With a 4 month old in the house, one on one fun with my son is at a premium these days.  I always know his (and my) quality time tank is running on fumes when we have a day where everything seems to be falling apart.  You know the kind I mean – when you feel as though you can’t do anything right, and are a complete failure as a parent.  Yep, those days.  You’d think that by the second kid my track record would’ve improved a bit, but now that there are two of them, those out of control days seem to show up twice as often.  

We had one such day a few weeks ago, sparked by the clingy nursing frenzy that is otherwise known as a growth spurt. It was overwhelming to say the least.  And while C is ordinarily very good at self-entertainment, he had clearly grown weary of playing by himself, and was acting out accordingly.  By the end of the day, it seemed as though the majority of our interactions that day had involved temper tantrums, whining, and crying (and usually a combination of all three.)  

That’s why I love this picture – it was taken the NEXT day, after we’d had a long talk at breakfast about what things went wrong the day before, and how we each could “start over and make better choices today.”  Baby Z was back to “normal,” Big C cut me a little slack, and I went out of my way to carve out some time for just the two of us.  The crag-daddy was working from home on that particular day, so during Baby Z’s 35 minute nap window in the morning (yeah I’m ready for all of these naps to start stretching out…but that’s another post entirely!!!), Big C and I biked to our local smoothie shop to grab a cold treat.  The time shared together seemed to reset both of our attitudes, and reinforced the conversation we’d had earlier.  

Every day won’t be perfect, fun, and may very well be downright horrible.  But thank goodness for “do-overs.”

How do you bounce back when life gets overwhelming?