Momming in the Mundane: having the nice things

I recently said goodbye to a beautiful glass pitcher that we got as a wedding gift.  It had a good run and was well loved, but in the end it fell victim to a curious toddler.  Little, being the curious and adventurous toddler that he is took advantage of my rookie mistake of leaving the handle toward the outside of the fridge and promptly grabbed it and pulled it right down to the floor.  Sweet tea everywhere.  Glass pitcher shattered.
I’ll be honest, my first thought, after making sure Little was okay (he was, just confused a little bit and covered in sweet tea goodness), quickly taking off his wet clothes and moving him to the living room to be sure he didn’t step on any glass while I cleaned up, was “this is why we can’t have nice things.”  It was mostly a joke.

Everyone told us to put away the nice things once Little was mobile.  But, we don’t have lots of fancy things anyway, and I just wasn’t too worried about it.  But here it was, my pretty pitcher in a little pile.

And then while I was cleaning up the mess, another thought entered my head.  But we do have nice things!  We have all the nice things!  A pitcher broke.  I cleaned it up – no big deal.  My sweet baby was playing in the living room and as soon as I got the tea up off the floor, I joined him and we had lunch.

And it was nice.

We laughed and he made another mess – this time in his high chair and with his food.

And it was nice.  These little moments are the nice things.  It’s up to me to acknowledge that and to rejoice over them.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the little things, but it’s important to step back and take some time to be thankful for the things that matter.  I don’t think we often give enough weight to these little moments – the relational moments and opportunities that we have to be still for a minute and just soak it all in.

Let’s do more of that.