How My Toddler and I Slept Better When I Said Sorry

I was having one of those days yesterday.  Miss 2 was being deliberately naughty at gymnastics and continued in that streak when we got home.  Tipping water on the beds, throwing cups on the floor, even after her sleep which usually fixes her attitude.

toddler sleeping tips

Our car had decided to die for the 3rd time in as many days as it was looking to be more than just a dead battery, and we weren’t sure how my husband was going to get to his new job that’s 6 days a week, 12 hour shifts, or how we were going to get the car fixed.
I’d been sent a nasty letter, and was just in a bad mood at bed time with a ton of paperwork to fill out for various things.   So to say I was irritated when I put Madam to bed was an understatement and she proceeded to bunt me in the head during a temper tantrum and make my mouth bleed.
Normally she will go to sleep within half an hour of me lying down with her even if she is wound up but she thrashed and mumbled and crashed all night, until I got up with her and left the room, so that my husband could sleep and get up for a 6:30am start.
I was lying in bed praying about what to do with her as she only occasionally has thrashing nights and its because of a spiritual loophole, either we’ve brought a bad movie or computer game into the house and not repented.  In this case, God told me to say sorry.
Even though she was asleep, sort of, as soon as I said ,’I’m sorry for being cranky Erin,’ she fell into a deep sleep until 5 am when she dragged me out of bed to make her a ‘Dorothy’ dinosaur, happy and loving life.
The Mama Moments are so simple sometimes.   Profoundly simple

encouragement for your mother heart, when you're struggling with how you do life.

If you need some Mama wisdom, I invite you to read Erin Odom’s ‘The Woven Heart – Essays for Moms on Love, Life  and Loss’.  She cheers us on in our journey, but lets us peek inside hers.  She gently challenges us to love, and not judge the mum who does it differently from our own opinionated, steadfast view on life, and to reach out to the neighbour just across the street, as well as the orphan across the seas.

And it’s precisely the real, that draws us back to these mum books again.  That I’m not the only one who dresses my child, or sits at the table feeding her when she should be able to do it herself.  I’m not the only one sitting up with a child with colic who won’t settle to a normal routine, and amidst all my friends serving up kale soup for dinner, I’m not the only one who’ll be cracking open a can of beans.  Trust me, if I served up kale soup for dinner, my husband would likely walk out the door to the takeaway shop, it’s been known to happen.

wovenheart 

Erin asks deep questions about life, love and loss, questions that don’t always have answers, those ones that we ask each other coffee, drawing out the wisdom of another through the stories they share.   Sometimes that is precisely where the answers are found, in the stories of another, and we can look at a situation from another angle.

The stories here are captivating and real, snacks for the soul.  I read them both in snippets and sat up late devouring them, because I had found a virtual friend, and yet while that may be true, the challenge resonated to focus on the friendships and relationships I have here, in my town, across the street, and in my home.

 

About Elizabeth

My name is Elizabeth Ainsworth, a wife and mother in QLD Australia who shares her ponderings of faith at Where Deep Calls to Deep

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