Small Victories!

Today our older son, Riley, pooped in the toilet for the very first time!

He announced his need to go, walked into the bathroom like he’d been doing it his whole life, and went for it. When he was done he opened the door to the bathroom and declared, “I love going poop on the potty!” This small victory was cause for a huge celebration in our house! One that involved dropping everything and going to Target to get him the ultimate reward – a nerf gun.

Riley just turned four a couple weeks ago. He’s been potty trained for almost a year, well, except he has refused to poop on the toilet. In one of our wiser parenting moves, we didn’t force it. We let him do his thing and continued to give him a pull-up when he needed to go. We could tell he knew what to do, but he just wasn’t ready to make the transition to the toilet.

As the year went on we would bring it up periodically, and he would say things like “Mom, I think I’ll go poop on the potty when I’m six!” or “I don’t like to go poop on the toilet because the seat is hard and cold.” There was always a good reason for why he couldn’t do it. But today, there were no excuses. He was ready. He was confident. You would never know it was his first time.

I share this story for a couple reasons. First, it’s a pretty great story about giving our kids the space to do things at their own pace. They do things when they are ready, not when we think they should be ready.

Second, as a reminder to celebrate our own small victories.

It’s been a little over a month since I left my job to partner with Evan on his business, and to be honest, until this week I haven’t been feeling like much of a partner or contributor, and that does not feel good.

Some of this was the result of the holiday season. Our boys were out of school for two weeks, and during that time I was on as full-time mom…for eighteen straight days. I had an amazing time with my kids. Incredibly amazing. It reaffirmed why we decided to make these changes in the first place.  

But, I got no work done. Like zero work. I don’t think I even opened my computer. And that felt weird. I felt incredibly unproductive.

Then, last week we were finally back to a more normal schedule, and it hit me that my learning curve is big, like much bigger than I expected. Sure, I have excellent transferable skills, and moments of brilliance, but in short, I’ve gone from being an experienced professional in my old field to kind of knowing nothing. I’m learning, but it’s been a blow to my confidence for sure and has made me question what the heck I’m doing.

Fast forward to yesterday, Evan and I had our first truly productive meeting of the new year. He gave me a few tasks for this week and today I was finally able to sit down and do real, meaningful work. For the first time since we’ve made this transition I’m doing something that is helping Evan; I’m taking tasks off his plate so that he can finish projects and get paid. It feels amazing!

And this, my friends, is my small victory! I did real work.

I did real work in my new role and it feels great. I feel great. I feel motivated. I feel like myself. Maybe even a slightly more balanced version of myself.

I’ve been wanting to do this since December, but the timing wasn’t right. I needed a little space for myself to regroup and refocus, I needed that time with my boys, and I needed to learn. And now I am ready to go.