Mom was right, as usual

I am not the most patient person, I admit that. And sometimes on these cold, long winter days I just get so impatient for spring and summer. I felt like I was cold all day.

Remember how I said that Tyler got 2 dinosaurs and a snake for his birthday yesterday? Well that's ALL he wanted to play with. all day. I was really running out of things for my dinosaur to say, and I was having a bad attitude.

I'm also at a funny stage right now with my kids. You see they are only both awake at the same time for a few hours a day. Brynlee wakes up before Ty (usually) and still takes two naps a day. Tyler takes one nap in the middle of the day, and they rarely overlap with Bryn's. So most of the time I only have one child awake at a time. This may sound like it would be easier for me, and in some ways I guess it is. But it also means that they don't play together as much, so I get to be the constant entertainer.

I called Kenny right after I put Brynlee down for her second nap. After a few minutes of talking he needed to go so I said, "I hope the next few hours go by fast, I'm anxious for you to come home today." "Yeah I can tell," he said.

At that point I realized that although I hadn't called him with the intent to complain, that's exactly what our conversation became--me complaining. I felt bad. Then I heard the familiar words of my childhood echoing in my head... "If you'd get up and get moving you wouldn't be so cold." My mom often said this to us when we were lazy and complaining of being cold. You will also never catch her sitting still, or wasting time. Today I was very grateful for her example.

So I put on some music to get me going, Colbie Caillat's CD to be precise. Tyler and I had a clean-up party while dancing around in the living room. I had to take off my sweater/jacket because my blood was flowing and I was warming right up! Then I decided all the hard wood floors needed a good cleaning. I swept while Tyler followed me around with the dust pan, anxiously awaiting his favorite part. I sweep the grossness onto the pan, he happily dumps it in the trash can.

THEN we mopped. We have a lot of hard wood floors, that's like our whole house almost. We use a Swiffer and Ty loves to help with this too. He stays close to me and whenever I need more cleaner I say "Squirt", and he pushes the button to spray cleaner out. I mop as much as it'll let me and say squirt again, and he pushes it again. It takes a lot longer to do it that way, but it keeps him occuppied (and it kept his mind off of dinosaurs for a little while). Before we knew it, Bryn woke up and then it was time to get dinner going.

I looked around at the now-clean house and felt happy. I was no longer thinking about what I was lacking, or wishing were different. I had a cleaner house and a lighter heart. So thanks mom, for your words of wisdom. You were right, as usual.