Appreciation

I listened to a friend vent today and then read her blog about the same vent and it made me think, Amen Sister!! She was referring to respect. In the last few days especially, we've been struggling with Erik and his respecting his parents choices. The words "You are being so mean" have come out of his precious mouth a lot lately. At first, it made my heart strings tug and want to curl up in a corner and cry and hold him telling him, momma will make it better. Then after the 45th time of his saying this is less than a week (not really but it sure seems like it) I got upset, not at him but myself. How could I have raised such a disrespectful child. Am I doing something wrong? Am I forgetting to address a problem? Do I not see what he really needs? Now a lot of changes are going on in our house, well actually just one big change. A whole other person is about to join us, for life. I realized tonight that I've been naive in expecting no change in behavior with Erik with a new baby on the horizon. I've been so concerned with how Sarah will be affected that I didn't stop to think about Erik. Sure he's been through this before but he's older, he knows more, he understands more. He truly understands that he will be the one who has to pick up the slack when I need something picked up, put away or Sarah played with. In all of my needing and expecting him to respect me, I need to turn the tables and respect him.
Right now that is difficult to do being 9 months pregnant and a husband working 12+ hour days this week. Which brings me to my title of tonight's post, appreciation. I appreciate my husband, kids and friends but mostly I appreciate the single parents out there. To not have the support both mentally and physically is unimaginable to me. I know we deal with what we have and work with it to the best of our ability but WOW, I am not one of those people who could do this on my own and I know a lot of single parents have some kind of support but it's usually not full time and it always comes at a cost whereas a husband or wife doesn't come strings attached (usually)!
For whoever reads this, I leave you with this thought appreciate your husband/ wife, kids, friends and anyone in your life who has a positive attitude despite their struggles.