On Sunday, we stuck around the house and the kids continued to enjoy their Christmas haul. Erin and I were treated to a pretty quiet morning while the kids played and did their own thing for the most part.
The dogs also played together, spending a fair amount of their time fighting over a bully stick. NOTE: there are like 6 of those things all around the house, but they always have to argue over the same one.
It was a lovely day outside, though, and we decided to take a little walk with the dogs. It was Islay’s first walk, so she was a little bit all over the place, but did well nonetheless. Then Erin took Asta on a longer trail walk, while the kids and I got Islay back home.
We then went over to Amelia’s school parking lot because the kids wanted to ride their bikes. Henry had just gotten a little strider bike from Grandma and Pop Pop for Christmas. On Christmas Day, with all that was going on, Henry didn’t show a lot of interest in the bike right away. But the day after, he started trying it out around the house and was excited to go outside and try it some more.
I will take a moment to sidebar and note that Christmas morning has often been a struggle for Henry. In previous years, before we had Henry’s autism diagnosis and understood a lot less about how he was processing things, he would get really upset at times. This seems counterintuitive, because of course we all think, what kid doesn’t love opening presents and getting new toys?
In Henry’s case, he likes routine and Christmas morning was a major and jarring change in routine. And all the stuff and activity was just overwhelming for him. He did SO much better with it all this year, and it was one of those moments where we recognized how far he’s come in the last six months. Sure, he still had a moment or two, but he was able to enjoy himself and has developed the flexibility to handle everything that was going on.
Back to Sunday and the bikes, there is nice strip of parking lot in front of Amelia’s school, so the kids rode back and forth there for a while.
Like at the playground a few days ago, we forgot Henry’s gloves and when he asked for some, I lent him mine, once again giving him the comically oversized hands.
It was fun right up until the wind picked up and it got a bunch colder, so we headed back home. I used a bunch of leftover turkey to make enchiladas for dinner. The meal was good, but I share this mostly to show off this picture of the super cool new Captain American spatula I got from Erin for Christmas.
After dinner, I watched the Packers get a win over the Tennessee Titans, which was fun. Once the kids were in bed, I did some reading in a new book I got for Christmas about forming positive habits, and also filled out my information for a trial of Noom. Clearly building productive habits are on my mind.
One thing the book has already noted is that, for as impossible as it often feels to build good habits, whether that’s health and diet, productivity, parenting or career, we focus way too much on the things we aren’t doing. The fact is we are forming habits all the time, many of them positive.
Reading that made me recognize, hey, I’ve written a blog post for 286 days in a row, so I guess that counts for something. Hopefully I can find ways to move that success to other areas of my life, too. A new year is coming up, and corny as it may sound, I hope we can all go into it with lots of positivity and faith in the potential of good things to come.
