self portrait in a side-view mirror. [28.365]

My workdays don’t give me many good photo opportunities (especially while daylight hours are so limited), so y’all get a quick SP, shot on our way to pick M up from school after work. At least the sun is still up when we leave!

Today got off to a rough start. M’s having a hard time lately – between molars, the ear infection, and all of the transitions at her school (older kids transitioning out of the Toddler room into Children’s House, younger kids transitioning up from the Nido), she’s just having a really hard time. She woke up crying at 5am and it didn’t really get much better from there. My poor bug. I’m not in the best shape, myself, so we’re struggling a bit, the two of us. She’s been yelling at me a lot (because she’s a frustrated toddler), and hitting and such, and I’ve been feeling low and sensitive because I’m extra-limited right now due to illness and a flareup of nerve pain in my left leg, and the combination isn’t pretty. I’m realizing that I don’t react well when I feel like I’m expected to do things and I can’t actually do them – and it’s silly in this case, because, you know, she’s a toddler so of course she’s being irrationally demanding about things! But I’ve always felt like I was expected to do whatever was asked of me, and to do it as soon as it was asked of me (whether that was an expectation actually held by the people around me or not, growing up, it’s certainly something I learned to expect from myself) and I get upset when I can’t. Something to work on, for sure.

I am really glad that M and I still end every day with a nursing/rocking session at bedtime – it is so good to have that connection at the end of even a rough day.