Choose To Be Happy

The kids were in the living room watching a learning video.

Me? I was sitting in the darkness of my room, cuddling a tiny boy. Enjoying his warmth. Listening to his breathing. Feeling his love.

The truth is that he had fallen asleep after eating and I couldn't bear to put him to bed and head back out to the rest of the family.

It had been a rough afternoon.

Fighting. Whining. Messes. Stress. I could feel my irritation rising as my patience grew thin. I was on the verge of losing my temper.

I needed a mommy timeout.

It was there in the stillness of that room that perspective was restored. I needed to calm down. The kids feed off my negative energy. If I was crabby, chances are they were going to be crabby too. If I was short-fused, they were going to be irritable as well. It did not excuse their wrongdoings, but it helped me choose to have a good attitude. I needed to stop focusing on the hardships of the day, and instead, choose to be happy.

Yes, it's a choice.

You cannot control your circumstances, but you can control your response to them.

I needed to choose to respond with patience and grace. Crabbiness multiplies, but so does happiness. It's my responsibility to keep the happiness level high in our household. Even when there's fighting and whining and mommy gets stressed, I realize this is just a season, a fleeting moment of time. These 5 little blessings of mine will be grown in just a few short years. There will come a day when they will no longer need me to make them a pb&j sandwich or allow me to wash the stickiness off their face. They will stop asking to sit on my lap or listen to me read a story. As time goes on, their independence will grow and their reliance on me will be nearly nonexistent. I want to savor these moments now, even on the craziest of days. The Lord has blessed us greatly. Instead of dwelling on the stressful moments, I choose to praise the Lord for all that He's done.

Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. ~ Psalm 150

I laid my tiniest blessing in bed and walked back in the living room, this time with a renewed spirit. Yes, I was still exhausted while the children had copious amounts of energy. Yes, I was still reminding them to be nice to each other. Yes, I was still reprimanding their wrong actions. But it didn't take long for my happiness to overflow to them. Within time, they too changed their attitudes. And once we all chose to be happy, the whole day was changed for the better.

There are always going to be hours or even days that are stressful, but we must focus on the blessings of God and His grace to help us through. And we must choose to be happy.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Tough Decisions

Have you ever felt like you were drowning?

Like your responsibilities were multiplying and you were always in over your head. No matter how much you worked to stay afloat, things kept weighing you down and making you sink.

That's where I am.

It just seems like we have so many extra stuff going on lately. Reorganizing our schoolroom. Preparing baby clothes to sell at a mom-to-mom. Preparing maternity clothes to drop off at a consignment store. Gathering toys to be sold. Filling boxes with everything else to donate.

Reorganizing.

Simplifying.

We've accumulated so much stuff over the years. Stuff that we have no room for. Stuff that clutters the house. Stuff that sucks up time. Stuff that makes me stressed.

One of the fastest ways to stress me out is having a mess. Oh, I'm not talking about messes that serve a purpose or aftermaths from a project. Messes from creating oobleck and learning about states of matter, messes from making homemade Oreo cookies and enjoying their yumminess, messes from transforming an experiment into a whole new process and experiencing the joy of learning.

These messes I encourage. These messes make for a rich, learning environment. These messes help my kids to explore and grow and discover.

No, I'm talking about lazy messes. Toys scattered around the house. Clothes sitting in a pile. Dishes left on the table. Papers and crayons cluttering the floor.

Lately, I feel pushed to the max. Keeping up with my chores - the laundry, the cooking, the obsession to make everything from scratch, the cleaning, the dishes, the picking up, the putting away, the changing the diapers, the nursing, the clipping the coupons, the buying the groceries, the sweeping, the vacuuming. The everything in between. Keeping up with the schooling - the teaching, the explaining, the helping with work, the activities, the crafts, the experiments, the reading. Lots and lots of reading.  Keeping up with the kids completing their chores - the clothes, the craft supplies, the toys. Oh, the toys.

I know I am not the only one to ever have 4 little kids. And homeschool. And try to keep a clean home. And have home-cooked meals. And. And. And. That's how I feel. Like there's always another and.

I've been self-examining lately. Scrutinizing my life. Contemplating what I can change to get me out of this drowning scenario.

Blogging.

Blogging is the one area I feel I can neglect. I don't think my family would accept a hiatus from the laundry. Or a break from cooking. But blogging I can cut back and still care for my family. I made this decision last week and figured I should explain why I've been absent. I hate having to do this. I hate that I haven't been consistent. I feel like we're losing something, forgetting something in our lives if we can't look back on it years from now.

Just writing that seems kinda silly. But it's how I feel. I've gotten better about accepting the fact that I've been hit or miss with posts lately, but it still bothers me. Like I said last week though, my family must come first.

So, what does that mean for the blog? Well, my plan is to keep up with blogging through the alphabet on (hopefully) Mondays, post a quick pic from the week on Wednesdays, and share our Smiles on Fridays. Of course, I have a few reviews for TOS left before the year ends in November.

Doesn't really seem like cutting back much? For now I won't be worrying about posting crafts on Mondays, trying to type up recipes on Tuesdays, or rushing to share experiments on Thursdays. I'm not sure how long this will last. I do know that it's necessary though, at least until I can catch up on the extras.

Bear with me, please? I don't know how I'll ever get caught up, if I'll ever get caught up. I currently have 30-something drafts going right now, and lots more floating around in my head. Ultimately though, 20 years down the road, my kids won't care if I never shared that everyone-raves-about-this recipe. They will, however, remember if I took the time to care for them.

Correction: they will remember that I did take the time to care for them.