them as much as possible.
And so I do now try and go on walks with the two of them
as much as possible and whenever Rupert wants to
but instead of doing the morning walk together,
we have now kind of tried to split
our parenting time with Rupert
because up until very recently,
we were doing absolutely everything with him together still.
And then we realized that that was probably not
an effective use of our time.
Especially in the mornings,
I love being the one who gets to do his morning routine
because I really like coming into him in the mornings
with his little bottle and waking him up,
and just being like, "Hello darling."
Oh, there's nothing better
than his little face in the morning.
He's one of those children though, who really sleeps.
We don't get woken by him in the morning, he wakes us up.
And when we're supposed to take him to nursery,
we have to wake him otherwise we will just be really late.
He'll probably sleep till nine if you let him.
We're definitely gonna blame that on why we're late.
(ethereal music)
I have a another parenting goal,
which is that I really want to take Rupert to ballet class
but I haven't had the energy, it's always on a Monday.
Adding onto this,
I did say I was gonna take him to a ballet class
and I did attempt to sign him up to a ballet class.
I do still think he would be perfect for ballet.
He likes to dance anyway
but he's sort of thing where he goes, "I spin."
And then he twirls, it's adorable.
Who did you pick this up from? This is very, very strange.
I think he must have seen a music box
with one of those ballet dancers that spins.
Unfortunately, none of the ballet classes in our area
for the under twos were running, sad times,
they got canceled so I have to wait until he is two.
But in the meantime, I have been taking him to gymnastics
so that's the thing we do together now.
(ethereal music)
And number four, while we're on the subject of babies
and also travel, I would like to fly to Valencia
to visit Clara and Evalina and see their baby
when it comes in May.
In October we had plans to go out to Valencia
for a whole week we were gonna go for a YouTube summit,
and to go and see Clara and Evalina,
and little baby Atlas, gonna be amazing.
And then what happened?
Got that freaking lung virus lung, infection, stupid thing.
It managed to stick around for two and a half months,
and that week was probably
my worst week, actually, turns out, it was brilliant.
Claudia had to phone the non-emergency ambulance line
a couple of times, like, why did I even get that?
I think it just was a regular nursery bug
that Rupert came back from nursery with.
But my immune system was like,
(Jessica laughing)
he and Claude were ill for two, three days.
My lungs were like, "Oh God, can't giving up the ghost."
And decided to fill up with fluid
and you can get x-rays and CT scans and they're like,
"Oh yes, look, it's disgusting."
It's like, "Yes, I know it's disgusting and can feel it.
Do you want me to...
Can't you hear it when I cough disgustingly?"
Interesting thing, I often get sad about my illnesses
looking back on them more than I do
when I'm actually in them.
I think 'cause when you're in an ill space,
you're a bit "Well, right now I have too much going on
to be sad about this, dealing with this,
doing anything about this right now.
I'm just going to watch
every single Marvel TV show there is
and worry about this later."
And very, very sad that I missed out on going to Valencia.
We are planning to go in Easter of this year.
I'm actually getting really emotional now.
It's just very hard having someone
that you love a lot be far away.
(ethereal music)
Number five, I would like to work with Diet Coke.
Is this a goal for this year, is this a goal for my life?
"And number five, I would like to work with Diet Coke,"
she said last year.
I feel completely rejected.
I'm right here, they know where I am, right?
- [Jocie] I told you become a hater and they'll hire you.
- All right, Josie's plan
is that I should become a Diet Coke hater
and openly be rude about Diet Coke,
and then they will hire me to change my mind.
- [Josie] Yes - I feel like Josie,
there may be too much recorded evidence to the contrary
for them to believe this plan.
Tell them I prefer Pepsi.
- [Jocie] Shoutout to Pepsi all the time
and they'll hire you.
Oh my gosh, this is a great plan.
- No one believes that, no one likes Pepsi.
Sorry, some people do like Pepsi, I'm so sorry.
To be fair, Pepsi Max Ginger is good
when you have bad nausea.
Also, I totally would've worked
on your attached caps campaign Coke, God.
(ethereal music)
2022 is the year of a million? I dunno, maybe.
My number six goal, it was hit 1 million subscribers,
that didn't happen.
But we are closer so that that will be updated
and a new goal for 2023.
And now we come to goals for 2023
so it is no longer number six, but now number one.
