We made a little spot on the floor—a make-shift bed of towels, in case she throws up more.

I’ve worried about her since she started getting sick around five this morning. In between carrying her to the bathtub more times than I can count, and marathons of kid shows on Netflix, and more puke, and syringes of Pedialyte to—for the love of God—avoid the hospital, we rest and care for her.

It was just me, her mama, until she puked all underneath the tv stand, and I had to call my husband to come home from work. I had been doing this cleaning of the carpets, washing more towels, bathing the vomit-covered child, and steering the baby away from it all, for hours, and then I finally just broke. I called him and said I did not have enough hands.

He came home and helped move the television, and the stand beneath it, and cleaned the carpet. He helped me care for our children, and then he went back to work. She threw up again right after I saw him pull out of the driveway.

I called him again and begged him to come home early. He said he did have to return to work, but he assured me that he would be there as soon as possible.

She fell asleep, and I was grateful—until she woke up to be sick, again. And then she fell asleep for real. And then my husband came home.

Her little sister was pretty good through all of it, considering that she’d been woken up too early as well, with all of this commotion.

Somewhere within this afternoon I cancelled her bus and called in her absence for the following day as well. I called her pediatrician. I ran to the store for items I hoped she could manage to eat the next day.

At one point, she was resting on her side, on this bed of my last clean towels (we ran out of both blankets and towels; the washing machine running all day). She took her tiny fingertips, and she held my hand and wiggled them in my palm, saying in this silly, soft voice, “Tickle, tickle, tickle.” It reminded me suddenly, shockingly, abrasively, like holding her newborn hand through her NICU isolet. I felt a bone-level reaction—the kind of emotion that makes your stomach feel like it’s filled with un-shed tears.

I looked into her eyes, and they were purple around them from her poor, long day. I smiled into her eyes with my own, and she did her cute “tickle, tickle, tickle” thing again. I felt thankful beyond capable expression for her general health, and for our access to physicians, and things like Pedialyte, and even thermometers and Tylenol. I felt grateful that she had my hand to hold, and for a baby sister who was concerned all day if big sister was okay.

I felt thankful for these things that my family usually takes for granted; things that too many kids don’t have.

The post We All Want Our Kids to Be Healthy. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The quiet of the house feels surreal.

The lush snow thickly blankets the yard outside my window, except for a few scattered deer prints trickling down the hill, and off towards the road.

My husband took our girls out for an errand, and I’m left alone. I’m not yet ready to exercise, and I don’t want to force it because, after a challenging week with my daughters, I want more than one of the half-ass workouts, like I’ve had all week.

I’ve kissed them all good-bye, and finished making my second cup of coffee. I note that it’s hot when I take a sip—not lukewarm, not cold, but hot enough to see wisps of steam rising from the top. Like a vision from God, I remember a face mask that I’ve stored in the deepest part of my bathroom cupboard. I didn’t want to throw it away, but I laughed a little too hard when I read the directions on the back. (“Leave on for 20 minutes.”) I can’t imagine my mindset when I made such a purchase. Was I naively optimistic? Or too rushed at the store to even read the packaging?

The mask says it’s made from “volcanic ash.” I’m a geologist, and I doubt this highly, so I read the ingredients well, and I do see—near the bottom of this list—“charcoal.” I put it on.

Looking out the window with my hot coffee in hand, I take another sip, and see that the baby evergreen outside the window is so snow-covered that it looks almost uncomfortable. I feel warm and snugly in the house.

I think of the girls in their layers, getting in and out of their car seats with their dad. I think of the slushy parking lots, and the inches of salt that surely must have been put down since the snowstorm last night. I imagine their cute pink cheeks, and my daughter’s glasses fogging up when they walk inside of the store. I think of their mitten-clad hands nestled into their daddy’s much bigger ones, and I can nearly feel their excitement as they shop on a Saturday morning with him.

This morning is so simple.

This morning is girls and their daddy out buying a gift for Mommy. It’s steaming coffee. It’s the worn Strawberry Shortcake blanket wrapped around my legs as I write.

I think of my family getting me a present, and I know–as cheesy as it sounds—that nothing I unwrap tomorrow will be as special as these faces looking at me while I open it.

This time alone is precious, too—something I won’t again take for granted in my life.

I hear the garage door, and I know that they’re home. I breathe in. I take a sip of still-hot coffee. I’m grateful.

The post Hot Coffee, Time Alone and Gratitude: What Mom Really Wants to Receive. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

My two children getting sick was actually good for me.

