This morning found me waking up in a funk. I mean, nearly every morning does. I am genuinely Not a Morning Person. But when I’m pregnant and the baby inside of me hates me from the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., I’m even more Not a Morning Person.
So the kids had peanut butter and jelly on baguettes for breakfast this morning. Just saying.
After a cup of tea and two hours of sheer survival, I started to feel guilty for just gritting my teeth to get through the day. I wanted to make the day more beautiful. So I began. I washed several loads of laundry, changed several sheets and washed them because it was windy and the sheets would actually dry outside today.
As I was cleaning up the aftermath of the peanut butter and jelly breakfast, I thought to myself “Well, this is nice. Laundry is done. Dishes are washing. But how can I fix tomorrow morning? How can I make tomorrow a more beautiful place to be before it’s even begun?”
Several of the kids were wanting to help, so I decided to do a bit of a deep clean of the kitchen. They organized my storage containers and glass jars, and I began a few pots of veggie broth for soup this week. We found our gratitude journal (embarrassed grimace at having lost it for a while under a sack of leeks) and began writing things we were grateful for.
I sat down and realized that deep cleaning the kitchen, while useful, didn’t really solve my problem of tomorrow morning. So I decided to make up breakfasts for the next three days for Michael and the kids. I made up four batches of raspberry pancakes. (In my defense, I thought the bag of berries in the freezer was a multi-berry mix from our smoothies. But it wasn’t. So raspberry pancakes it is. )
I also made a batch of blueberry muffins. These two items should cover breakfast for the next three days for Michael and the kids. If all-day-sickness allows, I’ll usually eat a few scrambled eggs for breakfast, but that’s typically all I can handle. So these breakfasts, while scrumptious looking, will not be for me.
I found that looking ahead to helping tomorrow helped me to gain more energy and task momentum throughout the day. Instead of staring at the pancakes, waiting, I would try to find little tasks like washing a window or hanging three pieces of laundry or straightening the bathroom sink that could be done in the 1-minute before I’d have to flip the pancakes. It became a game. I’d ask myself “What is one thing that I can do this moment to make the world more beautiful?”
And sometimes that meant stopping a sibling bicker-fest. Keeping it real here.
After we put the kids to bed tonight, I rearranged the master bedroom with my husband’s help. We don’t have any furniture for when the baby comes, but at least I can get our bed positioned on the correct wall. That way, we’ll be able to fit a chair, changing table, and pack n’ play for the baby to sleep in.
I can’t claim that any of these tasks will make me more cheerful tomorrow morning. Because it will–in fact–be another morning. But at least I’ve done my best to make tomorrow a more beautiful place.