I give this film two Christmas trees: 🎄🎄
Also, Laura Vanderkam had a great short podcast called “someday you’ll be telling this story” and it definitely resonated wirh me. Someday I won’t be awake with babies every night from 3am onwards. Some day I won’t be changing a crying baby on the floor while another baby cries next to me. Someday I’ll think “wow, twin newborns was so hard. How did we do that?” Someday I’ll take a shower when I want to, not when carefully scheduled into a weekend or when Andy can sneak a long tea break.
More often than not, when my mind start to wander, it wanders in a direction of gratitude. These are a lot of babies, but how lucky am I to get grocery delivery? To have a house stocked with food? To afford to heat my house? To have healthy children? To have Managed birthing 4 children without needing a Caesarean? How lucky that Andy and I both like an organised house. That we have a dishwasher. That our kids are generally good. That we have friends to drop off food. That if we need something desperately I know we have a community here to help us.
I know this is a learned behaviour, I wonder if this is just how we think as we get older or whether all the books on gratitude and mental fortitude have rewired me in this way.
I remember learning about abundance mentality and how that makes for a better lived experience than scarcity mentality. Joyful by Ingrid Ferrell Lee has stuck with me - she noted we like visions of abundance in our environment. We like bubbles and snowflakes and filled jars and twinkles lights. Abundance - multiple similar things - make people happy.
What could be more abundant than twins?
Awww. Love this. And yes, hard to beat the abundance of twins. Triplets, perhaps? Can you imagine?!
ReplyDeleteI love Ingrid Fettel Lee.
I also think a lot about Nicole's advice (via Allison) that: There will be a time after this. It's so all-consuming in the moment, but knowing that there will be a time after no sleep and all the other chaos that comes with little ones, is such a helpful perspective. And it makes my heart swell that you're defaulting to gratitude <3
I love your take on all of this! I know you are probably pulling out your hair at times, but you are here, talking about the good stuff. My Mom is a twin and one of four as well, and her Mom ended up being a single mother later (I think my Mom was ~ 10 or 12), plus her husband was not that helpful even when they were together, and I applaud my grandmother for getting it all done and keeping everything together.
ReplyDeleteThis also reminds me of feeling like my friend K was a superwoman when she took her first (wee!) baby to the grocery store with her. She was lugging around the car seat carrier thingy with one arm and pulling groceries off the shelf with the other and she was not getting flustered when the baby would cry while she was in the pasta aisle and I was trailing behind her feeling helpless and in awe. You mothers are made of some tough stuff.