Well, I've made it through the second trimester! The past month or two has been a really, really happy time (except for today, haha #adultbirthdays #thishappenedvalentinesdaytoo), and it's been fun figuring out what's made it happy so that I can replicate the results in the coming months. (I mean, the real answer is that I got enough sleep, but hopefully I can find other things to compensate for that until baby #3 is weaned.)
The main thing is gratitude, of course (which was one of my goals for the year), but I've been trying to figure out what gratitude encompasses for me. So far I've pinpointed accuracy, ownership, and letting things go. And those probably don't make sense right now, so I should probably elaborate on that. Another time.
Anyway, here is some of what I've discovered the past few months about what made March and April pretty good.
Things that aren't necessary to be happy
1. Apartments without mice
2. Utility bills under $300 or even $400 (joke is, the whole winter the apartment never got above 64)
3. Life without heartburn or sciatic nerve pain or any number of pregnancy symptoms
4. Competent mailmen
5. Life without stomach bugs (we've had a few lately that have made us cancel a lot of things)
6. Marches that aren't frigid or Aprils that aren't rainy.
7. Having an open invitation to play at the student housing we can see from our house. (I'm still sad that baby signing time ended abruptly back in February without anyone telling us [and we were the only ones who were going] but it is what it is.)
8. Boy Scouts of America doing things right. (All those hours I spent on rechartering and 5 months later they told us we did it wrong. Hahahaha.)
9. Kids who don't need to play with the same toy at the same time.
10. Having Primary run smoothly every week.
11. Maternity pants that feel good. I am so excited for it to be warm enough to wear maternity shorts because those aren't quite as demonic.
Things that help a lot with happiness
1. Two bathrooms (it's not so much that it's two as much as there's one on each floor)
2. Longer days
3. Days where we don't turn on the heater
4. Visits from Kaylie and Derek
5. Weeks where every recipe I try is a winner
6. Joseph learning how to color in the lines (he likes to know how to do things right)
7. Joseph learning how to deal with not coloring in the lines (thank you abstract and impressionistic artists for making beautiful art I can use to demonstrate)
8. Matthew finally picking up the word "yes," pronounced "dus." And now nodding.
9. Trips to NYC one weekend and Providence, Rhode Island the next. (more on those later.)
10. Joseph learning to ride a regular bike within 2 minutes of getting on one. Balance bikes are the best! (pro tip: whatever we did wrong that made his brand new shoes get scuffed up and holey from the balance bike, don't copy us.)
11. Clark Kent Days (days where we tell Joseph he has to wear a non-superhero shirt)
12. All 4 canines.
13. Dyeing Easter eggs and having Easter egg hunts with friends (even though Matthew was only willing to pick up one egg).
14. Seeing Kevin work night after night for months on a paper, and then seeing people get really excited about it.
15. Doing "homeschool" with Joseph and having him get excited about math. (We're starting public school in the fall, but in the meantime we just talk about whatever we think sounds cool that day.)
16. Watching him pick up a book and sound out a few words here and there.
17. Pretending to learn Spanish with Duolingo. (My opinion: if I hadn't already had foreign language classes that gave me a good grip on grammar, I would be totally lost doing this. But it's fun.)
18. Hearing about friends moving to New Haven.
19. Sending emails after emails to people telling them about both Ann Arbor and New Haven.
20. Running into friends in unexpected places. (Ran into a guy from Ann Arbor at the Chicago airport and an old engineering friend at Thanksgiving Point, for example.)
21. Hearing from old friends. Man, I love a good email exchange.
22. And at the same time . . . realizing that even the most beautiful, life-changing friendships don't have to continue. I had been wanting some things to be the way they used to be, and it felt like I was keeping them on life support. But now I realize it's okay to let them die a gentle death. I can still go put flowers on the grave, but I don't have to be bitter or upset that long-distance friendships don't always work. (I give myself permission to cry though.)
23. Going to the Yale Symphony with Kevin for our anniversary. We only got to hear half the concert because one of the pianists had an accident an hour or so before the concert. (Isn't that just so sad? I can't imagine how stressful that was for everyone.) But that's what YouTube is for.
24. Pink trees. All over New Haven.
25. Learning the names of those trees. Weeping cherry. Star magnolia. Crape myrtle bush. I can't learn them all at once, but I've got a few down!
26. Going to the teeny tiny library for books, setting Matthew up with a bunch of puzzles and Joseph with a bunch of superhero books while I futilely look for books in the adult section, and then having the ladies at checkout tell me I have beautiful children instead of telling me I'm a bad mom for not being within two feet of my kids at all times.
27. Forgiving God for creating people who do unwise or dangerous things under the guise of revelation or do evil things just because they can. This one has bugged me for about three years now, and the past year and a half I had to grapple with the darkest, direst implications of this (i.e. is all revelation just in our heads?). In addition to reading scriptures, praying, temple, callings, etc. I think opening up about this in multiple places has finally made it so I could finally just let it go and begin to trust and forgive again. So, that has been great.
28. As has Matthew's jumping been.
29. Hearing Matthew sing the ABCs (well, like 6 of the letters here and there) and then start into Twinkle Twinkle.
30. Watching the baby wriggle and jiggle and wiggle inside me.
and, sure.
31. The Jazz winning. I guess.
Well, I guess this just sort of turned into a list of what we did the past several weeks. Whatever it is that's made this spring so fun, I'll take it!
No comments:
Post a Comment