Tonight the words from Elder Holland's conference talk from last October keep running through my mind: You are doing better than you think you are.
I was really tempted to count today as a bad day. Today was certainly a difficult day, for no particularly extraordinary reasons. It's easy for me to look at my day and see the ways in which I could have been better, but I wanted to sit down and ask myself what I did well today. How might I be doing better than I think I am?
- I woke up early and swam laps this morning- waking up early and keeping my body strong are good things.
- I made a nutritious breakfast last night, so that it would be ready first thing this morning for my toddler who opens his eyes in the morning and his first words are "Eat. Eat."
- I took the kids outside to play. Being outside can be kind of a pain, especially with a baby who is mobile but still sticking everything in her mouth, but Peter lives for being outside, so we went outside.
- Peter was having a tough day today, and I made a point to just sit and hold him for a while once Carolyn went down for a nap.
- I read my scriptures during nap time because when I leave it until bedtime it's much less likely to happen.
- We had a playdate today, and Peter got to run and jump and laugh and play with another toddler. I get credit for that one because Peter is terrible at setting up his own plans with other kids (ha ha).
- I also managed to serve a pretty nutritious lunch.
- I made a point to put my phone or other distractions away and give the kids my total focused attention several times today.
- After lunch, even though I was irritable, Peter wanted me to chase him, so I held Carolyn and "we" chased him and both of them were laughing and I ended up having fun too.
- Come to think of it, I sat and held Peter several times today. As I've mentioned before, he's my sensitive spirit. He needed some quiet holding today for some reason.
I'm not going to make a list of what I didn't do well today, but trust me that I could, and it would be easier to come up with than this list. I'm glad I forced myself to think about these things, because when I spend time thinking about the good things I've done, it's easier to duplicate those behaviors.
How did you do better than you thought you did today?
Labels: Faith, Motherhood