Worldwide Pat-on-the-Back

I want to tell you about a woman I know. One night, after cleaning up the house and putting her son to bed, she stayed up till midnight reading about a woman, Marie Antoinette, when her husband came up from studying for a big exam in the basement and asked if she was ready for bed, she replied "ok". She washed her face, brushed and flossed her teeth, had couples prayer, and kissed her husband good night. At 12:30 just as she had laid her head on her pillow her son started to cough, uncontrollably, which had been normal for the past week, so she got up and made him a sippy cup of warm water, honey and lemon. She sat up with him till he drank enough for him to stop coughing. She went back to bed. At approx. 3 am her poor little son started up again. She put the sippy cup, with the remaining lemon-honey water, in the microwave to warm it back up, and had him drink the rest of it, and went back to bed. She woke up again at 4:00am to go to the restroom, did I mention that she is 5 mos pregnant. She is finally out cold, until 6:40 comes around, way too soon, her son wakes her up and she realizes her husband is gone already, confused and totally out of it she grabs her son and puts him in bed with her. She tries to get some more sleep between the hits and slaps and him poking her in the face. He falls asleep, and so does she. Until 7:00am when her husband comes in and asks if she is going to make his lunch before he leaves for school, she promptly gives him a look that needs no reply, he goes back into the basement to pack up his things. At this time her sweet little son decided to wake up and ride her like a horse, not so easy on a prego tummy with a full bladder. So cartoons it is. She get him a sippy cup, and plops him in front of the TV for morning cartoons, something she does on the mornings she is desperate for sleep and her son is not, and this is definitely one of those mornings.
She climbs back into bed and falls asleep when, what seems like seconds later, her darling husband is back at her side telling her it is time for prayer. She climbs out of bed, says prayer and kisses her husband good bye, with a Good luck to go with it(big test that day). She decides to try this sleep thing again knowing there will be no more prayer and that her little son will be occupied for at least another 30mins, she climbs into bed. At this time she is enjoying a great dream and some great morning sleep, when she is terrifyingly woken up to something scratching the wall above her head, and then her phone ringing, the scratching she later assumes to be a squirrel crawling up the side of her house. She picks up the phone and lies to the person on the other end, that she didn't wake her up, embarrassed to still be sleeping at 8:00am. She makes plans to go to a friends later that day to go walking and prepare some water balloons for their mutual activity that night. She then realizes the time and decides to get up, she had made plans with a group of friends to meet at the museum in one hour. She jumps out of bed, says her prayers, takes the dog out for a potty break, calls her friends to confirm their play date, lets the dog back in, jumps in the bath, does her hair, make-up, brushes, and flosses, her teeth, then get her little boy ready. By this time she is late and is trying to get somewhat of a decent breakfast ready to go, and her son comes to her crying. With a smell that could knock you out she runs him to the changing table. It is a bitter sweet occasion, she haves to clean up a TON of poop, but her son finally unloaded after about a week of dry spells. So he gets new clothes, and a fresh sippy and a breakfast bar and they leave for the car. But this little boy didn't want to leave just then so he throws a tantrum, with no time to spare she picks him up and carries him to the car, after a few slaps in the face(on her end) and anger welling up inside her, she plops her son, not so nicely, into his car seat and buckles him in. With a tearful ride they make it to their destination. They make it inside and they have a great time, her son gets to play with his very best friends, and so does she. After a few hours, with tired kids, a poopy diaper and two hungry prego ladies, they decide to leave. She stops by a coffee shop to get a gift for a friend, drops it off at her friends work, and jets home. She then remembers a friend with a sick kid who needed a thermometer, and a promise that she had made to drop hers off. She gets her friend on the phone and opologizes and says she will be right over. She stops by her house runs in grabs the thermometer and drops it off at the sweet grateful friends house. She gets home puts her, now sleeping, little boy to bed. She goes to the kitchen and heats up some leftovers and sits in front of her computer to finish reading about Marie Antoinette. Her husband comes home unexpectedly, to have lunch. So she sits with him for a few minutes, enjoying some Olympics, until he had to leave. She realizes the time and has to call her friend to try and push back their plans due to her son being asleep. She feels tired all of a sudden and falls asleep watching T.V. Now the next few hours are very hard for her to remember, she must have been very tired. She seems to remember her husband coming back home, and the T.V. being on, and some other things that are very blurry. Her little boy wakes her up, realizing she has no idea how long her son has been awake by himself, she sits up quickly, which then causes some deep cramping. So she grabs her son and lays him on the couch with her. I don't think she got much sleep between her little boy sqirming and her cramping, her husband comes up for drink, so she gets up. By this time it is 4:30 and she has NO idea where the time went, it was as if she was dreaming or in another world. She realized her son hasn't eaten since his very small breakfast that morning, so she gets up. By this time she is having what seems to be full on contractions. She hurries to get him food and sits him down to eat. With which he responds "no" he does not want to eat what she has prepared for him. So she yells down the laundry