A gift

Alright Guys, I guess it is time to practice what I preach. Many of you know that I firmly believe that happiness is a choice. It is something I have worked a lot on in the past eighteen months. Last night I was laying in bed, dreading the insane business of my schedule the next day and I said to my husband, "I am so busy that I haven't been able to enjoy anything about Christmas yet." Not good, when I get too busy and too stressed I know that I get snappy, irrational, overly-sensitive, and grouchy (not to mention that I eat way too much chocolate). So, I have decided that, come what may in the next ten days, I am going to give my family the gift of having a happy mom. I'll let you know how it goes.

(This is a clip of something I wrote a while ago about a theory I have. It is a bit long but I promise you some laughs.)

It is a fact that the mood of the Mom spreads through a house like a smell, be it apple pie or burnt toast. A grouchy mom can put a whole family on edge within seconds of stepping in the house. Or, in reverse, a happy mom can create an atmosphere of calm and peace even when the world is storming outside.

We, as mothers, find ourselves in the unique position of possessing the ability of controlling the climate of our domestic domain. Imagine what the emotional forecast is in your house. When we are grouchy and cold, our household weatherman maybe calling for freezing temperatures and sleet. When we are sad our forecast calls for three days of rain and lightning. Perhaps, when we are irritable and short tempered the Doppler screen shows winds exceeding 90 mph and a tornado watch. Nasty weather is something that makes everyone miserable.

I am a sunshine girl. I love feeling the sun on my skin. When the sun is shining and the day is glorious, I could spend all day outside playing with kids, gardening, barbequing with friends, or chatting at my husband. Even an overcast day or some rain here and there add variety and makes me appreciate the sunshine again. I have lived in heat and humidity, in hurricanes and snow drifts but days of incessant cold, rain, thunder, and lightning make even a trip to the cannery seem inviting.

People actively seek out nice climates. That is why no one plans a vacation to Greenland but you could pay a fortune for a postage stamp size piece of California. So, how excited do you think a husband is to come home to a house with a temperature that is fifteen below zero? Or how happy are kids when Mom’s personal forecast is blistering hot with 90% humidity?

There was one difficult time when my husband had been gone on a work trip for several days. I had had a very hard time with three kids, ages three and under, while he was gone. When he came home I was so mad and stressed I hardly recognized he was there. Rather than expressing my appreciation for him and how glad I was that he was home, I was angry over something that inconvenience me and that he had no control over. It took some good communication on his part to make me realize that I was punishing him with my bad mood (hurricane Jaymie) even though he had done his best under the circumstances.

Unfortunately, our kids and husbands are most often the ones that take the brunt of Mom’s bad mood. Have you ever worked for someone what was never pleased with your work? Someone that only told you what you were doing wrong? Or would throw you under the bus when things went wrong? My husband used to be an auditor and trust me; people don’t like it. It really isn’t any more fair when we do that to our family. When we spend the day yelling, demanding, and blaming others when things go wrong, nobody wins.

As my children have grown I am amazed at the strange, subtle, and not-so-subtle way that my kids respond to me. Through trial and error (mostly error) I have learned to recognize characteristics that pop up in my children when they are reacting to my mood. One child becomes sassy, another becomes overly needy and the last becomes reckless to the point of injury. (Names are withheld to protect the guilty).

It probably wasn’t until my kids were two and three that I began to realize that my children’s behavior often reflected my own. When my house was chaotic and messy, they were less likely to clean up after themselves. When I yelled, they yelled more and listened less. When I was snappy with them they were snappy with each other. There was undeniably a correlation. I finally realized had been blaming my mood on my kids’ behavior rather than the other way around.