Even Hard days have Beautiful moments

Some days as a parent are soul crushing. You fight with your toddler. You carry the baby around on your hip all day but feel like you haven't really looked at her actual face at all. You repeat everything you say three times, and only get a reaction when you yell it out the third time. You make breakfast, snacks, lunch and dinner – all to be hardly eaten and sneakily fed to the dog. The baby won't sleep for more than 20 minutes, and you have to be holding her the entire time. She bites your nipple during feeds when she gets distracted by her sister. The end of the day can't come fast enough, but there's a tantrum waiting about bath time or bed time, another round of booby biting from the baby, and now you're ready to curl up in a ball and cry. Except you can't physically curl up anymore. Add in the chronic pain, which increases throughout the day, and it's no surprise you feel your zeal for life has been snatched away, and you wonder how you can face another day of it. 

And then the baby looks up at you and smiles with one of those heart melting smiles that lights up her face, showing off that beautiful little dimple in her cheek, and those two razor sharp teeth amongst the rest of that gorgeous gummy smile. And you can't help it but you smile back, gazing at her adoringly. And then the toddler gets out of bed and insists that she needs another cuddle, and squeezes you so tight and tells you that she loves you so much, and then asks you if you are happy again, and as the tears roll down your face you tell her, yes, of course I'm happy. And you squeeze her tight and tell her you're sorry for being grumpy and she says I'm sorry I made you grumpy, and the tears flow even faster. 

So after some chocolate, and some pain killers, you look at their sleeping faces, so innocent and angelic and realise that yes, some days are souls crushing, but every bad day is worth it for even just a handful of beautiful moments. Luckily we get more beautiful moments than we realise, sometimes we just have to slow down a little to see them. 

Here's hoping for more of those beautiful moments than bad days for all of us!