That’s what my mom always said when I was a kid. Patience is also a challenge, at least for me. I find myself exercising my patience everyday. Which I suppose is a good thing, although when I’m in the middle of a patience-based workout, I am not so happy about it.

This morning, like just about every morning (save perhaps twenty), I had the benefit of exercising my patience first thing after getting out of bed. First a little background, I am a quick waker, and therefore a quick out of bedder. Which is fortunate given our son’s penchant for wriggling out of bed and running into the kitchen to cook immediately upon opening his eyes. (It’s important to keep up with him just in case one of the baby-proofed elements is out of place.) My husband is the exact opposite of me in this aspect. It’s only been about five months since he started getting up within an hour of the baby and I regularly. Before that, he’d roll of of the bed anywhere between 11 and 2 left to his own devices. For a long time, I found this very frustrating because I’d end up waiting at least 5 hours before our day together started.

Now back to today, I only had to wait about 25 minutes for papa to join us. Which goes by in the blink of an eye. And yet, my nerves are a bit frayed these days and to be honest I had some rather urgent business to conduct in one room of the house and I didn’t want to leave the baby with the breakfast cooking on the stove (he’s very determined to cook!). So I had an opportunity to practice my patience. When I went to put my toast in the toaster oven, I found our cat’s dinner from last night. Poor kitty went to bed without his dinner thanks to papa’s forgetting.

It was then that I told myself that if our dear cat can be patient, than so can I.