God's gift to Mothers

You know, something happens when a woman becomes a mother, and it's not just the wider hips and stretch marks. We're given these amazing gifts like being able to insanely multi-task (i.e.: shopping with child, holding child's hand and keeping him from playing with the wheelchair check-writing shelf while also holding onto purse and paying for purchases all at the same time). One of the ones that amazes me but I don't necessarily appreciate is the ability to smell poo a mile a way. Seriously, I will be upstairs getting out of the shower and Dan and Isaac are downstairs. As soon as I open the bathroom door *sniff sniff*, "Dan, did Isaac have a poo?" Then a moment later I hear daddy asking, "Isaac, did you go poo?" I don't know, maybe our sense of smell didn't get better, just father's got worse?

Every Friday is library day which I've done with Isaac since he was a baby. It's a lot of fun to pick out new books and movies and it's something to look forward to every week. This afternoon I took Isaac to the library with me, and we quickly found one book he wanted. We decided to look at movies, then we'd go back to books and find more we liked before we left. We had just walked into the movie aisle when *sniff sniff*. I whisper, "Isaac, was that you?" He says, "Yes". I ask, "Did you go poo?" He says, "No, I just tootarooty" (Dad's word, don't ask). It couldn't have been more than 60 seconds later the smell was 10x worse, so I lean down and whisper, "Isaac, did you go poo?" His answer, "Yes". Great. Now, my child has what I call bunny-poop that often falls out of his pull-up and lands wherever it may on the floor, and makes mommy all kinds of mad. So I quickly grabbed him and what we'd already picked out, and made a quick checkout! Thank God in Heaven that we didn't leave a poo trail! (Ugh, at least I don't think we did!) It will be a happy day when my son is finally potty trained!

Our Special Saturday

I usually do my house scrubbing on Saturdays: dusting, scrubbing the toilet, laundry, all that fun stuff. Instead, this week I did it all on Friday so we could have Saturday free, and we had a "Special" Saturday (Isaac calls any day "special" where he can watch limitless movies). With Daddy at work, Isaac and I had the day to ourselves to make cookies and watch Hot Wheels movies to his heart's content. His favorite cookies are chocolate chip, but this past fall his school had a cookie dough fundraiser, and his top favorite has now become triple chocolate chip cookies! He's been asking for more ever since, so we finally bought the supplies and got everything ready to have a cookie bake-off on Saturday. He was a great helper with the first batch, which means mommy did the scooping and then he'd hold my arm and help me pour the contents into the mixer bowl (texture sensitivity to things sticking to his skin, you know). After all the ingredients were in and mixed, he helped me pour in the chocolate chips. I then asked him to turn the mixer on one notch. Accidently, he flipped the notch to top speed and chocolate chips went flying out of the bowl! We both had a good laugh about that!

After that first batch, I went ahead and worked on a couple more batches by myself. Now, not many people have been to our place for the simple reason that we live in a SMALL duplex. It's so small that we don't have a diningroom (no table) and the kitchen is literally the size of our bathroom (no dishwasher). So I've just finished pouring all the dry ingredients into the bowl, the cocoa being the last one in, and guess what I did... I go to turn the mixer on to mix the dry ingredients and accidently flip the switch too far, just like Isaac did. POWDER GOES EVERYWHERE in this teeny tiny little kitchen!!!! What a mess!!!!! That white maternity shirt I was wearing? Well, I learned the value of wearing an apron, and I'm still working on taking out those cocoa stains. And that house cleaning I had done the day before? I had to reclean the entire kitchen, including mopping, and even vacuum the livingroom for anything that got tracked in there. I was able to single-handedly clean the entire mess up, but when Dan got home from work last night I told him all about it, and had to laugh at myself because if he had been the one to make such a mess, heads would have rolled!

But it was a happy ending because in the end we had some yummy cookies, and more than enough to share with our elderly neighbor lady!

A blog about gratitude

Welcome to my new blog!

For the year 2009, one of my goals is to be happier. There are some people who are naturally optimistic, and then there are people like me who have to work at it. I know part of it is life circumstances. For reasons only God knows why, my life has continually been full of trials and trauma, many of which my own family doesn't know, and certainly not friends since it isn't exactly topics of phone chit-chat. I have kept many things to myself where they've built up one upon another, and they've been festering until I've developed "whyME" syndrome. The result: I have become extremely unhappy, bitter, and cynical, and I don't like who I've become!

How does a person become happy while going through trials? While having my Visiting Teachers over, I realized the answer is to focus on our blessings. When we focus on our blessings, our hearts are filled with gratitude and knowledge of how much our Father in Heaven loves us, and that brings peace and happiness.

So the purpose of this blog is to help me remember my blessings, like an uplifting journal, and use this as a tool on my pursuit of happiness. I am really looking forward to a much happier and healthier year!