5 for me tonight

Today has mainly consisted of sitting on the sofa cradling a poorly Michael, hoping it's teething and nothing infectious.

My 5 are from the weekend and today..

1. The owner of the restaurant who served us on Saturday was called Siddhartha. Won't mean that much but it was the name of the Buddha before he became Buddha. In the flakiest possible way, the universe was saying "Good on yer" on Saturday. Yes the last six months or so have been extremely tough health and indeed everything wise, but as the Lama said, its absolutely the right teaching for me right now. And it is, even the stuff about death which I cannot comprehend but it is.

2. We went to a celebration of 20 years of Reading Buddhist Priory yesterday. Several people commented on my calm, positive parenting, even one of the monks. I didn't believe them, but had a good laugh with another parent who understood how possible it was to appear like this in front of an audience with the additional "pressure" of it being a Buddhist audience and yet not be like it quite a lot of the time also.

3. The thing that made a real and lasting difference and which will for quite some time to come was talking to another friend/parent who greeted me saying "motherhood suits you". What a wonderful thing to say. What I listened to at the time was when I said, "but you know I've been so awful, I've even slapped them" and she said, "well you just do sometimes don't you and you feel so awful afterwards". This mum is also a lay minister. In no way was she condoning her or my actions just acknowledging them and moving on. With the best will in the world, it Does just happen and that's something for my perfectionist nature to just let go of. Also, my goodness, this particular mum is one of the truly great mums I know (and I know a few) so to me, this was really inspiring that I might actually be an ok mum.

us

4. This am I was cranky and dizzy and sick and my back hurt with period pains that niggled like early contractions and I was exhausted. D was being determined to open a door and shut it, and I was worried as it's a heavy glass door and she could hurt herself easily on it. I didn't deal with it that well but not too badly either. She ended up in time out which was a little rubbish but gave us both breathing space so useful.

5. Held Michael for hours this afternoon. D was so kind, she pootled around and wasn't at all demanding and was quite, quite wonderful.