Must be Monday

Mondays are hard. It started hard but it had a sweet surprise in the middle.

This morning it was cold and I think it made everyone more prone to crankiness than usual. Sweetpea was voicing her strong opinion about not wanting to get dressed before breakfast and other minute problems. We finally got everyone ready for breakfast and prepared the ritual bowls of cereal. I had just finished praying when Sweetpea baptized me with her full bowl of Cheerios and COLD milk. She began to howl with uncontrollable laughter and the dog rushed in to get at the unexpected feast. The coldness of it took my breath away, which was a good thing because it gave me a moment to collect my emotions and not react in anger. That is an evidence of God's grace in my life.

So after cleaning up the mess and finishing breakfast I decided that it would be best to try to bleed off some of my stress through exercise. I am really trying to use this widespread but often unused (at least in our household) theory while going through transition with Sweetpea. Well, it worked for a while as the two littles were content to color while I exercised but just as I was really getting into it they got their fill of crayons. I tried to incorporate them into some stretching with me but that only gave Sweetpea more ideas of how to inflict bodily harm on me. So much for my taking a break, I decided that littlest button would go play by herself and that Sweetpea and I would do some therapy.

I got the bouncer out and expected full blown resistance and was delighted to find her mildly agreeable to the therapy. Off she started and soon gained herself some verbal praise which just motivated her to do even better. She has not shown this aspect before of responding to verbal praise so I was even more stunned. She did the whole therapy with great success and got a lot of positive reward for it. Not only that but the activity served to calm her down immensely and for the next 2 hours she did not have any big issues.

After a late lunch and some playing we were having devotions and everyone was on the coach. I was under a blanket to stay warm and Sweetpea got another blanket to coverup with. I was sandwiched between the two littles and before the devotions were over both were sound asleep. My little button still takes daily naps so I knew she would fall sleep but Sweetpea has resisted taking naps since she came so I did not expect her to succumb. It tells me that she is letting her guard down and not having to be as vigilant and on guard for being victimized, at least to some extent. I was very blessed that she took a nap on me and when she awoke she was a cuddly critter. Yum. I wanted to take a picture of it but I was afraid of disturbing the scene.