Gratitude for Friends

The last time we visited family and friends from our home town, one of our close friends gave us a bin packed full of clothes for lil G.

Today, before nap time, I went through all of G's clothes, pulling out the clothes that didn't fit him any more (or close to not fitting any more) and replacing them with the clothes from the new bin we'd just received.  Last year, the same friends had given us a bin packed full of 2T clothes.  We had also received clothes from other friends who were cleaning out their own boys' clothes.  As I was packing away all of the clothes sizes 18 months to 2T, I was humbled.  I packed away two bins, packed to the brim with clothes!  And there are still some clothes yet to be laundered and packed away, too!  This is to add to the 3 bins full of clothes from newborn to 18 months already in the attic!  But here's the thing about the large 18 month clothes through the 2T clothes: we probably purchased fewer than 10 total pieces of clothing for G during that time.  The rest had been given to us by generous friends and family.

And today, putting the new 3T clothes into his drawers, I was humbled by the fact we likely won't need to buy clothes for him again.  His drawers are packed solid with tops, pants, shorts, pajamas, and his closet is full of coats, dress shirts, jackets, and sweatshirts.

I am so grateful for such a generous blessing for our family!

Restarting - ground zero

This challenge feels a little like one step forward, two steps back. I've slipped back into yelling; I'm back where I started. I honestly haven't been making a very concerted effort. I haven't been tracking anything, and now I'm not even making it 2 hours into my day without raising my voice, losing my cool, yelling... Am I that tightly wound right now? Life is very full of stress; I know that continues to make it a bit more difficult to keep calm, but in the past few weeks, I even stopped trying altogether.

Here's something I'm realizing: perhaps I need to slowly work my way up to the point where even 24 hours feels more in my reach. When I realize I've lost my cool unnecessarily, I try not to just give up on the rest of the day, but a part of me figures if I can't count the whole day, then why bother? I don't think I had a true idea of what this challenge was going to entail.

A few weeks ago, when I was really trying to keep my snappish self from emerging every few minutes, I was feeling better about myself. I was seeing progress! And I felt like it had prepared me better for dealing with struggles. Then a few things happened that took my focus off of the challenge, and, without the focus, I lost that initial momentum.

So, though life is still not as peachy as I would like it to be, I need this challenge. My family needs this challenge. My husband and I were getting upset at each other in front of our son, right at bedtime, which ended in me yelling, and it was making our son sad and scared. For all of the other crap we are dealing with right now, having a contentious atmosphere does nothing to help. I have much to do with that atmosphere.

Time to try again.