Battling the Blues

I need a gratitude dump right now.  Stat.

I've been feeling really blah and down lately.  I don't know if it's the cold weather or recent dip in sleep (insomnia mixed with a bedtime that creeps ever later) but I'm just one big puddle of blech.

So, here we go...grateful, grateful, grateful...

--So grateful for some ladies at my church who come and babysit for us on weekends.  Last week we had a blast with this lovely lady.  Thanks to her help, I was finally able to take the kids on a fun outing (there's no way I would brave handling 2 crazy/fussy kids by myself) which we haven't done in over 3 months!

Any place with kiddie trains is tops in Judah's book!

Yay for baby-sized carousel animals!

Judah, the other white meat.

--I'm grateful we found comic books for preschoolers.  And there are at least 10 of them.  Judah loves to pore over them so it buys us a few hours of peace per book.

What, you don't act out books as you "read" them?

--I'm grateful that kids grow up.  I'm really looking forward to the time when Judah's 5 and Noah's 2.  Babies are hard.  Nursing is annoying.  Naps are really inconvenient.  But in the meantime, I try to squeeze as much consolation as I can get from Noah's intoxicating chubby cuteness.

My cuteness lets me get away with anything--even waking mommy up at 5am everyday!

Poor Little Big Boy

A gracious commentor (commentator?) mentioned that the happiness experiment followup showed that doing gratitude journaling once a week was sufficient for the exercise to 'work' so now I don't feel bad about not doing it every day.  And for that, I am truly grateful!

It's actually really hard to find time to blog and there's so many other things I'd rather share about than rack my brain for publicly appropriate content to be grateful for.

For example, today Judah had a really 'mature' conversation with me about how hard it is to be a big brother.

Judah (in a quiet, contemplative voice): Mommy, you know, it's really hard to be a big boy.
Me: Really?  Tell me something hard about being a big boy.
Judah: I have to be quiet all the time because Noah's napping.
Me: Yeah, that's hard.  What else?
Judah: I always have to watch him, make sure he doesn't get hurt.
Me: Yeah, that's hard.

This went on for a while as Judah listed typical big brother woes--having to share his toys, not getting mommy all to himself, enduring Noah messing up his spaceship creations, etc.

Being a little brother is no cakewalk either, apparently.

And then, because you can't just throw away such a perfect teachable moment when it falls right in your lap, I of course had to ask Judah what was great about being a big boy.

Judah's replies were pretty much 100% all about eating some form of chocolate--cake, candy, ice cream.

His gluttony issues aside, I so treasure these moments.  It's so rare when I feel like I'm actually interacting with Judah as a thoughtful human being (and not just a destructive, willful force of nature).  Kinda makes me wish I could just press a button and start the parenting process at age 4!

Day 2 of Gratituding: The Other Bat Kid

Continuing with my attempt to become a more grateful and happy person (see previous post), here are the things I'm grateful for today:

(1) Upcycled my old 3-drawer office cart into a 'craft' station for Judah.  His art and craft supplies have been laying around in a disorganized mess and slowly driving me insane.  So, yay for sanity.

(2) The weather has finally dipped to the point where it actually feels nippy all day despite the bright sunshine.  I love cold weather because that means I can use the oven with abandon.  I love roasting meats and veggies and baking stuff.

(3) Watched Judah impersonate Batman for the better part of an hour tonight.  I mentioned the Bat Kid phenomenon to the Spouse and gushed about how awesome it was.  Judah overheard us and instantly launched into superhero mode, running around, jumping on mattresses, and the entire time shouting the Batman theme song at the top of his lungs (lucky for him the lyrics are pretty simple)--na na na na na na na na na na Batman! na na na na na na na na na na Batman!

Judah giving off his best 'tough guy' face.

Judah's go-to pose when he wants to show off his muscles.

After I praised one of his kicks, he started kicking higher and more furiously.  The recoil action on these babies was hilarious.

It was so hard stifling my laughter in the face of Judah's very earnest belief that he was indeed dishing out some very bad ass superhero moves.

If Eeyore and Debbie Downer had a love child...

It may be hard to tell from my cheery exterior, but I'm actually quite a neg-head. I gravitate toward bad news, focus on the things that went wrong, and obsess over what might go wrong in the future.

 Hardly a recipe for joy and very much against the spirit of the season--Thanksgiving.

In a famous experiment by psychologist Martin Seligman, patients were shown to drastically improve their mental well-being by doing simple things to boost their sense of gratitude. Among them, was to list 3 things they were grateful for each day.

Well, being the neg-head that I am, I very much doubt such a simple exercise could really make a dent in my strong Debbie Downer tendency, but what the heck.  It couldn't hurt.

So...three things that I'm thankful for today...(and of course instantly I'm thinking of numerous things that I'm NOT thankful for today--like how I realized I forgot my wallet as I was checking out at Target, doh!)

Okay, thankful, thankful, thankful...

(1) Didn't have to cook dinner--bought soups and sandwiches at our local grocery store.

(2) (Aside--this is taking a really long time...I've been staring at my screen for literally 5 minutes now...) Printed out some easy worksheets for Judah downloaded from a free website.  He loves doing stuff like that and it should buy me at least 30 min of peace tomorrow.

(3) Made Noah giggle like a madman for a whole 5 minutes today.  I know that sounds like a small thing, but it really was a highlight of my day!  Interpret as you will.

The Big Cheese

Noah has entered into, what I like to call, the Death Wish phase of his babyhood.

He is now always about 45 seconds away from doing some kind of serious bodily harm to himself.  He loves poking his fingers into electric sockets, pulling himself up on Judah's rickety chairs, reaching for tiny objects to stuff into his mouth and choke on, etc.

We are exhausted just trying to keep him alive.

Now that he's full on crawling, there is no moment in which we can just leave him alone to chill on his own.  He's also a squirmy fish when you try to hold him--contorting this way and that, wanting you to literally bring him the moon and other far away objects beyond human reach (to grab and put in his mouth of course).

But he's also giving off the cheesiest, most irresistible smiles now:

One of the best parts of being a parent? Not having to resist the irresistible. I can't stop planting big ol' smooches on this chubby little guy!