Vowing to Be More Thankful

I wake up most mornings, hoping for a new start. Hoping that the stress of the previous day, the yelling the fits, the boredom will be better. Sometimes it starts well. My 3 year old cooperates. He doesn't ask for a popscicle the first five minutes that he is awake. Doesn't insist on squishing his brother, or watching something that I can't magically make come on the television. Then the afternoon comes, nap refused again, bad mood. And by dinner time I'm ready to give my kids up for adoption. My poor husband comes home to a mess. M is crying incoherently, E is yelling in baby yells, dinner is half done, if even that much and I'm ticked off. I stay up at night wondering what I'm doing wrong. Knowing that I lost my patience way too easily and shouldn't have yelled. I watch M sleeping, wondering if he even likes me anymore, promising to do better the next day. It's hard, I think sometimes I should just go to work and take the kids to daycare. We would probably all be better off. But then I talked to an old friend today. She and her husband have been trying to have children for the last year. She is currently sterile because of high glucose levels. She really wants children, and frankly she's the sort of person who was born to be a mother. Who would love her chidlren endlessly, rarely loose her cool and win mother of the year awards all the time. It's not fair. Why her? In a world where people are leaving thier just born infants at Jack in the Box. So I've vowed to be more thankful for my children. They are just children, they don't mean to stress me out. They don't know that if I play with them nonstop Iwon't get the cleaning done. And what does the cleaning matter anyway. I'm sure many people out there would give thier left arm to be able to play all day. I won't say it's going to work and life is going to be smooth from now on. But hopefully I can come back and read this when I need to and remember how truly blessed I really am. Even at dinnertime when things seem the worst.