This time of year always seem to be the most busy for us, and probably families everywhere. The sun comes out and with it so do the invitations for barbecues, impromptu trips to the park, beach and pool and ‘special late night ups’ in abundance (because who wants to be in bed at 7pm when the sun is still shining and you can hear the hustle and bustle of happy folk outside and, more importantly, who wants to be the parent trying to enforce that – not me!)
It’s a funny old thing though because I think sometimes I try to cram so much in that I end up suffering a bit of early summer burnout (usually just figuratively speaking but sometimes literally too if I’ve forgot to put on sun tan lotion again). I think that’s what happened this week. It’s only Tuesday but today was not a good day for us. It started well seeing friends for a ride to the goat walk but started to go downhill from there. A nasty tumble off a bike, a grisly teethy warm baby, a young man with sky rocketing emotions, a hard day at work for Dan and general fatigue at juggling the housework, home education and general childcare for me. I was relieved when bedtime rolled around and quiet descended.
I’m going to chalk it up to a bad day though and put it behind me because I’m been trying to consciously hold onto the good times at the moment. With Sophia and Isaac, I found babyhood hard. I was impatient for them to grow up. For them to be walking, talking and just to generally be more interesting! With Sophia it was mostly because I was bored and didn’t have many Mummy friends and with Isaac, he wasn’t the most content of babies which spurred more wishing away of his early days and weeks. With Elijah though, I’m finding the opposite. He is by far, the most happy, relaxed and sociable baby of all three of them (probably as a result of being the youngest of three). Every day, I feel a pang of sorrow that he is a bit older and that he won’t be so little again.
Smily beach baby!
I know we won’t be having any more babies and he has been such a gorgeous blessing of one that I don’t really want his baby days to ever end! But he is doing mini crunches, desperate to sit up, can roll over, dissolves into deep belly chuckles at the merest touch, is starting to interact with objects around him and at just shy of 4 months is almost out of 3-6 month clothes. There’s no doubt about it, he’s definitely growing up. The ‘fourth trimester’ is over and if I’m not careful, he’ll be toddling about, shouting garbled toddler speak at me before I know it.
So I’ve decided that I’m going to make an effort to savour the days. I’m choosing to focus on the good times, the moments when the kids make you melt into laughter, when you wake up to a beaming baby and the sun streaming into the room, when you end up behaving like a big kid yourself with your husband. It’s easy to get bogged down with squabbling siblings, financial stress, mundane meal planning..etc. but I don’t want to look back at these early years of my children and remember being stressed and tired. I want to look back and remember being happy. Having fun, laughing, and loving hard.
Late night up nail painting with my best girly
Bro love!
I’ve written about this kind of thing before, I know, but I wanted to remind myself again and I find the blog is a good way to do that. Intentional living, choosing to focus on the positives isn’t something that comes easily to me, especially when I’m tired. But I wholeheartedly believe that putting in the effort is worth it. So again, I’m choosing to be happy.
Blurry, silly, selfie!
the starlings gather here 