Why we celebrate the little things
In my house, we celebrate trash night (Wednesday), clean sheets and bedtimes before 10.
We have special songs for when the weekend starts, when we change our panties and when we make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. (This one you may know.)
We throw living room dance parties on the reg, slip easily into the roles of our favorite (changing) superheroes and villains and laugh as often and as loudly — and as much like Peppa Pig — as we can.
In my house, we make a special effort to find joy in the little things of daily life because in my house, daily life is so. dang. hard.
We’re a family of two working adults plus two busy kiddos (ages 6 and 3) plus two stinky dogs. We have the advantages of college educations and good jobs that provide us with a stable, relatively easy financial life. We own our home and the two cars that reliably get us wherever we want to go. Our kids are healthy (thank God), happy and mostly (ha!) normal, and they’re cared for and taught during the day by teachers and daycare workers who love and respect them.
We are incredibly lucky in so many ways — and we undoubtedly have advantages over so many less fortunate others — and yet, some days? It’s hard for us to make it through. (I’m not talking, mommy-needs-a-glass-of-wine-with-dinner hard. I’m talking crawl-under-the-covers-and-sob-until-the-kids-put-themselves-to-bed hard.)
Parenting is no easy gig. And while I once thought I was just doing it wrong, years of reading my favorite subgenre of self-help — great books like Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun, Brigid Shulte’s Overwhelmed and the book I swear was written just for me, Katrina Alcorn’s Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink — made it clear: It is what it is. And some days, it’s just too much.
On any given day I’m responsible for: feeding, clothing, entertaining, bathing, disciplining, protecting, hauling around, finding things for and generally keeping alive my kids, my dogs and (a lot of the time) my husband. In the meantime, I have to do all of those same things for myself, while fitting in important (I’m told) tasks like relaxing (HA!) eating healthy foods, building core muscles, preventing wrinkles, wearing sunscreen, leaning in and out and every which way and on and on some more. Then come the job duties — mastering my day-to-day work while nurturing a career that is 1) fulfilling 2) lucrative 3) able to be squeezed into the hours of 9–5 when I know my kids are in someone else’s line of sight. And then if the house gets cleaned or the laundry done or the dogs fed (has anyone done that today??) that’s a major plus.
This list of daily to-dos doesn’t even account for the myriad should dos running through my head at all times. Skeptical? Here’s a play-by-play of what my brain is scolding me for right this very second: “Did you send that card to your elderly former neighbors yet? They’re not getting any younger you know. And why didn’t you sit down to practice piano with daughter last night? Her teacher won’t be happy. And, shoot, you forgot to take son’s family picture to school for his Valentine’s Day project. Nice work, MOM! And did you talk to your husband today? Did you even say good morning??” (Did I?) Sigh.
Then add in a snowstorm — Jonas!! — or a sick kid, and this fragile, barely-there equilibrium goes to all hell.
Do I have a right to complain? Not any more than any other parent out there — and certainly less than parents who face even greater challenges. So I try to keep the frantic overwhelm at bay and do what I can to appear calm, collected and in control when under the surface — yeah, I’m not even close.
Which is why in our house, we celebrate — anything and everything we can:
When my husband makes a particularly edible dinner that the kids take a few bites of without prompting — SCORE! When my shy-as-can-be daughter tells us she asked a friend to play with her at the playground — #WINNING! When I give a presentation at work that isn’t met with rounds of boos, when my son gets almost all of his pee in the potty, when I finally remember to run the vacuum under the kids’ favorite chair (#gross) — we celebrate!
Because celebrating is more fun than complaining, and it reminds us that this daily chaos we have? It’s pretty darn good.
