Monday Gratitude

Things I’m grateful for going into this week:

1. The weather is finally starting to improve. I’m sure we’ll still have some cool, rainy days, but it feels safe to say we’re done seeing the 30s. The weather this past weekend was beautiful, which was especially nice because we started potty training were able to spend a lot of time in the back yard and at our neighborhood playground with our little training potty in tow.

2. I was able to easily re-home a bunch of stuff we no longer needed by posting them for free on our neighborhood’s family-centered Facebook group. I haven’t had much luck giving things away on my local no-buy group – it always takes several tries to find somebody who will actually show up – but this facebook group tends to be pretty reliable. I’ve turned to this facebook group a few times when I’ve wanted to find something but didn’t want to buy new, too. I got my kid’s potty seat and several of his snack and drink containers just by asking the group if anybody had some they didn’t want anymore.

3. We can lie to our kid. We don’t watch a lot of TV, but he has taken a liking to these short videos that show different kinds of animals and then say what they’re called. For the past six months they’re all he’s been willing to watch. We decided we want to shift his interest, if we can, to things with a bit more of an actual storyline – Trash Truck, Puffin Rock, Bluey, Sesame Street, Thomas and Friends, any of those. We want to keep things low-stim, so no Ms. Rachel or Cocomelon in this house. He has been very hesitant to move from the animal videos, though, so after a recent trip to the Museum of Flight where an out-of-order elevator really caught his attention, we simply told him his animal shows are out-of-order. That made complete sense to him, and it’s been weeks since we watched them.

4. We love our pediatrician. I really didn’t care for the first doctor we were assigned to, and it had started causing me SO much anxiety before appointments. Our interactions felt strangely hostile, she often gave us information that was inconsistent with information we’d received elsewhere in the clinic (from the dietician, for example), and I always left those appointments feeling like we’d been on the defensive the whole hour. We managed to switch to our current doctor about a year ago and our interactions all feel very positive. We just had B’s three-year checkup, and I really hope he stays with our clinic for a long time.

5. We happened to have Pepto-Bismol on hand when I desperately needed it yesterday. I’m on a temporary medication that can cause nausea, and was hit yesterday evening with the worst nausea I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t know it was even possible to throw up that much. I was starting to think I’d need to get myself to urgent care, but I also didn’t think it would be possible for me to leave the bathroom. Over-the-counter meds tend to expire before ever getting used up in our house, and then they don’t get replaced because we never use them, so I didn’t think we had anything I could take. My husband found some Pepto-Bismol in the downstairs bathroom, and it felt like a gift from a God I don’t even believe in. Within 20 minutes of taking it I felt much, much better. Lesson learned. We will always have Pepto on hand. Even if we have to throw out three expired bottles before anyone needs it, we will always have it.