The happy now

Let's just start this by addressing the fact that I'm positive I woke up on the same side of the bed that I always do.  But something was different.  I could sum up what it was in two words: no sleep. Well 3 hours of sleep. But does that really count???  Twins needed to be fed at 1am, Sophia lost her binky at 2am, Madelyn had a bad dream at 3am, and Ezra wet the bed at 4am.  Lila, like the angel she is, slept all night, but you better believe that wasn't going to stop me from finding something to get on her case about. :/  It was just one of those days where I was completely mom-centric.  Everyone was against me.  I was like an adult two year old all day.  Verbally punching everyone in the face.  And then I'd apologize and cry and say I would do better, only to turn around and see that someone had pooped their pants and I'd snap and turn into the hulk again.  Just a never ending cycle.

It's days like that where I have to give myself a pep talk and go all "Invictus" on myself.  "I am the master of my own fate" I repeated to myself.  "I can change this situation and make it a good day."  So by four o clock, by cracky, I was ready to change this day.  I showered, got dressed, packed up a picnic, loaded up the kids and we were off.  Sure, it took a full hour to get out the door, but nothing was stopping me now.  We picked Jonathon up from work and scouted around for the perfect picnic spot.  Which we found, we ate, we conquered and even got to bunny watch for a minute.
My attitude changed and instead of seeing all these people around me as little mini human robots programmed to destroy me, I saw them for the beautiful little people that they are.  They're not perfect and neither am I and that's the beauty of it all.  I just had to shift it and enjoy the happy now.  It's chaos, it's diapers, it's no sleep, but it's beautiful because we're learning and growing together.  
We've come up with a little motto for our family which is "find the happy."  It originated from this song, which my kids love to sing when they're doing chores.  It melts my heart every time.  The line "but with joy, wend your way" has stuck with me in the last year and Jonathon and I simplified it to "find the happy" so our young kids could understand.  We both have ancestors that sacrificed so much and it's good for me to remind myself and my kids to find the happy in life, just like they did.  The fact is, parenting is exhausting.  No matter how many kids you have, life is just so much better when you can embrace the happy now.  Chubby babies in flamingo rompers help too. :)

1 comment:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...