I mean, no one wants their kids to not feel well. Still, I had been in a mental and emotional rut in the weeks prior, and it took a week of being stuck at home in a sick house for me to fall back in love with my life.

Sometimes, we need to fall back in love with ourselves, and with our life as it is, right now.

While there is merit to looking ahead, to planning, and to dog-earing goals, hopes and possibilities, it’s equally important to pause and appreciate this ground that we stand on, right here and now.

Life isn’t always wonderful—I had some genuine stressors and reasons that I had been irritable and cranky this previous month. That said, this week was a solid reminder to me that our mood is often a choice—not always, but often. (And honoring unwelcome emotions and thoughts is also honoring being genuine and authentic, but wallowing is rarely positive.)

These following tips might not pay my bills, or babysit my kids for a night out with my husband, or bring world peace, but these habits, put into daily practice, will help me find more joy in today.

1. Stop overthinking.

I overthink a lot. (A lot, a lot.) That said, I believe in doing.

In other words, sometimes we need to stop thinking and take action. Nothing is more of a reminder of this than cleaning up puke or nursing sick children back to health.

So when my sister texted me yesterday that she hadn’t slept well and was also sick and just feeling not so wonderful, I texted back something along the lines of, “Stop overthinking and put on sexy boots. It’s hard to feel like shit in sexy boots.”

Boom. Moving on.

2. Give.

The main reason I finally got my head out of my own rear this past week was because, in giving to my husband and daughters as they didn’t feel their best, I was reminded of how much I, frankly, have to give.

I am a well of love and of capability. I needed to give, and be of service, to my family in order for me to reconnect with my energy that had been lacking and the happiness that is already right here in my living room.

3. Find gratitude.

While cleaning up vomit and worrying about a high fever certainly isn’t fun, cuddling two beautiful girls and watching the just-released Inside Out is pretty spectacular. Additionally, I felt thankful for our general health that makes these types of passing illnesses something kind of awful.

In short, there is nearly always something to be grateful for, and finding it, and giving a brief, silent moment of thanks for it, can be hugely beneficial.

4. Stop giving fucks away.

My two kids getting sick reminded me powerfully of what matters in life. It’s unfortunately easy to forget what matters.

What matters is not social media popularity. It’s not the size we wear. It’s not a new pair of jeans. What matters is, for me, simple: the two tiny bodies I was snuggling on the sofa and the larger one I kissed goodnight.

What matters, too, is my own self-care.

Unplugging almost completely from social media and my phone this week to be with my family made me internally ponder this question more than once: “If Facebook, social media and the internet in general suddenly ceased to exist, how would this impact my life?”

If no one was looking at a picture of the food we ate, or keeping in touch via comments on a picture of my kid, who would I, for example, still talk to, in “real” time?

We spent a lot of the early part of our week outside. The weather was unseasonably beautiful and warm, and I, in general, rarely take my phone with me when I’m playing with my kids, because the sky is always more beautiful when I look at it without a phone in the way. More, when I do stop to take pictures of my girls, the images never capture their beauty or the overall specialness of the moment as it happened. So I stopped trying.

Most of us give away far too many brain cells—and opportunities for happiness—wondering what other people think, or how we can be “better,” or focusing on what we’re lacking rather than what we already have. Checking back in with what—and who—is truly important in my life, I find again and again, makes all the difference in the world; in my world.

So, no, spending a week with sick kids didn’t make money grow on the tree in my backyard. It didn’t babysit my kids so I could write or call my best friend. It didn’t give my husband another day off so he could be home with us. But it did remind me where my life is already wonderful. I hope that next week, when my little world is healthier, that I use these tiny life practices to infuse more joy into my every, ordinary day.

The post 4 Tiny Habits That Lead to Big Happiness. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The gift of gratitude:

The card arrives with a tiny package, and normally I would have opened that first. Instead, I gravitate to the small, dark blue box.

Inside is fragile red tissue paper and a silver pendant of a tree. Its simple beauty catches my inhale. I exhale and just look at it. After a moment of staring and then finally putting it around my neck, I realize I still haven’t opened the card. It describes to me, in my friend’s comforting scroll, its meaning.

I look again at this shiny tree hanging above my heart and know that its message is a powerful one; one I needed to hear.

It reminds me to tend to my life, where I am.

It reminds me to honor the roots I’m growing, right now.

It whispers to me, as it suspends upon my body, that who I am in this space is worthy of nurturing, of love and care.

Much of a mother’s life is taking care of others. I spend the largest portion of my day making sure that my small children are safe, fed, happy, and generally tended to. My new adornment, however, reminds me that this “job” of mothering is exactly where I’m meant to be and, more, that this time of my life, although chaotic and stressful, is special and wholly miraculous.

