This was good.

I once heard that when you're putting your kids to bed, you should always ask them to tell you about the best thing about the day they just had, even if it was just a moment's length.  This encourages them to think positively and it sends them to sleep with warm thoughts rather than stressful ones.  That always stuck with me, and when Jacob is old enough to share his thoughts using words, we'll definitely put that into play.  I've also decided that I could really use to adopt that practice for myself.  It's so easy to focus on all of the stressful and negative things happening to you throughout the day, that all of the good stuff practically vanishes before you can even register it.

I'll go ahead and choose the following moment as today's moment because I'm fairly sure nothing will beat it.   I was slouching on the coach wrapped in a blanket, unable to shake the night off, imagining indulgently that I was still in bed sleeping, and that Jacob was too.  That wasn't further from the truth, of course.  He was up and running (yes, he now runs!) from toy station to toy station, pawing at one mound of fun and moving on to the next.  Moments earlier, Jacob had urged me to turn on the stereo, which I did, but instead of listening to that music, he went straight for one of his own music-making toys and banged away over top of the song playing through the speakers.  Too tired to get up and turn the stereo off, I watched, dreading the noise-upon-noise I'd have to endure for the next 15 minutes or however long it would take him to tire of his synthesizer.  Somehow, though, I eventually found myself zoned out (or zoned in?) to the sound of Elvis Perkins' Ash Wednesday, as though the beautiful song was actually playing in my head, with the rest of the noise now muffled in the background.  For the few minutes that it played, I think I might have fallen asleep, all the while savouring every note like melting chocolate.  It was a short, but nourishing morsel of good that's still getting me through my day.