Pushing the Reset Button

Yesterday was an interesting day. Pip woke up way too early, and I quickly discovered that it was a meltdown down. Being 2 years old is hard! These are not uncommon days, but today, TODAY was a bad day for it.

I had a million errands to run and an awesome event to plan for that night. I was excited, but busy and a little stressed to get it all done on time. And having a not-so-happy toddler did not help. It wasn't even 8am and I could feel myself already feeling frustrated with her and having very little patience for her little heart.She insisted in wearing goofy socks and clunky shoes that I dislike, but I quickly decided to drop the matter and said to myself "fine, I'm not willing to die on this hill".

As we jumped into the car to head to the grocery store for our first of many stops, I let out a deep breath and threw out a little prayer that sounded something like "God help me to get everything done and help my toddler to be happy!". Just then I remembered a sweet little reading from a blog that I follow. She has 3 kiddos and one morning was running very late for preschool and feeling rushed and frustrated. She decided to stop, turn on some music, dance with her kids in the living room and reset the mood for the day. She let go of being late, and let go of her frustration- and in turn her children reacted positively and also began to choose joy.

Well, we were already in the car and headed to the store, so I decided to come up with something to "reset" our day as well and get us on the right track. Being tired and busy, our reset looked like this:

Yes, she is eating a donut with sprinkles and a chocolate milk. But look how happy she is! We sat at the Starbucks inside Fry's and ate donuts and talked and laughed for about 20 minutes. I set aside my phone and my to-do list and just enjoyed the reset. And for the first time, I looked around and didn't care if I was being judged for feeding my kid a donut. No one knew why, and no one else knew about our reset. It felt good to just sit there and enjoy each other's company for a few minutes.

The rest of the morning she was relatively happy and dealt well with the many errands we ran. I think our reset worked. So if you are just having a bad day, try to slow down and start over in whatever way works for your family. You won't regret it!

I will be posting a post-surgery update soon- thank you for the prayers and thoughts!
And as for the awesome event, I will write a post on it soon. But just to tease you....

There might have been a little of this....

 And a lot of this....

Can't wait to share!