Celebrate National “Give Yourself Props” Day…

…which is a day I just invented. Sometimes, a girl has to give herself props (a.k.a a pat on the back for achieving something awesome), and in fact, we all should acknowledge the great things we do more often. I don’t mean the big things, like running into a burning building to save a cat (even though that is pretty awesome), but rather the little things we do…the things others wouldn’t know about unless we publicly called attention to them on the internet.

For example, I’m giving my co-worker, Cheri, props for competing in a triathlon this weekend only 4 months after having a baby. Four months after I have a baby, I’ll be amazed if I run the length of my driveway, let alone swim a ¼ mile and bike 15 miles before doing it.

And I give our fabulous British electrician, Steve, props for working on our kitchen last night after a 14-hour day at his real job. I wouldn’t have the energy to buy a light bulb after the day he had, let alone provide people with an electrified kitchen.

However, I do give myself props for living with this stand-in kitchen…

Those are our IKEA kitchen cabinets that Joey’s built. We’re storing them in the living room until we can hang them up.

…since May, while being pregnant. Now, in comparison to what some people deal with when being pregnant, this is not that bad. I don’t have a place to cook, wash dishes in the basement, scour off drywall and plaster dust daily and cloak my dishes in old sheets to keep the dust off them…it sucks, but it’s certainly not the end of the world.

As you can guess, this pregnancy hasn’t been filled with months of relaxation, but it has been pretty status quo for Joey and me. We’ve been remodeling our house for three years. Living like this has become our norm and in a way, our baby girl got to be there with us as we busted our butts to build a new kitchen, create a nursery and finish about 8 other miscellaneous projects.

Although I have wished our house was finished so we could just sit back and enjoy being pregnant, I’m also happy that Joey and I tackled one last project just the two of us and that we could work together to finally finish the home we’ve been building for so long.

We still have one more bathroom to do and a yard and attic to spruce up, but I feel as if we’ve reached the climax in our remodeling story and are now approaching the happy conclusion where we get to delight in all our hard work.

So, I give myself props for continuing our projects while being 34 weeks pregnant and for doing it with one hand on a hammer and the other on a swollen belly. One day, I will proudly show my daughter this blog and tell her the story of how mommy and daddy rebuilt an entire house and that, although they didn’t know it at the time, it was all in preparation to become a family.

Now, since it is National Give Yourself Props Day, I’d love to hear about what we should give YOU props for. I know you just learned of this holiday’s existence and may feel ill-prepared to participate in the festivities, so I understand if you choose not to comment. But I hope you’ll at least quietly acknowledge to yourself one of the awesome things you’ve recently accomplished, even if it’s as simple as remembering to take the garbage out this morning. Because I forget to do that all the time.

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