Grateful for apples like Everest, 7 year old help and fresh laid eggs

Another week has flown by. I am tired, missing my husband, alternately cold and hot (thank you crazy Brisbane weather) and a little overwhelmed as my 7 year old is counting down the days until we depart for the States (she wants it to come faster, but I need time to slow down for a second).

While all that is happening I have been hyper connected to gratitude this week. Halfway through Monday I had already paused to be grateful several times. I am glad that I am feeling reconnected with this practice again and that I feel more at ease each day. I think I made a good decision recently to go back on meds and am grateful I did so. I read a great post today from one of my favourite bloggers (Andrea at Superhero Life) who has also started meds and she expressed so much of what I felt, especially in these lines:

“I used to think it was a flaw of my character — neurotic, too sensitive, easily overwhelmed, no fun, bad mother. The judgments would come in a steady stream at the hardest moments. Why can’t you just be a normal person like everybody else?”

This week I am also grateful for something that would be so little and simple for most parents but huge in the Dane household – my 9 year old is eating apples! In the last 6 1/2 years as we battled her texture issues and fears around food she has not consumed a single piece of fruit apart from the occasional banana (not by choice – I just would not let her have NO fruit) . She finally reached breaking point and now dreads even the odd banana. Faced with all her progress this year and my urging of “so what fruits will you replace it with?” she has been desperately trying fruits to no avail. She tentatively started trying apples again – first with some nibble from a slice, later a few pieces from an apple slinky and finally taking an apple to school that her teacher turned into a slinky and she ate the whole thing! For us that is the equivalent of climbing Everest.  This week she came home from school and reported that not only had she eaten an apple, but her teacher had not made slinkies that day and she ate it whole. This is the first time she has bitten into an apple in 7 years. What next?  Mango season just started and I am praying she will finally try one. Our aim is to have five fruits approved in the future so she can actually have variety. Baby steps though…

I am also grateful for my seven year old’s help over the last 2 1/2 weeks. While my husband is working interstate it means I have to take on his chores – chicken duty, rubbish bins, composting and watering the garden. My seven year old is usually not the one offering to help, prefers to opt out when given the choice. She has suddenly got gung ho and has taken on chicken duty like a champ – feeding them before school while I am still getting ready and often doing the afternoon chores as well. She’s also done more around the house generally speaking and I am so grateful.

I have to be grateful for those chickens themselves. Have you been lucky enough to eat freshly laid eggs? There is nothing like it… I remember many years ago staying at a B & B in South Australia with my husband. At breakfast I had to ask about the eggs because they tasted like they had cream or cheese added to them (I am dairy free). No – it was just that they had been delivered to the B & B from the people across the road and had just been laid. So my thanks go to Beauty and Brownie for giving me that simple pleasure so often. I am grateful that almost 18 months after inheriting them I still pause for a moment at that first bite and savour the way they taste. Heavenly!

What are you grateful for this week?

Find your simple,

Deb

Linking up with Bron for Village Voice’s 52 weeks of grateful.