This place in my life is exactly like this pendant: simple, yet wondrous and profound.

Its sterling silver is lightweight, and I barely feel it touch my skin.

This tender gracing of metal feels like the gentle press of a warm hand over my heart center; that strange, ethereal sensation of intangible love from another that nudges even the most scientifically minded of us to believe in something deeper than flesh and bones.

The skin underneath my eyes feels thin today; it feels tender and bruised because of my fatigue.

My husband heard me up with the baby and he got up so that I could go back to bed, but I couldn’t. I was already doing my making-coffee morning ritual and I didn’t want to try to go back to sleep, although I knew even then that I would be tired if I didn’t.

I drank my first smooth, slow sip of coffee with whole milk—the way I like it; this soothing ritual I perform every day—and I looked at the baby as she recline on my husband’s chest. They were giggling together, and I felt my fingers subconsciously move to touch my tree of life pendant that I had put on simultaneously with the water to boil in the red tea kettle on the stovetop.

These two people on our soft crimson couch—half of my own little foursome—are only two individuals in a giant place of many others, but, to me, they are my entire world, along with the other little girl still sleeping soundly.

And I know that I’ll have to guard my patience as the day goes on, and my girls test me, and I’m tired. I know, too, that I’ll wish my husband and I were going out for a glass of wine tonight, together, alone, but that I’ll be equally grateful and joyful at kitchen cooking and glasses of wine over top two tiny girls’ heads.

I pause and reflect upon my life, in this instant of living it, and I feel my heart swell underneath this silver circle of metal.

I’m grateful also for a friend gracious enough to send me gifts that make me feel loved.

This necklace, every day of my life that I wear it, will remind me to eagerly tend to my life in its present state, wherever that currently is, and to tend to my own self-care too.

I am a writer, a yogi, a wife, and a friend, among other things, but, mostly, right now I’m a mother, and I’m thankful for the magic that resides here plainly and invisibly, for me to daily open and appreciate anew.

The post A Reminder of the Magic That Is Motherhood. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I’ll admit that sometimes I feel frustrated at trying so hard at a job that seemingly has very little thanks returned.

Yesterday my baby turned one and there are no pictures of me from that day. Literally none. Because I was the one taking the many beautiful photographs of my daughters and husband having birthday cake for breakfast (our tradition), or picking apples at the orchard, or opening the gifts I’d lovingly bought for her.

The thought crossed my mind as we prepared for bed that there were no images of me, the woman who had given birth to this tiny-but-loud miracle of a girl, from the day we celebrated her arrival. I felt annoyed.

This morning, we woke up and I put on the pajama shirt that my family had given me yesterday as a gift. It appropriately says “prime coffee time” and was a physical token of thanks from my family to me in honor of our child’s first birthday.

So I put on my new nightshirt and, not ironically, make myself a coffee, and I uncover that my thoughts—as I roll through this morning routine—again catch on my irritation at having no pictures with me in them. (As I’ve shared previously, this is why I started taking selfies with my kids.)

And this morning begins another special day. In these foggy morning after-effects of a first birthday, we are cozy and preparing for a new day of wonderful “firsts”—later this evening we are going to the girls’ first wedding.

I’m gearing up for another day that might be challenging for me as “mom,” but is worth it because of my daughters’ childish excitement and experiences. More, I’m noticing how my own attitude—of either gratitude or frustration—colors and shapes everything we do.

The tone of my voice and the way I treat my husband, in particular, are directly connected to the mood I choose to wear.

Personally, I find it important for both myself, and for what I teach my children, to be honest in honoring my emotions, even these uglier ones. Regardless, owning a feeling and then choosing either to unnecessarily wallow in it or move forward from it is a personal choice.

I sit writing this in a Minnie Mouse party hat.

As “mom,” I, clearly, wear many hats.

I wear a “wife” hat, a “yoga teacher” hat, a “writer” hat and, most importantly, a “mother” one. I chose to wear all of these hats and a variety of others, and this knowledge is important, but it doesn’t make some days easier.

Being a mother is difficult and not made simpler by the reality that I am a woman and an individual outside of and underneath this one, favorite role.

So I choose to expose my disappointment at something as simple and profound as not having a single photograph of me and my baby on her first birthday—but then I choose to expose, too, that I didn’t ask for one to be taken of us with the voice that I easily could have used.

I didn’t ask for a picture and happily took the gorgeous collection we have because I was enjoying myself, and I was appreciating watching my girls with their dad. It wasn’t until later that I really noticed how I wasn’t in any of them. Pictures are important, but children, even more than lasting imprints on paper, need parents to be present; imprinting memories on hearts.

