Sick After Christmas and Beyond

   It has been a long January and so far February hasn't been all that 'short and sweet' either. We have such a shortage of sunshine here and every year after Christmas sickness seems to invite itself over for an extended visit. It has NOT been fun because we are then basically quarantined for weeks on end. This is the case again and we are sick. I am sick to and when you are sick, and nursing a lot, and not sleeping much, it seems to take being sick to a whole new level.
  We have had a couple different sicknesses but the one I have right now includes days of fever and head aches which render me pretty helpless. Anyway yesterday was a lower than usual day and although it ended well enough (because my sister and mom were rock stars) I had a moment where I heard myself say, 'I just generally suck at life.' I really felt that too. I looked around at my children who had each eaten about six pieces of bread before 10am and who were refusing to touch any other food. The house was a disaster and gross. The children were being unkind to me ignoring me, refusing to help do anything and being rude. It was mutiny on every front. So as I changed a diaper and the baby fought me tooth and nail, someone else was crying and refusing to attend a fun outing, I felt too weak to shower or fight another fight about eating healthy and I just felt like running away!
  It has been this way for a while ~ the rudeness and unkindness directed at me and it has worn me down. So I was questioning myself about my ability to parent these strong children. After trying to bring back to myself many different sessions on healthy parenting and counseling sessions about self esteem the thought that trickled into my mind was...'I cannot let my children's attitudes about me define how I feel about myself.' That led to ~ 'Don't let how you think about yourself be defined by how you are treated by anyone!'
So I just had have to say ~ To all the mom's who are holed up in their messy houses...who are human snot rags, who are tired and dull eyed, who feel like they can't go on....Hold your head up okay ~ There are a lot of good, worthy, beautiful things about you and you've got to know it! Take a moment, gather yourself back together even if you are hurt and tattered and it feels like there are mere remnants. Realize this battle to raise these children into human beings that will be amazing has some pretty horrible moments but you are not alone. I am here and once again I am seeing that my children are reflecting how I feel about myself. I have been feeling like a piece of dirt, a bad mother, a failure, defeated, down ~ but really I KNOW perfectly well that I put all that aside a long time ago.
  I sat a couple of them down and we had some words and I told them that enough was a enough. By the end of the day everyone was doing much better.
  Mothers ~ we are gems, priceless, worthy and no one said it was supposed to be easy right? We keep soldiering on. Shower those little sweethearts with love on Valentines day and don't forget spring will come. It always does and the sunshine, flowers, blue sky, it will make all the difference in the world!