Mark has been grumpy all day. And I have been typing, sewing, shopping, and cleaning instead of walking with him, holding him and easing his troubled heart most of the day. Tonight was better as we snuggled together to read bedtime stories. Tomorrow I’ll respond more promptly to his needs. Duh. It took me all day to figure that his grumpiness and my busy-ness had a correlation.
“Fathers and mothers are too absorbed in business and housekeeping to study their children and cherish that sweet and natural confidence which is a child’s surest safeguard and parent’s subtlest power… Happy are the boys and girls who tell all things freely to Father or Mother, sure of pity, help, and pardon; and thrice happy the parents who, out of their own experience, and by their own virtues, can teach and uplift the souls for which they are responsible.”
-Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins