Faith, Hope, and Love...

"When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world."-Zig Zigler

There aren't enough books in the world to describe how hard it is to raise a child. I'm not talking about how expensive it is or how time consuming it is. I'm talking about how thought, emotion, and soul consuming it is. I think that every parent goes into parenthood with a list of "things my child won't do." "My child WILL NOT have a temper tantrum in the middle of a restaurant." Let me just tell you, my child has done that...several times. "I would never give him sugar for breakfast." I think he had fruit loops this morning. We put all of these expectations on ourselves.So I ask myself, "what makes a "good" parent?" Does a "good" parent only buy really nice clothes? Does a "good" parent only feed their child organic food? Hmmm...

Ashish and I were in Sam's one day, Jordan may have been six months old. We walked past a woman that worked there, she was handing out food samples and I remember the smile on her face. We took our food sample and moved on but I couldn't get the look on her face out of my head. So we were on our merry way, strolling through Sam's; as we rounded the corner to the frozen food aisle, the woman with the big smile was standing there. What happened next will forever be in my mind. The woman said: "I can see that you two are great parents because your baby is happy; and happiness is all that children need. I smiled so big because it was so nice to see two young people purposely trying to make their family happy." What an amazing compliment. Amazing because at 6 months, Jordan wasn't sleeping through the night which means that Ashish and I weren't getting a good nights sleep. I hadn't had a good nights sleep since January...this was August. I loved that an outsider could look into our little family and see happiness. From that point on, I was no longer striving to be a "good" parent, happiness makes my family PERFECT!