Today was a terrible, no good, very bad day. Up until about 6 pm, which can take a really long time to get to if your day started at 5:45 am. I've been trying really hard to channel this peaceful parenting mentality lately and today it didn't work very well. There were some angry mommy moments today.
The plus side is that by about 4 pm I was so done that I just started cleaning, and got to several of those areas of the house that have been neglected forever. If the kids are going whine anyway, might as well get something done. The funny thing was, once I started ignoring them to clean they stopped whining. ...New strategy?
After I cleaned I gave the kids a bath and got Peter down for the night (earlier than usual, let's hope that doesn't backfire on me tomorrow). And by the time Peter went to bed we were all on pretty good terms again.
My day from that point on was all uphill, like the good kind of uphill. Marty brought home takeout on his way home (Yay! No cooking dinner!), and he played with Carolyn while I worked on my lesson for tomorrow, then I got to go on a little girls night to Jamba Juice.
Now as I'm writing this blog, I'm scrolling through my pictures and videos of the kids from the last day or two. It's so easy to forget a bad day when you're immersing yourself in some of its best moments.
Moments like unloading my groceries into the car at Costco and turning around to Peter with his arms wrapped around his little sister.
Or when they were both playing and laughing together and my heart about melted altogether.
Or when they both "helped" me unload the dishwasher, and Peter was "helping" me put away the groceries.
Or when Carolyn was tapping into her inner dentist with Marty tonight.
I look at these and I'm not feeling the ugliness of my bad day anymore. I'm amazed at how quickly the pain from our trials can be displaced. When we are in the midst of it, it's awful and miserable, but once we are out of it, it can feel like it maybe it wasn't so bad after all.
And I guess that's why we keep getting up to try again the next day.
