Tending to the Garden

I won't apologize for the lack of words over here. I'm not sorry.

Oh I'm sorry if you missed me, or our lonely, but see I have a good excuse.

It's March in Chicago. It should be cold, snowy, gray, rainy. It's been sunny, in the 80's and beautiful. I have a sunburn and mosquito bites. We have been soaking up all the vitamin D we can before Mother Nature realizes she flipped to many pages in her calendar. 

We've been tending to the garden, freeing our little buds from the detritus of winter . 

Allowing them to burst forth uninhibited 

Reach towards the sun and grow and bloom. 

As we spend our days working the earth and soaking up the sun the words spill from my mind. They fill pages and pages, in my mind. 

See as I work the dirt and tend to my garden I am not only freeing my buds and allowing them to bloom.  

I am freeing myself and blooming as well. 

Zen Amidst Chaos {Bigger Picture Moments}

In a perfect world I would rise early to the chirping birds and the quiet still of the house. I would roll my mat out on the clean and cold floor and I would step on to it cracking my toes and digging into the softness. I would wake my tired and cold muscles with slow deliberate movements, leaning into them, feeling the rhythm of my breathes, allowing them to warm up my body and still my mind. I don’t live in perfect I live in Chaos. 

For a long time that meant that I ignored my desire to get back into a yoga practice because I couldn't do it the “right” way. Dim lights, clean and quiet space, peacefully. As I’m learning to better go with the flow that means fitting in “me time” when I can.

So the baby and I have been doing yoga most morning after dropping off the kids. There are no clean floors, no calm and quiet, It looks a little more like this:

We careen through the door like a pack animal barging through the gate. Our stuff is dropped in a loud heap. I hand the baby a snack and go set up my mat. Piles of kids clutter and laundry are pushed out of the way to lay out my mat. I take care to make sure that none of the Cheerios are directly under the mat.

Sitting on my knees I begin breathe of fire, in out, in out, building speed. The baby thinks this is a great game and she straddles my knees to join in snorting like a little baby bull.

I lift her off my lap to switch positions. It’s her favorite one, where we roll up on our shoulders and back to our sitting bone. She squeals with glee as she hugs my legs waiting for her ride. We rock and we roll and she giggles. 

I continue through my routine, moving around her lifting her off of me. I am her jungle gym and playmate all rolled into one. 
I stretch she squeals and me time turns into “we” time and it’s just as good.
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Live
Simply changing from me to we, that's my Simple Moment, Bigger Picture this week. What's Yours

Capture
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Encourage 
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