Yesterday morning was something else.
It.
was.
bad.
I had worked the night before and was running on just a few hours of sleep. Lij had the girls class, which he does NOT care for. And in general were coming off of a 18 days of no routine. All of us were having trouble adjusting. It doesn’t help that my boys school starts early.
Like usual, we’re running behind. Telling one to brush their teeth and the other to find socks, they weren’t listening I was loosing patience FAST. Our WE. NEED. TO. LEAVE. alarm went off and we were a minimum of 5 minutes until we were ready to go.
That’s exactly the same time all hell broke loose.
The cat barfed, the dog ate it and then said dog shit all over the place. I’m not kidding.
I believe the creators of FML must have had a day(s) similar to mine.
Pushing the kids out the door on one of the coldest days yet, we couldn’t find Bash’s other glove, Lij refused to put on his coat and then stood outside crying about how cold he was. I tossed him in the car, buckled him up, found the glove and drove like hell to get them to school on time.
The traffic light was not in our favor. While sitting there we listened to the morning radio and they said something that made us all crack up laughing! While we were smiling and laughing we looked at each other and I realized, that was exactly what we needed. The perfect restart.
* *
Although the morning laughter helped, I needed more sleep for an official restart. That’s exactly what I did.
After a nap, I proceeded with my morning routine. Part of that routine is reading a passage from A Year Of Living Your Yoga by Judith Lasater. This is what it said:
January 4 Laugh More.
Living Your Yoga: Children laugh dozens of times a day. Laughing decreases blood pressure and relieves tension. Find something funny in your life today and laugh at it. Better yet, find something about yourself to laugh at.
* *
I talked to one of my friends later that day and she began to tell me about her day.
At 3am she woke up lying in pee. Her daughter took her diaper off in the middle of the night and wet the bed they were sharing. Her baby girl wouldn’t go back to bed and my friend stayed up with her. By the time her little one fell asleep one of her boys was awake. He wanted to paint a bird house he received as a gift. Pretty soon the entire house was awake in the six o’clock hour.
While she was helping her oldest with his homework she realized her middle boy started painting the bird house, she got distracted for a moment…maybe it was a homework question, soggy or burnt breakfast but in that moment everything started to fall apart.
A glass broke. Her baby girl, dressed in all white got into the paint. She painted her hair and her outfit. The homework questions were flying and the middle one was upset that his paint was being wasted on his sister. My friend ran her baby, who now had paint in her mouth upstairs and tossed her in the tub. While she was upstairs she heard tears downstairs.
Her middle boy pooped in the toilet and then dropped his favorite new toy into his turds. Her eldest didn’t want to go to school and there was paint EVERYWHERE.
In the height of her chaos, she stopped, looked around and thought I need to change the tone of this day. The bus was about to stop at their house but she didn’t want to send her little man to school in tears, instead she made them laugh. She asked them to take a look at the shit storm they had just survived. There was glass and paint everywhere, toys in turds and burnt breakfast but their day couldn’t get any worse!
They all started cracking up, as I did when she was telling me her story. I thought my day was terrible but the cat barfing and the dog eating it just didn’t come close to hers.
Laugh today. Watch a funny movie, or go watch someone slip on some ice (only laugh if they didn’t get hurt) but laugh. We are able to decide which way our day is going to go, chose wisely.
Never forget, laughter really is the best medicine!
Much love and peace,
Jes xoxo