Today’s not been a good day and quite frankly I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself. I’ll allow myself a bit of wallowing though, we’re all allowed it once in awhile and recent circumstances call for it a bit…as long as we don’t stay there.

Anyway, it’s been really our first day stuck in, it’s my day off so no key worker childcare for little P and no work for me. I’m also fighting off the agony of an ear infection and now on my second round of antibiotics, I didn’t fancy braving the cold to add to the pain. So we played inside, nothing special and like I said quite frankly, I just felt fed up.

P feeds off my emotions, all kids do, they are highly tuned and sensitive to the feelings and atmosphere around us. That teamed with me having to tell her that Dr Ranj has cancelled football and ballet class again because of coronavirus and the germs (watch BBC’s Get Well Soon if you’re not a parent and you’ll get where I’m coming from) put her in a similar mood to me. She knows, she knows I’m not right, stressing about the uncertainty, having one mind on her and the other on remote learning, time in school, childcare for her and when the hell I’m going to get some adult social time again. She doesn’t know those specifics but she knows my thoughts are in two places at once and therefore acts accordingly…like a little turd, which is probably the most appropriate word after today’s poos incident.

Then tonight, we cuddled up in bed for story and our little bedtime rituals. I actually like bedtime. I’ve written about it before, she can be a pain and pushes it to the limit for going to sleep. But she’s always nice, she’s cute and coy with it. And despite her best efforts to avoid going to sleep, it’s always calm and some nice quiet time together. Partly because I’ll spend it with her, I’ll lay with her until she’s calm enough to sleep, I’ll cuddle her and stroke her hair and it’s just nice time where actually I relax too and take a big exhale and let out the stresses of the day.

Every night we always talk about our favourite things from that day. So as usual I asked her and she asked if she could choose three, so we both did. It struck me today how simple these things we say are. How for both of us it’s about a small moment, a small thing, like, “playing with you” or “laughing at *insert random funny thing here* with you” and most importantly it’s the with you at the end. Because our favourite things are each other.

So I’m ending the day a little calmer, a little more grateful and little more content. I mean I’m also in a little less pain thanks to antibiotics round too and ibuprofen, but mainly I’m just a little less, well overthinking, over worrying, letting stuff get me down. Because my favourite thing today was little P.