I read something this morning in Sarah Hart-Unger’s blog that could have come from my keyboard (emphasis mine):
But for whatever reason, I felt calm and maybe the kids followed my lead. I did not feel victimized just because I had to do bedtime alone … I also found myself appreciating little things the kids were doing …
I also wonder if some of this calm is just feeling like I have more bandwidth overall. Wednesday and Thursday are my own this week and I don’t even have many recording sessions scheduled, so I get to truly have unstructured time to work on my own stuff. When I know every second isn’t promised to someone else, it makes the busier moments feel more doable.
I’m this person! I felt extra victimised yesterday when another day started with a kid vomiting, progressed with Cal falling ill too and developed into a very tiring cleaning marathon of a day that I didn’t handle with grace at all (apart from feeling like the real victim of the situation, I’m also a rubbish nurse with next-to-no bedside manner).
But it hadn’t crystallised in my mind until I read the above passage that so much of your stress response is influenced by the surrounding circumstances of your life. She is right that it’s so much easier to tap into the nice side of you when you know that a break is coming up, for example. I think this is related to the idea of slack again.
One nice thing about the last two days has been that with only the toddler going to nursery, we’ve been able to walk again. (Normally the easiest way to drop off two boys is to use our bike trailer.) Walking with the toddler means hearing strange ideas, bits of song, observations like how sad someone must feel after seeing a left-behind toy and holding a little pudgy hand.
Some of my favourite things the toddler has come out with lately:
- ‘For my neck.’ – after being asked what the medal that he was wearing was for.
- ‘I’m not feeling well!’ – first time he has tried to get out of going to nursery.
- ‘I talk Finnish.’
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