I believe I can always find something to be thankful for.
Last night (or, rather, this morning), at 1am, I realized Jem had thrown up our dinner of pasta carbonara all over her crib. It was caked in her hair, all over her jammies, and smeared over her sheets. I was up late editing wedding photos in the quiet house after the girls had gone to bed. I was doing my just-before-I-crawl-into-bed check on them and I smelled something funny in their room...
So, at 1am, Gabe took over with a crying baby (who woke up as I was looking closer at the mysterious patterns on her crib sheet) while I stripped the bed and got a wash load started.
How Mara managed to stay asleep through all of the activity next to her, I'm not sure, but it wasn't until AFTER Jem had been changed and fed, the crib sheets changed and remade, and Jem tucked back into her crib that Mara woke up.
I think it was about 3am before we all got back to sleep.
So, today we've been a bit fuzzy. Pre-kids, I would have probably drawn the curtains, turned off my alarm, and then slept until my body woke up, but with kids, I try to keep them on a bit of a schedule so nap times and bed times can unfold normally today, which means not as much sleep as I would have liked.
Gabe had a commitment this morning, so the girls and I were making do, and for some reason, Jem didn't take her normal 90 minute to 2 hour morning nap, instead she woke after 50 minutes and wouldn't go back to sleep... maybe she's still feeling funny? But to say that the atmosphere of the house was punctuated by tired sounds would be very accurate (sighing on my part, crying on theirs).
I was having a bit of a bad attitude about a number of things (bummed Gabe wasn't around to endure the crying children with me, bummed I was so tired, bummed Jem hadn't slept, bummed we don't live near either of our parents or siblings to try to schedule a little childcare break, etc), but I started hanging up the two loads of laundry that I'd gotten washed, and I had this moment of clarity:
I am really thankful for our front porch.
I think sometimes gratitude is my best weapon against the grumpies, because as I thought about how much of a blessing our front porch is, I realized I wasn't nearly as peeved at the world!
We live in a small space - our apartment is about 450 square feet (about 40 meters square). It's technically a one-bedroom Granny flat/mother-in-law apartment, attached via the garage to our landlords. We also have a utility room/storage room built into the garage that has turned our one bedroom into a one bedroom plus enough space for the girls to have their own tiny sleeping zone in half of the utility room.
I don't mind the size of the space - I like being able to keep it clean pretty easily, I like that it forces us to prioritize what we have, I like that it provides a challenge to constantly keep improving, refining, and reorganizing our space. But I also so appreciate that we have a covered front porch at the entrance to our house.
Our front porch adds about another 100 square feet to our space - it is where we leave our shoes if they are wet and dirty, Gabe parks his scooter, the girls both have swings, we have a couple chairs to sit on, there are concrete pavers to do chalk art on, AND (by far the best part, in my opinion) it has a laundry line that means our clothes can dry under cover.
As I was thinking about the front porch and all its blessings, I started thinking about how much I enjoy doing laundry in the summer.
We don't have a drier, so we hang-dry our laundry all year long. In the winter, the covered porch is HUGELY helpful to keep the laundry process going, but it can still take a few days to get clothes and cloth diapers dry (sometimes needing to be brought into the house and hung up on a rack in our living room over night or for 24 hours to finish getting dry). But in the summer, man, I can hang up Jemima's favorite blanket - the one she struggles to sleep without - at 10am, and it's dry and ready to be back to work for her afternoon nap.
That got me thinking about how much I appreciate our yard - our landlords have a beautiful, big park-like yard, and it is so nice that the wind can blow through the front porch and dry our clothes, and the sun can shine on our front porch and expedite the process.
And THAT got me thinking about how wonderful our landlords are, and how they interpret Kiwi-isms for us, drop off excess food, let us glean plums and lemons and oranges from their trees in the back yard, let me plant a garden, let Samara come chat with them when they come home from work, let Gabe utilize tools from their shed for projects, etc...
And you know what? I'm not grumpy anymore. It's hard to be grumpy when you're brain is wandering down the path of "Wow, I have so much for which to be grateful!"
