Childrens' Parties and more Childrens' Parties

Today is the weekend for parties for my dear 4 year old. She had three of her preschool friends turn 5yrs this week, and all have their parties at the same time. We managed to squeeze in two today (with mama missing out on her hockey game), with another one still to come tomorrow. It's so interesting to stand back and witness what happens at these events, as there are notable differences between the children themselves and the adults. The children are typically very excited to be moving on in their venture towards school, while the parents are left pining their 'baby' whom is growing up so fast, starting school already. I wonder if this is considered a loss for some, and for those people, a process of grief must be traversed. Anyway, what I really came to write about this evening is that I've come up with a plan! Starting today I have begun recording emotions that I recognise throughout my day, I then rate them using a 1-5 scale for intensity, and briefly state what happened. I am going to do this for the next three weeks, then when I see Veronika next submit this to her, discuss any patterns that may have emerged, or if there were better coping strategies I could have used to diffuse the situation etc. I'm feeling pretty good about this, as it means i'm actively doing something, and can have documented evidence of change over time.

After my purchases at Lush the other day, I've also started to indulge myself just a little. I really like how clean my facial block is leaving my skin, and am particularly in love with the massage body bar, it smells divine and is heavenly when applying, requiring the time to give yourself a quick wee massage. So this has become a time of self-soothing/self-nurturing for me.

I also managed to cook up a few chicken breasts this evening to freeze in portions for my lunches over the next week. Tomorrow I will bake the sweet potato, or cook up the brown rice which i'll add to the meal, and walah, lunch meals are taken care of. I'll throw in some lettuce leaves and tomato to give it a bit more colour (it's not going to add to it nutritionally or anything), and perhaps I will have it with a cup-of-soup or something given the unfortunate season of Winter is now upon us #cry.

Eugh! I just lost half of my post, and am too frustrated to re-write it now, so am going to call it a night and go and engage in some distress tolerance skills to calm me down (only half joking) xx.