Gratitude

Today I'm really feeling a sense of ease, acceptance, and gratitude. I'm thinking it is the growing presence of yoga in my life, but it could just be a good day. Like this morning, I thought I was going to have to skip yoga because Matt was going to go to the office early. Instead the alarm went off at 5:30 am and he said, "I set that for you, in case you still wanted to go to yoga." It took me a few minutes to really grasp that, but I quickly realized that I did want to go to yoga. It was a great class and I did a new arm balance pose! A very crude version of this, http://www.fitsugar.com/Strike-Yoga-Pose-One-Legged-Arm-Balance-1004848. When I got home, I was able to clear all the fresh lovely snow off the driveway. February is so much prettier with snow!

Then the boys and I headed on to our usual Friday activity, swimming lessons and grocery shopping. Swimming was fine. Grocery shopping was great. For some reason, my boys decided to cooperate, enjoy the ride, and listen. Another check in the plus column.

When we got home, I felt that we were at a tipping point. Christopher wanted to play in the snow. Daniel wanted to stay inside. Then he decided that he wanted to erect some sort of climbing rope involving the vacuum cord and the bannister. He had just been helping me vacuum, so that was nice, too. The need to have a climbing rope was successful redirected into assembling a pulley system from the bannister with some bags for transportation of small items up and down. These are the parenting moments I like to call offensive. I just knew that he would not let go of this idea, so instead of fighting it head on with a 'no' I found a way to satisfy that need and taught him something in the meantime. So much of my day is spent playing defense, it's nice to get ahead for a change.

Now we get to the good part. Christopher was really sad to go down for his nap because he really wanted to have some avocado, but he finally gave in to a rest. Daniel wanted me to hang out in his room for a few extra minutes while he tried to fall asleep, which I was glad I decided to do becasue both boys are napping! A quiet house is a really rare occasion these days. Daniel usually has a quite time in his room during Christopher's rest, but his definition of quiet involves loud singing and lots of kicking of the furniture. When the doorbell right as Daniel was about to be out for the count I was sure that Daniel was going to come bounding out of his room, but luckily he didn't and the person at the door was here to bring me a suprise out of the blue unexpected bouquet of flowers from my husband!

What did I do to deserve a day like this? So here I sit, thankful for such a thoughtful husband and fun kids. And as I make Christohper some guacamole as a treat for his snack, I'm just going to remember these parts of my day not the one where Daniel decorated his pants with the marker because he thought it would look nice, or when I decided that maybe Daniel was mature enough to manage the water for his shower after swimming and ended up showering all four of the people in the area in dry clothes instead of himself, or the part where, well I'm sure the third in the list is coming. I only have two so far :)