I'm feeling good at the moment - really, really good. I feel calm, content, at ease with myself and not remotely stressed. I cannot begin to describe to you how happy that makes me, it's been such a long time coming. I realise even just last week things weren't so awesome (in fact, this day last week I was in the horrors and had decided my DBT group was a complete and utter waste of time). So why the big shift?
I think honestly, it's the change in my general life situation. I've been home with the kids all week, and have absolutely loved it. We've fallen into a nice little routine - I get up ahead of them to do some yoga, then we have breakfast and head out for a walk. You've seen the pictures I've posted of Oughterard and how beautiful it is, we're absolutely spoiled for choice in terms of where to go. The walk might keep us out for an hour/hour and a half (depending on how much stone throwing is involved)
and then we're back for snack. After that, the days have just sort of unfolded - there have been friends of the kids' in, or they've been outside. We've sat down to do stuff together, or else they've played on their own while I pottered.
That said, there have been some choice moments as well. Turns out being home with kids all day is way more full on than being at work, or at least it is for me. But, it's full on in a way that I want, rather than a way that it has to be, and there's a big difference between the two. There have been tantrums, severe selective hearing, and more than one declaration of boredom. We've had to establish a whole new set of ground rules, and get used to spending so much time together. I'm having interweb withdrawal, finding it hard to make time to write, and really missing keeping up with some of my favourite bloggers (A is for Anxiety, One Depressed Mama, if you're reading this I've no clue where you're at at the moment but I hope things are ok and with any luck I'll have time to check in over the weekend). But it's absolutely worth it.
Hubby is now coming home to a (relatively) calm house. I'm taking control of cooking again, and actually enjoying feeding us well. The change in the kids, especially my boy, is wonderful. He seems so much more settled and happy in himself, and M is constantly out with her new best friend, H. It's so lovely to see them interacting with other kids like this, something I would rarely have had the opportunity to see before simply by virtue of the fact that there was so little time in which to allow it to happen. It's a big, big change for them, and one that I think will really stand to them.
I was worried about being here all day, every day, with no car. Now, the fact that we have no car almost takes another pressure off - we don't have the means to go anywhere, so I don't feel obliged to be planning day trips. Turns out the kids are just as happy to run around the local park as they would be somewhere further afield, and that makes my life really easy.
Will the next 6 weeks continue in this blissful domestic glow? Is this finally the start of the stability Therapist has long promised will some day happen? Is it because of the morning yoga, the DBT, the immense sense of freedom that comes from having no one to answer to but myself? Who knows. No doubt there'll be moments where I'll want to tear my hair out and run a million miles from the kids. But for once, I can see that for what it is - life. It's not some epic failing on my part, it means I'm human. And if that's the biggest blip I'll have to deal with, then it's going to be a really good summer.
Labels: children, choices, control, family, hope, mood, optimism, parenting, routine, slowing down
