September 1, 2013

A Summer Cold

Of course we all end up sick for the last long weekend of the summer... I have no idea how my immune system is so compromised these days. I chug back my green smoothies almost daily, take good multi-vitamins, eat a clean diet, drink lots of water.. blah, blah, blah... oh wait, maybe it's because of my lack of SLEEP!!! 

It always happens this way.. Carson gets sick first and is up half the night, I get up with him and get drooled on and snotted all over, go back to bed, sleep for a few hours and do it again. Then I have to get up and carry on with my life and those demands. I guess eventually, my body needs a break.

A summer cold is not the same as a winter cold. It feels 10 times worse because it's SUNNY and HOT out! Why would I want to sleep and sit on the couch all day? Well, I did it anyway. I listened to my body. I did what my Mother taught me and drank lots of water and rested. It was hard. No joke. I don't like sitting around. It did help and I was back to about 80% in 2 days. Not bad considering I had Carson to look after as well.


Four days later and I'm still holding onto a bit of the snuffles. I've been using my time to clean and make meals to try to get ahead of of another busy week coming up. This cold has forced me to slow down and reflect on my life and some of the things that keep me busy. I feel like I need to work on taking more time to just chill out. No phone. No computer. No noise. Relaxing isn't something I do well and it's time that I learn to stop stressing and trying to do it all.

Carson needs a healthy Mamma to take care of him and I need to try to put myself a little higher on the priority list. I need to stop being hard on myself and expecting everything to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. Perfect is boring. When I am strong and healthy, my family is too. It needs to start with me. I can't prevent getting sick, but I can try harder to take more time for myself and treat myself a litter nicer. 


All Mom's out there fall into this somewhere along the way. We all put our family's needs before our own, our employers needs before our own and even our friends needs before our own. It's ok to do that sometimes and most of us are just nice enough, good natured people to do that, but we also need to think about our well being and respecting ourselves. If we don't respect ourselves, no one else will either. 


As I sit here next to my tissue box and tea, I'm reminded of the smaller things in life and just how important health is. It doesn't always matter if all the laundry gets done, if every single meal during the week was made from scratch, sometimes we just need to put our feet up and let it all go...none of that stuff will matter 20 years from now.