it's gonna be okay

This child of mine. This sweet child of mine.

The beginning of this year was rough. She was turning into this ... three-year-old.

Or something.

She had this nasty little attitude about everything and it was making parenting her hard. I found myself frowning a lot instead of laughing. I found myself counting out loud and in my head (out loud to put her into Time Outs, in my head to hopefully contain myself from blowing up) whenever I was around her. Bedtimes were the absolute worst--taking up to 2 hours some nights.

But then something happened.

I'm not sure when it was or what it was--and it very well could've been me who changed--but something happened and parenting her became a joy again.

Time outs went from daily occurrences to maybe once a week to once a month. Bedtimes still take about an hour, but there isn't any more yelling.

I think the attitude has a lot to do with the busyness of December: Santa, Christmas, Rudolph, her birthday, New Year's Eve... I think things get so exciting come December, that when middle of January tries to bring about a normalcy again, she fights it because I'm pretty sure I complained about what a Pill she was early last year, too.

Well, now that we're in mid-March, we're back to Normal and I really like it here.

It (normalcy) lets me see the bigger picture and that helps us all, I think.

I know Lovie can sense my stress, my sorrow, my sadness from Oma's slow death. And it's hard for me to keep that from her and I guess it's OK not to try anymore. I mean, for months now I've tried bottling it up inside of me... but why?

We visited Oma on Saturday. I was so reluctant to visit with Lovie the past month because I didn't really want her to see Oma in such a sad state. But my mom thought that since Lovie is such a good girl (her words), that maybe bringing her by would be good. She missed seeing her and she thought Oma might really like it, too.

And she did.

Oma smiled like I haven't seen her smile since the last time Lovie was there. And so did I. Instead of feeling sick to my stomach over Oma dying any day now, I was content. And so was Oma. She had life in her blue eyes again. She looked ... peaceful. And happy.

And that's saying a lot about someone who's withering away to nothing.

Oma still isn't eating much of anything, she's still sleeping almost all day and night, and she's recently stopped taking all medication except for a pain patch she wears. She's super tired and very ready.

And now she's wearing a smile on her face.

And so am I.