Create your reality

Wednesday’s this month I’ve been blogging about craft projects. Tonight I wanted to blog about how I’ve finally managed to finish Shimri’s and Shimei’s baby quilts, but they aren’t finished yet. I did get them both basted and got the border on Shimri’s quilted today. I’d like to get Shimei’s border quilted and the binding basted on tomorrow, but we shall see. Since I’m not blogging about finished quilts, I thought I’d blog about the stress I created by trying to finish them.

In a large sense we create our own realities. We can’t control the actions of others, but we can control how we react and our own actions.

Today I created quite a bit of stress for myself. I do that sometimes. It’s not my brightest idea. I’ve prided myself on how calm and relaxed the holidays have been in the past because I set realistic expectations and don’t over plan everything. I’ve worked out the Thanksgiving cooking so that the food is all ready at the same time and we sit down to eat with a clean kitchen too.

And then this year we have a 2-year-old who wants to help cook everything and two 7-month-olds (tomorrow) who need to eat a lot, be put down for naps, have their diapers changed, and be played with and held. I already did one round of dishes today with Shimri tied to my back

Cooking with the 2-year-old is actually a lot of fun. Today we learned about yeast when we woke it up with some hot water and then gave it sugar to eat. She knows that when we make bread dough that after we mix it we need to cover it with a blanket (dish towel) and let it take a nap before we cook it too. And today we made it fancy and made cinnamon rolls with it. Tomorrow we’ll make dinner rolls. She really loves helping us cook. Which means scheduling making certain things around her interest and nap schedule.

All of that, wanting to get the quilts done, the house cleaned, update our hand print Thanksgiving table runner, and cook the food for tomorrow that doesn’t need to be cooked tomorrow cooked today, added up to me getting frustrated and resentful this evening. And when I finally calmed down enough to realize what I was resenting, it was myself. I resented the fact that I’d created such an unrealistic to-do list for myself. Not everything got done and I wasn’t recognizing what I actually did accomplish.

So I sat in the dark and nursed the babies to sleep, had some yummy cinnamon rolls and enjoyed a glass of eggnog with Brett.

My reality is three kids who I love so much it hurts some times. Tomorrow we’ll get the food cooked by dinner time. I’ll vacuum at least the floor the babies spend most of their time crawling around on so they don’t eat the fuzz on it. We’ll do one last round of “Thankfuls” before dinner and see what Iddo is thankful for this time. And I’ll make sure that the reality I create for the Christmas season this year is more realistic than the reality I tried to create for Thanksgiving Eve today.