Iveyrock

This year started out feeling very bogged down and grey. It was raining every day for weeks, and I had a hard time getting a feel for how this year should look. Eventually, however, the sun came out. At first I had a hundred reasons why I couldn’t make it outside, and kept putting off actually spending time in the yard with my kids. Finally, after a good amount of frustration and a little bit of tears, I made myself spend a day doing nothing but being outside with my little ones. And I realized again how vitally important it is to get outside as much as possible. Not only do the kids function better the more time we spend outdoors, but my mental health is significantly better.

So as the weather is beautiful right now, and I know it will only get hotter; I made my goal to spend as much time outside as possible. Then I spent a week or so spending a bit of time outside… but wandering back inside more or less on autopilot, and promising myself that I would spend more time outside the next day.

Then, last Tuesday, Chava had a nasty fall, and broke her jaw. She is supposed to be taking it easy for six weeks. Now, my little girl has more energy than she knows how to do with. After just a couple of days of low activity, she was wanting to play like nothing was wrong. Six weeks of protecting her face feels like an impossible goal.

The accident that she had, the day spent in the ER with her, and my constant attempts to get her to slow down are bringing out all of the anxiety that I worked so hard to put aside. This year has been hard on me, and this accident feels like it is threatening the mental health that I fight hard to hold onto.

So, as of tomorrow, we have five weeks of restricted play left. I started this blog almost a year ago to remind myself to spent intentional time being, instead of worrying. I am going to use this time as Chava heals to post everyday about the time we’ve spent – to remind myself once again to slow down and really see each day, instead of spending five weeks (or longer) in fear. I am going to combine my goals, and focus on pictures of us living life outside – although I’m sure some indoor pictures will sneak in as well. And I am NOT going to obsess about doing this perfectly. If I miss a day of posting, I’ll just move on to the next. (So you all can poke me, if I look obsessive-like.)

My pictures for today – working on a project. Hopefully I’ll post more about these little shelves in the next couple of days.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.