It's Been Two Years...

 since I first opened this space and started writing.  Pretty crazy!

 I haven't been writing as much recently, mostly because I'm attempting to finish up my doula certification.   It's been a long time since I've had to write essays and I have to say I'm not enjoying the process.  I will be ever so glad when I'm finally finished and certified! :) Perhaps I will throw myself a party. :)

  I started writing this blog as a way to force myself to find joy.   Life felt rather dark then, and although I knew there were glimmers, they quickly swam away from me.  Writing was a way to remember, to find those shards of light and capture them.   I find joy much more easily these days, although it's still darker than I would like.  My husband keeps telling me that healing is coming when I get too frustrated.

 As we were away over the holidays and only returned yesterday, I did the groceries after getting the kids from school.  Kian decided that he didn't like that particular grocery store and decided to vent his frustration by screaming.  I should mention that Kian has a particularly high-pitched and piercing scream.  But he wasn't content with this.  No, he needed to hit anyone who came near him.  It was not a pleasant scene.

 I was thinking about the days when smacking a misbehaving child was common place and fighting down my urges to do just that when I remembered I had my phone.  I quickly sent Steve a text, asking him to pray.  I guess he knew it was urgent since there was no punctuation and I actually used numerals instead of words.  After dropping my phone back in my pocket, I headed to the dairy aisle to grab milk before leaving.  At this point, one of my arms was wrapped around Kian to keep him from hitting his brother, while the other one tried to steer the cart.  I'm really not sure what the other shoppers thought.  I'm sure it wasn't all pleasant.  But then in the dairy aisle, peace came.

 Over the weekend, Kian had visited his aunt and uncle, where he was given yogurt drinks.  Money is tight so we don't buy yogurt drinks typically.  These are Kian's new favourite and he had asked me to buy him some earlier.  Lo and behold, I found some on sale.  Kian stopped misbehaving when he saw them.  After getting him to apologize, I extracted a promise that he would behave if we bought them.  Not content with that, I informed him that if he misbehaved at all, the yogurt drink would be returned.  We outlined inappropriate behaviour and went on. Immediately his behaviour changed.   By the time we reached the cashier, he was in a much better mood.  Things were going so well that the cashier actually praised my parenting.  Laughing, I informed him that my now-adorable looking little boy was the same one who had been screaming earlier. The teenager had a hard time believing that such an innocent looking child make that much noise.  Personally, I think God made him extra-cute so he would survive to adulthood. :)

 Anyhoo, it's late, I should go to bed.  Happy blogaversy to me! :)