shoot for her husband to come up and help her out. The contractions, or what she assumes to be contractions, stop when she is sitting, so she sits down when her husband comes up. He is concerned and trys to help her figure it out. She tries to call her friend back to explain what is going on, when she realizes she doesn't have any service, which is not unsual that whole day she had been losing service causing her to inconvenience others by not returning phone calls or texts. So she uses her husbands phone. She explains to her friend what is going on and opologizes for missing their plans, and for most likely not making it to mutual. Her husband helps her out with their son as much as he can, and tells her to call him if she needs any more help, and heads back to the basement to study some more. Se gets to rest for a second until it is made very clear that a certain little boy no longer wants to sit at the table. She doesn't remember all of the details of this, but she remembers water and a lot of soggy food, and her husband, so he must have been there to help, not quite sure. She cleans him off and sets him down, because he soaked his lunch he of couse was still hungry, so she rinses off some grapes and blueberries and they share a snack while watching T.V. She starts to feel better and decides it is time to make some dinner. So she goes into the kitchen to make some spagetti with garlic bread. Her sweet husband comes up to take their little boy out to play while she finishes up. Once she is finished she goes out to get the boys. They come in and explan that they were at the neighbors, and that their kitchen is all tore apart being remodeled. So they decide to get some food ready for them and they take it over. They chat for a few minutes and go back home to finally sit down and eat themselves. After eating she sits on the couch and turns the T.V. on waiting for her son to decide he is done with his dinner. When he is done she cleans him off, and sets him down, upon doing so he throws himself to the ground trapping her between the table and the wall, so she has to grab him by the arm and drag him out of the way. She finishes wiping off the table and throws the rag and dishes in the sink. She decides he just needs to go outside and play for a while. Though she is nervous of what people will think because she missed mutual because of pain, and now she is outside playing with her son, they get shoes on, and she grabs a few toys and they go outside. While sitting outside enjoying the beautiful weather and her son playing in the grass with the dog, she starts to feel a lot better, even energized, so she calls up her friend and offers to go to mutual. By this time mutual will be over in 30 min, so they decide against it, which makes her feel a little sad and guilty that she didn't just push through it and go when she was supposed to, but she lets it go. She then sees some clouds rolling in and with some inspiration of her neighbor, she decides it would be a good time to mow the lawn before the rain. After chatting with a different neighbor and her kids, her husband brings up the mower and she starts to mow the lawn. While mowing the lawn, as quickly as she can before she starts to feel sick again, she notices her son crying over on the porch, figuring it was just because of the loud lawn mower she ignores him, justifying that she will be done soon. When she is finally done she takes the mower around back to have her husband put it away. she goes back around front and holds her crying son. She realizes this is more than an "I want you" cry and he shows her his hand, and on his little hand was a clothes pin pitching his poor, tiny little palm. She quickly takes it off and consuls him. She feels so guilty, for the 30 mins she was mowing he just wanted her to help him and she ignored him. Her husband comes out and sees them and inquires as to why they are both almost in tears. She shows him his hand, which is now purple where the clothes pin once was. They clean up the toys and go inside, and Daddy puts the mower away and gets back to studying. The little boy gets a bath with every single bath toy she can find. She goes through the house cleaning things up while he is playing. She washes him up takes his crying little self out of the tub and gets him ready for bed. He gets nice clean jammies, his teeth brushed and some vapor rub on this chest. Way too tired at this point he refuses, meaning crying and pushing her away, to have prayer or scriptures, so she walks out and lets him go to sleep. Without another peep, he is out like a light. So she finishes picking up and moves to the kitchen. She does all the dishes, washes, rinses, drys and puts away. Then she takes out the recycling and the trash, then starts a load of laundry before she sits down to prepare her lesson for Sunday. I don't know about you but this woman is amazing! ;)

So I'm sure you all know that this Woman is me, and this is a story of my life in the last 24 hours. I was feeling a little guilty about the things I didn't do today, like making Alan's luch and skipping out on a friend and mutual. Then I realized that I had my hands in dish water, and I had just mowed the lawn, and dealt with a moody child all day, so I decided that I may not have done EVERYTHING, but I had sure done a lot. So I wanted to share it with all of you, all of you who took on the challenge to read this huge story. I know we all do this, we look at the negative instead of the positive. We feel as if we are not enough, and that some how we are letting our Father in Heaven, or someone important, down; and that is simply not true. We are great human beings who do a lot. Whether we are male, female, mothers, wives, children whatever we are, we can accomplish great things, and have already, we just need to take the time to realize it.

Now, what I want you to do. I want all who read this to sit down and write out your busy day, or your accomplishments for the week and post it on your blog. It is fun and you really feel great afterward. It's like the biggest pat on the back you've ever given yourself. Happy Blogging Everyone! Thanks for reading.