It's how you look at it.

During the craziest of daily life, the craziest of the sometimes scary world we live in, a moment of good – big or small – can ground you.  It can ground your mind, setting you mentally back to “how wonderful life truly is”.  It can also bring you back to a sense of well being…that your purpose in this world is to love and love every minute you are given. 

After a “discouraging” to say the least last week battling with what I’m calling the “terrible two’s”, the little things have refocused me.  Temper tantrums, whale cries, crocodile tears, fish flops on the floor were totally forgotten after last night’s quiet time with my Crew.  My baby’s head on my chest and kisses on my lips was all I needed.  Pulling over multiple times this morning to “pee pee”, with no performance I might add, after my tardiness grew and grew, my patience dwindled and dwindled, my drive to work ended in a smile.  A smile because somewhere in between the fuss, a true conversation with my toddler occurred.  As we were talking about going to school and getting to see all of his friends, Crew began to list all of them, by name.  My mouth dropped…he totally understood me, totally answered me, TOTALLY unrehearsed.    

And after getting to work, late to my Rotary meeting,  busy emails, voicemails, deadlines, I was in a full dash to make my 10 am meeting.  It was an interview with a heart transplant patient.  Not knowing the significance of my upcoming encounter and with intentions to hurry, get the story, get the photo, do my best, get back to work and get back to those deadlines..one hour later I was still sitting with my interviewee, both of us in tears, celebrating life. 

The world is still a good place, there are still good people.  Every minute matters, the good ones, the bad ones.  Every minute should be cherished. 

Modern day scrapbooking

I have always loved looking through my baby book, re-visiting photos from my childhood, and hearing my mom/dad re-tell me stories of my youth.  As I became a parent, I promised myself I too would keep track of all the special moments for my babies.  With my already hectic life I decided to stray from the norm, revising the “paper” scrapbook to one on the world wide web.  I opened up Gmail accounts for both Crew and Essie.  As the days past quick, it’s a wonderful way for me to keep up with all the changes, a wonderful way to track life’s memorable moments.  Whether its stats from a recent doctor visit, a video capturing a reached milestone, or just a silly face photo, one day my babies will be able to look back and “see” their childhood.  I email them everything I want them to remember.  I email them everything what I want to remember about them and MANY MANY words of I love you.  I’ve emailed them song lyrics, photos of their first friends/doggies, photos of their bumps and bruises, words from family and friends, and many others.  All of which are encouraging, positive…sent with love. 

Different this morning though.  After reading horrible news via Facebook (and yes, I emailed both Crew and Essie the article), it’s changed my mindset of subjects suitable for emailing.  For all the years my momma preached and preached, “don’t to that, you better not”, “something bad could to happen”, “there are crazy people in this world”, I am truly appreciative.  I only wish those words stuck with me when I was young, before I became a parent.  They all ring SO TRUE.  All those times my I walked home in the dark with friends,  drove way too fast in hopes to make it somewhere on time, jumped off too high of cliffs in to unknown waters, I was just lucky.  Lucky that nothing bad happened. 

So I will continue my previous trend of “happy” emails…along with “warning” ones…both sent with love.  Stories of real life. Stories of how scary this world really is.  All of this in hopes that my babies will think of consequences; learn to be careful, responsible and value the freedom of normalcy.  That and among the thousands of times I will say those “warning” phrases…I can only hope it will stick.