It's okay!

There is nothing like having kids to teach you to not sweat the small stuff! I have to remind myself daily that the toddler meltdown, splattered spaghetti, blowout diaper, lack of a shower and the fact that I am always running late is okay! It's small stuff, small worries...nothing so horrible that it has to ruin our day, steal our joy and make us anxious.

I am guilty of having a bad attitude when all of these small annoyances seem to build up throughout the day. They collide and I have found myself mumbling under my breath, "uhh, oh my gosh, seriously?, lord help me, grr!" The problem isn't that I am expressing frustration, it's that my toddler (all children) is a sponge! He reads my body language, he sees my facial expressions and he hears how I react to everything!

A few months back he dropped something (food of some sort and it got all over) and I heard him say "uhhh, grr" and look at me for a reaction. He was looking for me to get upset at his accident. Not mad, but irritated. And then I realized that I was expecting my 2 year old to behave way older than he is. He's 2 for crying out loud...he's going to drop stuff all the time, have meltdowns, get distracted, throw things. And I'm supposed to behave like the adult, get over it and show him that it's okay. It's okay to make mistakes, to have accidents, because we're not perfect. Because mistakes and accidents are part of learning.

Now, when he drops the cup of milk and it splashes all over the floor or when he has an accident because he thought it was just a fart (lol), I choose to say "it's okay baby, it was an accident, mama will fix it, I love you!"

He has caught on. I hear him saying "it's okay." Especially after the boy Joshua in his potty book has an accident on the floor. He looks at me and says "it's okay, it's just an accident."

Aren't kids the sweetest? God has used mine to teach me so many things. One of them being, to relax, enjoy the important stuff and say "it's okay" to the small stuff.