It’s a hot, sticky day here. After a long delay summer has arrived. I find I’m not as heat tolerant as I was as a youth! Regardless, it’s a real treat to have sun and heat and I hope it helps our garden grow.
Today I achieved a small personal peace victory: mind over mind. I left the house after lunch because with all the renos and people moving about it’s really not a great place to spend time with a mobile baby. We went first to the library, then to sit in a park (she napped for a while), then met up with a friend and walked some more. After almost 3 hours out it was time to come home. It was hot. I was sweating. Baby was tired. The whining started. So I picked her up and carried her. Good, but not good enough. We were ten minutes from home, and I figured out that she was hungry. And I had to go to the bathroom badly. Two competing priorities: stop and feed her and risk wetting myself, or rush home with a hot (overheated??) fussing baby.
This is where I could have become upset, resentful, angry, sad, any number of negative emotions based on feeling sorry for myself in this OH SO DIFFICULT situation. Instead I realized that this was an opportunity to practice what I would like to preach: your mind chooses your interpretation of a situation, so choose one that conduces to peace.
I pulled out a bottle from the diaper bag, and fortunately it was warm enough for her to take it (she fusses and won’t drink if it’s too hot or too cold). Then, carrying her on my front in the Ergo, I pushed the loaded stroller with one hand, held the bottle with the other while also holding her sunhat on her head with two fingers to keep her eyes shaded and walked through the sun back home to the bathroom. And again, I didn’t get upset at this slightly awkward manoeuvering; I reminded myself that it was almost funny, and that these are the incidents that make you a mother. She calmed down, I calmed down, we got home without incident and there is nothing else to tell.
Funny how undramatic it can be to not get upset over little things!