The deep soul needs only chocolate can fill...

I ended today by giving up.  In a most calm and measured way, I consumed a third of my daily caloric intake in chocolate, without guilt.

A major focus in all aspects of life for me right now is mindfulness, but I know when to say when.

Let me start by saying that I cannot imagine why a mother would willingly give up nursing just as her baby ventures into toddlerhood.   Nursing a toddler is, in so many ways, helping me keep my sanity.  Hannah is a happy, sweet little girl, but she's still a toddler.  And a strong-willed, curious one at that.  By virture of her age, she is highly emotional and mostly irrational.  Her wonderful little body is suddenly capable of so much, and she has discovered that she can move about in the world and discover it for herself.  She now has preferences and has figured out how to make them known.  In other words, she is discovering - and guarding - her power.

In everything, I am trying to be mindful of giving her the gift of her own sovereignty, letting her be autonomous and independent.  This does not mean total permissiveness, but it does mean that my convenience and my notion of how things "should" be in the current moment don't come first.  Letting her be a child comes first.

But to everything there is a limit.  We have to get in the car in the morning to make it to work and daycare on time.  After a half hour of waving at people in the parking lot from the backseat of our car, we come dangerously close to a) hitting rush hour and b) being forced once again to get expensive takeout for dinner.  It's time to go home.

Oh, the sounds she can now make in protest!  I am in awe of her strength, and her ability to buck and wriggle out of my grasp as I try to put her in her carseat.  I can't help but feel a little awful when I literally have to wrestle and then pin her in for the journey.  

So now we're home, dinner is in progress, and rather than play happily with the myriad toys available to her, my curious little explorer prefers the spice cabinet and will not stop whining and pulling on my leg until she is up on the counter sorting out bottles of thyme, oregano and basil, handing them to me like a dutiful little sous chef.  During a brief interlude on the floor, she dumps out the dog's water all over the floor.  Content only to play with her sippy cups if they're full of water AND uncovered, she drenches herself and the counter. 

This after 34 miles of commuting in the rain, with 8 hours of fun with teenagers, otherwise known as hormones and clothes.

So in these moments when Hannah is taking a turn for the mischevious, it is a type of salvation to be able drop what I'm doing, freeze time, and nurse her for a few moments.  These moments get sweeter the older she gets.  What used to be a physical necessity now is not.  I believe nursing now meets a need in her soul, a need to feel nurtured and comforted and held.  Of course there are other ways to do this, and when a mom stops nursing is a choice only she can make.  But it is like hitting an invisible reset button in the moments when I am most at risk of losing my sanity.

So once the little one is in bed and I have a few moments to myself, like an idiot I start cleaning, which somehow led to a private little temper tantrum in which I hurled my makeshift sewing basket off of it's shelf as if it were the source of all my stress.  Shortly after the sewing basket incident, in a moment of kindness to myself, I said "I need chocolate and to write."

Out came the creme de menthe fudge and the laptop.  A fringe benefit of nursing?  Losing weight while eating fudge.  Hard to argue with the awesomeness of that! 

Maybe tomorrow mindfulness will look a little more yogic -- maybe I'll do some pranayama in the bathtub by candlelight or something.  For tonight, that fudge was just right.