It's raining in Rome

It was one of "those" days when I was trying to make fun memories with my child but everything was going wrong.  Everything from my youngest waking up too early to my word being contradicted to cookie dough sticking to, well, everything.  This wasn't what I had in mind when I thought of making holiday cookies.

"That doesn't look like a snowman, Mom," my son told me with disappointment dripping from his voice.  He had his hands poking around in the dough and then into the flour and then into his mouth. 

While I was trying to instruct him in the ways of germs and hygiene, my little sound-track kept repeating herself behind me saying, "Mommy, look!"  I stood there with cookie dough gooping up my fingers, the table, and the rolling pin, a snowman leaning precariously on my cookie sheet, my mess widening by the second...and I sighed.  This certainly held the potential of becoming a lasting memory, but not necessarily a positive one.

The good news is that in that critical moment I remembered a phrase offered to us during our parenting classes:  Rome wasn't built in a day.  

We'd like to see our children "get it" immediately.  But usually they won't.  They are children, after all, and it takes time (and consistent parenting) to develop good habits and solid character. 

The phrase was meant to encourage us in our parenting but it went beyond that for me.  It pertained to me directly and to the parent I'd like to become someday.  And it pertained to Fun-Things-Gone-Bad.

Thanks to those well-timed words, I managed to take courage in the middle of my cookie episode. "It is only raining in pre-Rome today," I told myself.  

I imagined the work on Rome being halted during untimely downpours.  The mud, the set-backs, the delays...it wasn't what they had hoped for. But the master planners didn't despair.  They knew the sun would shine again --and Rome eventually became an empire. 

Somewhere in our kitchen the sun must have started to shine because our cookie dough consistency grew workable with more flour and we eventually had trays full of cookies that passed the approval of my junior assistant.  Even the baby grew happy playing by herself.

So the next time I'm losing heart over a child (or a mommy) who isn't "getting it" at the moment or if I'm disappointed over Fun-Things-Going-Bad, I'm going to remind myself that it is only raining. 

After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.