Have you laughed today?

A wise friend once told me when I first became a parent to make it a goal to laugh, really laugh like deep belly laughs and unstoppable giggles at least once a day with my children to help me to enjoy them and not get lost in the work of being a parent. This advice has stuck with me for 11 years. Occasionally in the chaotic pace of our lives it gets lost or rather, I lose it. I forget to pay attention and seek out those moments. It never fails though, when I’m trying to get through my checklists and to conquer the dishes and laundry for at least 10 minutes one day I am reminded of this value I hold. Sometimes it is whispered gently into my heart, others it is like a 2×4 up side my head and still others it explodes shredding my lists and destroying my piles.

Today I had planned to get another breastfeeding demonstration video up but didn’t have any footage that would work for what I wanted so I grabbed the camera and decided to film me breastfeeding Smunchie in the Mei Tai as I walked with The Storyteller, Lolie, Squiggle Bug and Smunchie home from the ballet studio. The Storyteller was to be my videographer when we stopped at the park and let Lolie push Squiggle Bug in the swing for a while as we filmed. They were all enthusiastic and The Storyteller assured me she was ready to become a film maker.

SteadyCam she is not.

However, she is a cute little ballerina. By the way the video shakes and wiggles, jumping around all over the place one would think she was still in dance class while holding the camera.

Isn’t she cute! She and Earth Baby were getting ready to ride their bikes to the ballet studio when I snapped this in a sloppy “Aw! My babies riding off to ballet for the first time this season” moment.

Because I don’t want to subject anyone to video induced motion sickness, I have no video to share with you.

Well, that’s not exactly true.

In the video I had hoped to demonstrate how I adjusted my carrier to breastfeed and then could multi-task while babywearing and breastfeeding. Once I had Smunchie latched, I walked over to Squiggle Bug and started pushing her on the swing to let Lolie run off to tackle the bigger playground equipment. The problem was Smunchie much preferred watching Squiggle Bug swing and totally ditched the b@@b. So I gave up and enjoyed the moment and we got this instead. The carrier is too loose and not being worn well at all because it was adjusted for BFing and I relaxed it even further for her to see better.

Turns out, I like the video footage we ended up getting better anyway.

We laughed and laughed and laughed some more. We shot several videos until the camera died. Then we watched her more without the camera. On the way home we laughed some more remembering. After dinner we watched it again with Earth Baby who had missed it and we snorted and hollered through it again. And when I edited it down with Smunchie on my lap, she and I laughed yet again. Oh yeah, we’ve laughed today. Have you?