I sit here in this party hat, drinking coffee and wearing my new “prime coffee time” shirt. While this gift is meaningful beyond easy measure, I don’t typically expect “thank you’s” for my mother hat-wearing job. Apart from kisses and cuddles and healthy, happy children, expecting regular, verbal, actual “thank you’s” is a bit outside of reality and slightly self-centered. Instead, I look for the thanks where and how it’s offered, naturally.

I find it in how my husband plays with the girls so I can write in a party hat.

I find it, also, in how my oldest daughter wants to wear jewelry and clothing that are the same as mine.

I see it obviously in the way the baby grabs my cheeks in her small, strong hands, kissing me directly on the lips with her own.

I am grateful. I’m grateful to discover that these coveted “thank you’s” have been there all along, and I have only to reach out and meet them with my own indebted heart.

The post Finding Gratitude in a Thankless Job. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The light streams towards me through the front porch windows.

The light is golden, and it highlights the yellow of the front porch’s ceiling, and the way that the white rocking chair’s back creates lined shadows, where a glare off of the window screen mutes it into a blueish patch on the wooden floor, next to me.

My fingernails click a little as I write on my laptop; as I sit down at our nicked antique dining table in the room slightly beyond this pane of glass separating me from that perfectly lit rocking chair.

It’s too cold for me to sit outside, in that white rocker. The sun would warm me, surely, but I’m tired, and I always get cold when I’m tired, and, anyways, it’s been chilly today.

I hear football playing in the next room. Our two daughters sit together on my husband’s lap. The baby is wearing jeans for the first time. (They’re hand-me-downs from her big sister.)

I can’t help but listen in, although I earnestly try not to—my ADHD hears multiple conversations, easily, and at once.

Our oldest daughter asks for “Mommy,” and he tells her softly that, “Mommy is doing her typing.” They go back to watching football—kind of, the girls don’t really care for it (yet).

The cars rush by outside of that window—a curvy, country road lies at the bottom of our hill, beneath that yellow front porch and its white rocking chair.

The other day a man followed my bumper closely as we curved this way and then that, and I slowed way down, having earlier braked for a fawn at the edge of the road, knowing that if I had to brake again that he was too close and would hit my sleeping baby in the backseat, and her singing-along-in-the-car, older sister.

As I pulled into our long, stone driveway he yelled, “You’re a terrible driver!” so violently that I could hear him inside of my silver Jetta, and in my driveway, as he sped by. It made me upset initially, but my disturbance was quickly lost to the revelation that it must be so sad to be living within his skin.

I pause my typing fingers to take a slow, smooth sip of my favorite white wine and to look once again through the window of the front porch.

Already the sun has lowered and dipped just enough to make the arms of the white rocker blue, and the yellow light is lost entirely. (I admit to peeking also at the football game in the other room, to check the score.)

My baby babbles to her big sister, sitting together as they are on Daddy’s lap.

She turns 11 months old next week.

I wonder, often, why we are all in such a hurry—like that man. I hurry too.

I rush through my showers because I think I can hear the baby crying, or I find myself thinking about the next pose that I’ll get into as I practice yoga, instead of firmly staying within the one that I’m currently inhabiting.

And I listen to those cars rushing by, and I observe the cool, crisp, quickly ripening fall air—and I realize that, for the first time ever, I’m not ready for my favorite season of autumn.

I’m not ready to leave my baby’s first year, in October.

I’m not ready, either, to—each morning—see my daughter get onto her first school bus.

I’m not ready for more smile lines, or more grey hairs.

But I am ready—it’s cliche, but true that the alternative is no better.

I pause another time and sip my wine, which I never like chilled, but it is slightly cool because of this end-of-summer air.

My oldest daughter completely distracts my next thought by coming in and saying, “Hi, Mommy. Hi, Mommmy,” and I’m grateful—because this is why I am ready to turn another year.

My own birthday is 10 days after my baby was born, last October. I’ll become 36, and I look forward to chocolate cake and, I’ll admit, to presents, and my family singing to me and to the few friends’ cards that I’ll still receive, despite becoming so reclusive after having children.

I’m reclusive because I’m possessive—I’m possessive of my time. I watch closely where it goes, because it seems that I never have enough.

And it’s not that I don’t miss phone dates, or my twin sister, or my friends: I do—I do so much! But, more, I don’t want to miss that space  in between when my daughter began to crawl and then run—it happened just like that.

