This week my Monday started quite rough. Truly, for the first time in a while, I was able to see each thing that was a shitty situation be a blessing to our family and I wasn’t as mad or irritated as I would have normally been in the past.
It took me having a child who is now 1 year old to realize that the things we struggle to see as a blessing can truly be just that.
Obviously, this is not the case in every single situation. I am human and can say “f*%k it” A LOT and push my laundry and dishes to the side a good bit.
Let’s recap my Monday morning.
2:30 am – My son woke up screaming. He is cutting quite a few teeth so it could be the pain from that or maybe a night terror, not totally certain. What I was certain about was that he needed his mama to go in and hold him. He laid right against my chest and fell back to sleep in a few minutes while we rocked in the rocking chair in his room.
Blessing: My son rarely wakes and needs his mama to hold him much anymore. As tough as those long nights were as a newborn, I miss them. I soaked up this moment of holding him while he reached for my arm to be sure mama was holding him tight as he rested knowing I was there for him.
As I left his room quietly, I could smell something was off. Our dog was sneaking back into the room and I had turned the light on to look but saw nothing so I assumed it was me being totally out of it since it was the middle of the night.
7:00 am – Our carbon monoxide alarm began going off. My husband had just come to bed around 5:00 am because he was getting ready for a switch in shifts this week going back on night shift. He woke right up and I went through the house about to call 911 as I was opening all of the windows. He read that the 5 chirps meant it was an old unit and needed to be replaced. Thankfully, that’s all it was.
Blessing: We are in a safe home with the proper precautions in place to keep our family safe. This unit has been replaced as well.
As I was rushing through the house, I found the smell I thought I smelled a few hours ago. Our dog got sick and diarrhea was all over the living room floor. My extremely tired husband was already wiping it up while I was downstairs filling the bucket to scrub our floors.
Blessing: We have a dog that loves our child and us unconditionally and tries her hardest to keep us happy. By doing so, when she is sick, she always tries to go by the front door where we let her outside, though she knew it wasn’t right, she didn’t want to wake us that night (though I wish she did!) Also, my husband is a rock star jumping to help me figure out the alarm and with the clean-up that is clearly not anyone’s favorite thing to do.
7:45 am – My husband had gone back to bed to try to get more sleep. I was able to finally sit down before I had to login to my computer for work so I enjoyed a cup of coffee. While doing so, I hear the cat vomiting. This was the icing on the cake, some would say, for the morning.
Blessing: We have another pet that adores us that clearly felt left out and needed love too. Okay, that one I’m kidding a bit and had to add some humor into it because really it was testing my nerves at this point. It was a more of a “are you f*%king kidding me?” moment.
I was still able to sip my coffee before my son woke for the day since he had a busy weekend and longer night than he hoped.
The point is that it was back, to back, to back things that went wrong in the morning to start our week off. Yes, I was tired and the day ahead dragged a bit for me where I struggled to find the energy but that stuff does not happen every day.
It was a morning I had to turn my attention to what mattered and that was that we were all safe. Each of my kids, yes the fur ones count, were relying on mom and dad to take care of them and that is something I love to feel and make sure they feel it too.
We all have tough days and moments.
They look MUCH different to everyone in many different possible ways.
It is life and the reality we face as parents with the nights and moments but it is our choice in how we react to them. This teaches our children and they see how we react to things.
If it took having a child to help me find the positive in the bad situations, so be it. Again, I am no saint and a lot of the moments you’d assume I may get frustrated and mad, I probably do.
However, even if for one of the moments, we can find the good in it; maybe that is just the start for better days ahead much more often.
I hope you have a great day ahead of you!
Two Cents Worth of Mom Life 