gratitude list

Can I tell you about my day?

It began with Audrey waking up at 1:00 am, puking all over herself. I think besides the newborn projectile vomits (and dude. the lady could launch that shit.) this is the first time she's ever thrown up. And it scared her. We cleaned her up and brought her into our bed and I snuggled and breastfed her until morning. Which, aside from the vomit, is not really any different from any other night. We are lovers of co-sleeping. But last night, Audrey was a wiggly uncomfortable little pickle, with a roaring and gurgling belly, and like fourteen arms and legs. I swear to you, babies turn into Ganesha when they sleep.

When we woke up, Audrey was fine. As if the night never happened. And then The Coffee Incident happened. Now, I find this very funny because today is National Coffee Day. I had just told Audrey that we were going to go down to the basement to watch Sesame Street, and was holding her with my left arm. With my right, I had my freshly poured cup of coffee. NOT THE STAIRS, you're thinking. Yes. I do this every single day and so far it has yet to be harmful. I think that even if I fell, I'd do a classy roll like Gene Wilder did in the first Willy Wonka movie. That's how I roll. Heh heh. Besides, it's only a half-flight of stairs since this is one of those 70's split level houses.

So. Going downstairs with baby and coffee. Molly, the neediest dog in the entire world, decided that just following me everywhere wasn't enough, and felt that being directly underneath me as I walked was a better option. Except that dogs have shitty logic, so it didn't pan out. I tripped on Molly and the coffee cup I was holding (my favorite one, by the way) fell down the stairs and shattered into so many pieces that I swore it was more like 5 mugs that broke, not just 1. There were glass shards everywhere, and I still was finding them later this afternoon in places pretty distant from The Coffee Incident. And then there was the coffee. I cleaned coffee off the floors, stairs, and walls for so very long. At the end of it all, I found Molly huddled up on her little dog bed, looking very nervous, and with coffee on half of her body. Poor lady. So she got cleaned up too.

Oh! And I should probably mention that Audrey was not dropped. Or cut. Or burnt with coffee.

Then I went out to a nature trail with my sister and Audrey because I needed to get out of my house before more stuff went crazy wrong. When I came back, I found that Molly had chewed an entire 24 pack of crayons that I just bought.

It seems like a day full of suck. Except that it wasn't, really. Today was a mostly really great day with some crazy stuff peppered in. So I think it's time to write a gratitude list. I used to say things I was grateful for, out loud before bed every night. It's a practice I learned in Al-Anon, and it has a really great way of making terrible situations seem better because there's always something good to be found. I think just being so busy with being a full-time caregiver has made me slack off on the mental gratitude list before bed, and then I saw that Cait wrote one on her blog, The Happy Radish.

Here are 10 things that made me happy today:
1. Hanging out with my sister
2. Changing the words to songs so they're filthy, and then cracking up.
3. Seeing a deer on the nature trail today. She was so close to us!
4. Audrey singing along when I go, "Hello, is it me you're looking for?"
5. Julian being very excited about a screenplay he's writing
6. Thursday is family pizza night. The simple routine of that is so sweet to me.
7. Julian asking me to smell his hair after his shower, because he likes his shampoo.
8. Boiling garbanzo beans and noticing a foam, declaring that the foam is "boiled farts", googling the info and finding out I'm kind of right. Any time you can claim superior fart knowledge is a good thing, I say.
9. Texting with one of my oldest friends about silly high school crushes.
10. M&Ms, and the way Audrey finally says "please" when I bribe her with them. But it's more like, "peace!!"

Nothing gigantic. But all happy. Even in days that are nutty, there's always something good to be extracted.

Now it's your turn. What made you happy today?