I want to notice, too, the smile line that appeared just here on my husband’s cheek, as well as the little girl’s repeated giggling with him that created it.

I don’t want to miss when I stopped being called Mommy, and am, instead, Mom.

I pause and this time, as my fingers briefly stall, I close my eyes.

The cars rushing are momentarily slower and my daughter’s words in the other room seem suddenly as crisp as the autumnal air outside the window, rather than muted in the background. I sip my wine and I note the tartness of its flavor.

I begin to long—slowly—for tart fall apples; for numbing fall mornings, where we stand at the edge of our stony driveway, waiting for the bus.

I envision the baby eating her first birthday cake, and the devilish grin that she’ll surely bear.

Yet I will, most assuredly, be another person rushing absently from here to there tomorrow (since it’s always our fullest day of the week), but it’s these simple inhales and exhales over girlish laughter, and football, and writing, and yellow-to-blue evening light that make me relish being human—and make me remember to feel alive.

We need to pause—if only for a few moments during an afternoon—and remember to enjoy this life—this one, fleeting life—that we usually rush through, far too easily.

The post How to Find Gratitude on an Ordinary Day. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I was reading to my daughter in bed last night.

Looking out the window, the green of the trees contrasted the grey sky, seeming ethereal.

The yellow walls were both cheerful and soothing.

I could have stayed there—next to her—forever, if I couldn’t also hear the baby cry, and if it wasn’t my tenth wedding anniversary, with waiting wine and husband.

I turned to see her still, sleeping face, after I realized that I was the only one who listened to the end of the story and, in that instant, I felt my life slipping by—those kinds of moments that you know you’ll (hopefully) think of at age 90 and wonder where the years went so quickly.

After an evening that included celebrating a decade of married love and the two sleeping children that eventually came along with it, and once in my own bed, underneath silky covers, gazing now at a much darker landscape, I didn’t sleep well—I didn’t want to miss anything.

And this morning, the green trees and the grey sky have a similar visual appearance, but my eyes aren’t seeing them the same way.

Today it looks peaceful, but sad too—but I don’t want to be sad.

So I squeeze my kids, and nurse, and play with the baby and my oldest before she has to go to school, and I know that life does go too fast, but I’m thankful for every ounce of it along the way.

I’m grateful for coffee-with-sunrise grey mornings, when the world could be groggy and tired, but instead finds never-ending pools of energy inside the smile lines of four year olds and the crowning awareness of the life that still lies ahead, among grey skies and bewitchingly green trees.

Photos: Flickr/Volcanic Sunrise; Author’s own.

The post A Morning Prayer of Gratitude. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Her fingers are coarse from the dry winter air.

She rubs them together absentmindedly; running the careful grooves of one finger whirl against another.

She spreads her arms out wide to her side—her thin, forming wings—and then drops them limply—suddenly—back to her sides: a casual body prayer—as she inhales and raises them and exhales and lowers them again—that her life is moving forward; that she’s dropping the flimsy slipcovers of her past, right here, right now.

Right now is sunshine through the large window pane that she looks out, dancing with one hand cockily placed in her tight-jeans pocket and the other holding a glass filled with wine the color of spring sunshine. She takes a sip and closes her eyes, feeling her hair graze the back of her neck, as her hips sway unconsciously to the music steadily drumming behind her, with her late-evening shadow.

The lyrics touch her, gently, but they don’t pierce her soul. She likes it, because when they do inch that tightly to her needy stomach, she loses herself completely to the imagery of another wordsmith, rather than to her own present, stationary situation.

The CD changes in the stereo that her husband has owned since back when they dated, before they were husband and wife, when the disc-player cost a lot but was completely worth it because they loved music so much their gooseflesh hurt.

They still do like music that much, only now their money more easily goes towards girls’ clothes and new socks and the best spinach at the grocery store.

She moves, the heels of her feet slowly thumping up and down to the rhythm of the different artist’s songs and she sees, at her toes, her smallest daughter lying in a perfect stream of lowering sunlight, sucking on the end of a stuffed caterpillar tail. Her eldest daughter smiles and hugs her daddy tightly, completely clueless that these sorts of evenings are for anything but families of four and pre-dinner dancing: totally and wonderfully ignorant of anything besides her own early beginnings.

She looks lightly at the setting sun, but her heart sears—burns—with the picture of this moment.

She tattoos it onto her breast and feels the drumming of her fingertips—leaking out into black-and-white lettered words—becoming slower and slower and slower until it stalls, and the sunny hope of spring fills entirely her winter-achy belly.

Photos: Flickr/Andrea Portilla.

The post The Tattoo of Spring. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.