If you look at the picture up there, you'd think we had the perfect morning. According to that picture, all three of us were happy and joyful all morning long! But the reality is that it was a really tough morning.
Last Friday both of the kids decided to skip their afternoon nap. After about an hour I gave up, brought them both downstairs, and turned on a movie to help the afternoon go by. It was rainy and yucky outside, so it was the perfect weather for snuggling. Fast forward to this morning, and Javi hadn't taken a good nap since Thursday and had stayed up super late on Saturday evening because Uncle Dan was in town. Toss in a 5 week old who is transitioning to a new schedule (what it will be, no one knows!) and it was...challenging.
I gave myself pep talks, but it didn't make things much easier. Javi was so tired that nothing could keep his attention more than a couple of minutes, and everything frustrated him. I pulled out the camera to snap a picture of Keilana in her cute little dress, and Javi perked right up. Picture?
So I set up the tripod and we took silly pictures for a few minutes. We laughed hysterically, made silly faces, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was wonderful.
And no, the morning did not really improve after that. There was still whining and tantrums and lots of crying. "Afternoon" naptime became : it's 12:01! Time for bed! They are both sleeping like little angels now, and I'm soaking up the quiet.
When I look back on these pictures, I want to remember those moments of laughter in the midst of a difficult day. I want to hold on to that precious time. But I also want to remember that we took those pictures on a hard day that stretched me. Because, as one of my favorite quotes says,
"You never see the hard days in a photo album, but those are what get you from one happy picture to the next."
No comments:
Post a Comment