The start of winter

It's been a month and two days since Reef arrived...and it has simply flown. My little squishy one has his tongue tie lasered tomorrow which I am apprehensive about but it will hopefully bring much needed relief for both of us. 

Feeding has been better in the last week, thrush cleared up too (I cut DOWN sugar...couldn't quite cut it out).

Trained in a WOD for the first time on Thursday night which ROCKED and did a 5km walk on Sunday. In between I've been stretching and stabalising though my thoracic and shoulder girdle have been killing me from breastfeeding (and feeding in pain). Speaking of, HUGE excitement: with Rivers fourth birthday, I also celebrated my fourth year of breastfeeding...for the past 1,460days I have fed at least one child every single day!

So I'm writing tonight because I had a really awful realization about the solo parenting at night...

Lately I've been trying to stay away from my phone and be super present with the kids, it goes so fast these precious first years, but I still find myself getting really frustrated and really angry about the kids not listening to me. You see, I believed a part of me not coping well with the toddler behaviour could have been due to the fact I do a lot of work on my smart phone and I really get swept away on social media platforms. But I don't think that is the issue...I think I am just maybe not that FUN. I don't like singing, or silly voices (except when reading), or splashing...I become anxious when things are messy and this is to the point where I will cry because the wooden birthday cake is not set up perfectly on its special plate...I feel like I spend a lot of time explaining what to do or what not to do and why. Then the worst part is that I take everything as a personal attack on me, I feel like Reef doesn't love me when/if he cries (rather than just acknowledging he has gas), I feel like River wants to hurt me if he does the opposite of what I'm asking (rather than remembering that sometimes he CANT listen and is overcome with an impulse to touch/do/say whatever it is)...and it hit me tonight when I asked Raine for the thousandth time not to jump on the bed, there was just no threats I could use to make her stop (she can't understand that she might fall or hurt herself), there was no bribe (she certainly didn't care if we read or not), there was nothing at all I could do except walk away or just accept it. Her jumping on the bed was not a reflection on me as a bad parent, she wasn't doing it to upset me...and so I did something I haven't really done before...I gave in. As much as it would have been awesome to start jumping with her and get Riv up to jump too, I just let her jump until she was done. And when both kids where slamming their heads into the pillows, laughing maniacally, I warned them that someone would get hurt (Riv missed and collided with the wall), but I gave in and then I soothed him when he was hurt.

As much as I have been a peaceful and attached parent, I still have much to learn and much to work on. Currently I am overwhelmed easily and know that I can be a bit too hard on the kids...especially because I feel like I NEED things to be perfect. So this is me, raw and honest (for a change), promising my beautiful kids we'll be having much more fun. It's not realistic to expect I can mimic Mary Poppins but I will definitely be trying to be softer and more lighthearted with everyone in my family, including myself.