Hello, hi, and welcome to my new goals.
So there you go, that's my first goal of 2023.
Let's see if we can make that happen, who knows.
This year I'll be releasing one long form video every week
and two short form shorts,
and that will be throughout the year except for next week
when there won't be any videos due to the aforementioned,
drum roll please...
Ta-da. Number two, we're going to Malaysia.
Yeah, no I made it number two, the goals and wishes,
because it was just a big thing for us last year.
Something that Claudia has been really struggling
with since we had Rupert and I think,
I mean, I've been struggling with this in my own way
and I think everyone who has a child sort of has this
is feeling a sense of connection to your own childhood
and where you come from.
Wanting to pass things on to your child,
feeling a sense of who am I, identity,
looking back, your life,
looking at the life you want to give your child.
And I think it's especially hard for Claudia
because she's half Malaysian but we live in England
and the Malaysian half of her,
is her mother who isn't with us anymore.
And it's really difficult to then
try and have things where she's like,
"Well, when everyone's ill in the family,
the best thing to have is this soup
that my mother always made
but I don't know the best way to make it."
And I know she tries to look for the recipes,
sometimes it can get lost in translation
so she really wanted to be able to get back to Malaysia
and reconnect with that part of herself and also show Rupert
that really important part of his heritage and who he is.
One day in, I think November,
when I still had my lung infection,
I was just like, "You know what, let's just go in January.
Let's just do it."
We'll just go for a whole month in January
because it is really cold and dark, and you get really sad.
So after this video,
the next four videos are actually going to be vlogs.
I know that with Christmas there weren't a lot of vlogs,
which you'd normally expect from Vlogmas,
but that was partly because
there're going to be these four vlogs coming up.
There are also gonna be extra stuff sprinkled all around.
If you wanna get yourself prepared,
see what it might be like,
you can look at our previous trip to Malaysia,
which I'm gonna link in the card above
and in the description down below, click on that.
We made quite a few videos while we're out there
and you can kind of see what it's like.
I mean, that was now five years ago so oh my goodness,
it's going to be very different.
Who knows how that's gonna go.
We'll report back, my goodness.
The next ones I'm gonna be pretty quick with,
number three for 2023.
Claudia masters sign language, a big goal, a big goal.
We're all aware, okay.
Maybe masters isn't quite the word.
So we've got to the point now where Rupert speaks
in sort of about five to six word sentences.
But he also signs to a similar degree
and I cannot always understand his speech.
So sometimes Claudia has to tell me what it is
that he's vocalizing
and Claudia does not often understand his signing,
so I have to interpret that for her.
So I think it would be good if we could get to a point
where she could understand the signs
that he is attempting to do.
Because much like when a baby is attempting a word vocally
you know, banana and they say nana,
the signs that he attempt aren't always perfect.
So instead of cake, he might do a cake over here.
And for Claudia that can be confusing
because to her mind she doesn't know the sign well enough
to be able to understand it in a different placement.
For her to have a good enough knowledge
of the words that are at a level Rupert might want to use.
Number four, find a hot beverage I like,
other than Lemsip and Squash.
I need, when people are like, "Hi, do you want some tea?"
I can't just be like, "Do you have a Diet Coke?"
Five, eventually move Rupert into his own bedroom.
Rupert's still in his nursery.
He moved into when he was seven months old
but was kind of his bedroom.
Not that he's slept in it from birth
and was set up for him to be a little baby in it.
So it's not perfectly set up
for the independence of a toddler.
And it can be a little difficult
when he wants to to do things
like dress himself independently,
which is what he's really ready for now at this point.
And we want to get him a wardrobe that he is able to use
and make sure that everything is just set up for him
to be able to best be his independent little self.
But we also don't want to change the baby room too much
because then we won't have a baby room.
And we would like to use the baby room
for another little person.
We're gonna move him to his own little space
and we shall do that and we'll make a lovely little video
about the transition process.
So thanks so much for watching my look back at 2022,
my goals and wishes for 2023.
I'm excited to know what some of your dreams are
for the year ahead.
Let me know in the comments down below
and also if any of yours came true from last year.
If any of the things that you hoped for and were wishing for
and working towards happened to materialize.
I very much look forward
to watching this video with you next year.
See you very soon from Malaysia. See you soon!
(Jessica kisses)
(cheerful music)