Sunshine

This morning around 2:00 I got up to change Shelly's diaper, laid her down on the changing table and noticed something unfamiliar to me at that time of night - bright happy eyes and a great big smile! It made waking up worth it just to see that happiness, much more pleasant than waking up to crying, that's for sure! And, its a good thing I felt that way because she woke me up again two hours later to change her again, and there was that smile again. I started thinking about the excuses people use when they're crabby and get short with the people around them and one of my often-used excuses is that I didn't get enough sleep, or I'm not a morning person... But that's really no reason to let myself fall into a bad mood or short temper. I read a book once called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, which was about an autistic boy who doesn't like the color yellow, and one day on his way to school he saw three yellow cars and it put him in a bad mood for the rest of the day. When his teacher pointed out to him that it wasn't logical to let the color of passing cars put him in a good or bad mood, he said it wasn't logical to let the weather affect your mood, but lots of people did that. And I've thought about that often when the weather is crummy and for some reason that means people feel unhappy. Why do we let those things get to us? There's nothing we can do about it, so just move on, right? Sometimes, easier said than done. Anyway, I was thinking that just because its the middle of the night is no reason to be unhappy, and Shelly reminded me that smiling is nice to see ANY time of the day (or night), and maybe I should try to do it more often! Seeing my kids smile is a ray of sunshine, and a big reward for doing something small like changing a diaper.