focus on the good.

yesterday was a hard day. we had just returned home from two weeks of visiting family & friends on the west coast, and woke up to a messy and cluttered apartment, a fussier-than-usual baby, and a new time zone. i don't think i realized until after we left how really nice it was to be around the people i love, people who constantly said "oh, i'll hold the baby!" and to feel like i was more than a feeding & entertaining machine for my child. not to say that i don't love doing those things - bonding with phoenix through breastfeeding and seeing how smart he is when we walk around and observe things are wonderful parts of my life - but after spending time with my big extended family (including all my family-in-law) and coming back home to toronto, it felt like being a feeding & entertaining machine made up about 80% of my life. that's a hard feeling, especially for someone who envisioned that having a baby would be all leisurely strolls to coffee shops and through neighbourhoods, bonding with other mamas over yoga classes and social groups, and cuddling in bed.

but wait - yesterday i did almost all of those things (and more)...

the three of us slept in, and cuddled in our big queen bed.

we wandered over to one of our favourite cafes in toronto for breakfast.

i took phoenix for a long walk through the streets of downtown toronto in his stroller.

we got our apartment (mostly) tidied up started feeling a bit more back to normal.

after the baby fell asleep, we spent some time alone together binge watching a favourite tv show.

but when i started writing this post, it was with a really negative perspective on my day, which WAS a hard day - phoenix was fussy and wanted to be held all day, and he only took a few short naps, which left me exhausted and made tidying up take way longer than i wanted it to. during breakfast at the cafe, i dropped my husband's breakfast sandwich on the ground (before he even took a bite), spilled coffee on myself, and had a horrible failed attempt at discreetly breastfeeding a screaming baby while wearing clothes that were absolutely not conducive to breastfeeding. yes we took a lovely long walk, but the air was muggy and i was hot & uncomfortable, the traffic was loud, the sidewalks were horribly maintained and so bumpy (which kept phoenix from napping) and it seems like even more people have taken up smoking in toronto since i gave birth. i snapped at paul several times while we were trying to get the baby to sleep (who had gotten overtired and couldn't settle down easily as we had become accustomed to him doing, so he cried until i walked and bounced him to sleep), and then afterwards felt terrible about being frustrated with my husband and son, and felt like a bad mother for getting so frustrated instead of just enjoying every joyous moment of our wonderful and perfect life together.

phew.

i guess all that i can do is start over today, with a fresh perspective that even though things don't always go exactly the way i plan them (or in reality look the way they do in blog posts or instagram feeds), i have control over what aspects of the events of my day i focus on. i could focus on the hard details, or i could focus on the beautiful big picture. from the descriptions above, it's pretty obvious to me that i'd rather focus on the wonderfulness of my days. and that's not to say that i can't acknowledge that things are hard right now - life can be extremely trying at times with a newborn - but i don't want to look back a year from now and remember only how difficult it was... i'd much rather remember the cuddles, the long walks, the cafe breakfasts with my little family.

because eventually babies calm down, fall asleep, and grow up, and the good things are the things that really matter.