June 13

I routinely feel like I'm failing at the parenting-thing. I'm not the world's most patient person. I stress over everything. And my personality is a mix of extreme sensitivity and extroversion, which means that though I take anything and everything to heart and often want to run away from people in order to think things through and push the reset button, I desperately need deep, real connections to survive. And given that it's summer time, I feel more alone than usual because I don't have dance and baseball and school to meet up with other people.

So yeah. Thanks to all of those factors, more days than not, I find myself making mistakes with the short people because I mishandle my own emotions. This, for example, is Abby marching ahead of me at Target tonight. Ironically, I decided to take her in order to make her feel better about something I knew she was upset about, but it blew up in my face. As it so often does.

But here's the bit of redemption I can ferret out of the negativity: I know that in eight or 10 hours, I'll have the chance to get up and do it all over again; to say different things and to make different choices in the heat of the moment that will foster different moods and create different outcomes. So today, for the gift of second (and third and fourth...) chances at getting it right(er), I'm grateful.