Waffles, Bacon and Leaves

We ate waffles and bacon for supper last night. Do you know what the funny thing is about that? I had the perfectly portioned, health-conscious marinated pork chops in the fridge, all ready to go. But when I thought about pork chops and my kids, I laughed and maybe snorted a little bit, so I pulled out a pound of bacon.

Once I had decided on supper, we played in the leaves as soon as we got home. We played in the leaves, and Cashel shoved leaves in my face, and we may have gotten leaf entrails in our eyes and had to fish them out. And Kendrick may have gotten trounced once, or maybe twice. (As an aside, that poor kid might just not make it out of his toddler years without some sort of scaring.)

You see, I've spent the past week and a half in a bit of a haze: A super grumpy haze where I feel like life is just so hard. So to be honest, last night surprised me about myself. But there's just something so magical about leaves, and a big pile of them just draws me in.

Kendrick wasn't overly interested in them, but rather for some unknown reason in our neighbor's yard: He ends up there every time. But the change from the entire past week to last night was that I didn't chase after him yelling and feeling stressed and strained and ready to just shove the kids in the house and give up. Instead, I chased after him, yelling, "I'm gonna get you!" and picked him up and gobbled him up.

It was one of those fun nights that just made me smile deep down in my heart. And then we had such a light, fun, giggly supper of sticky, buttery Belgian waffles (a total calorie-tracking nightmare) and bacon, and the boys were just FUN! We've also been doing this thing where we put our PJs on early and go downstairs, spend about 10 minutes jumping on Kendrick's bed, and then go out to the living area and I put on "I like to Move it Move it" and other really crazy, upbeat music and the boys just run around laughing. It has been SO good for my soul.

Life lately has been so heavy, between work being extremely demanding each day, and the boys being extraordinarily naughty and awful in the evenings, and Mark being gone in the evenings helping with harvest. This season of our lives -- This harvest season -- is always hard for us. And if I don't post about it here or on social media, it's because I don't feel it's helpful to spread the negativity. And also, I don't feel like I'm handling it very gracefully, so like my Mama taught me: If I don't have anything nice to say, then just don't say anything at all. Last week was almost unbearable, and I was yelling ALL the time: Practically screaming. ALLLLLL the time. Poor Cashel must've thought I hated him, and Kendrick probably wanted to go hide in a corner and cry. They (mainly Cashel, really) were being SO incredibly naughty: So this turn of events this week has been very, very good for the soul. I've needed more smiles and giggles and tickle-fests.

You just never know how the days (or even hours or minutes) will go when you have two little toddler boys running around, and you never know what kind of mood they'll be in. But I'm going to try to keep moving forward with this positivity.