Parenting is hard.

Buuba had a bad day today. He had Swedish fish for breakfast. He was with grandpa, grandpa does what he wants, I get it. However, it makes it harder on me. See, bubba is a great eater. He would pick vegetables over anything sweet nine times out of ten, With his food allergies (so far nutmeg, something in graham crackers and something in Asian food) his diet doesn't include things that have excess amounts of sugar, artificial colors or flavors or anything like that, so he has a very low tolerance. And Swedish fish are not an organically occurring, organically colored food. And they have tons of sugar, So yeah, today he had a bad day. He was bouncing off the walls, being defiant and just generally being a tiny terror. Things are a little crazy at work lately too, so my anxiety level has been pretty high. I'll admit that I wasn't as sweet and soft to him as I should have been. The terrible thing about parenting is that no one understands your child like you do. When your child is misbehaving, you know that there is something wrong but on the outside it just looks like you have no control and you let your child walk all over you. That's not the case with bubba. We have very strict limits and very strict expectations. It helps that, generally speaking, bubba is a very good boy. He always says please and thank you if he wants something. He helps clean up, and generally uses soft hands and soft words with people.

Today wasn't one of those days. Today was a day when he ran around like a crazy man, He acted like I've never told him no in his life. Instead of saying please and thank you, he threw himself on the floor. Instead of using soft hands, he was hitting and biting. Instead of helping clean up, he was making a bigger mess.

I get so stressed out when he acts like this because if I think he's being a terror, what do other people think? As I mentioned, other people don't know that he was on a crazy sugar high and reacting to things not normally in his diet.

The problem with today, though, was that I was so worried about what other people were thinking that I forgot to worry about what bubba thought. When I yelled at him, was he scared? When I pulled him down from the top of a high stack of chairs he had climbed, did he think I was being too rough or that I was trying to hurt him? I don't want my son to ever have to worry about those things. My goal is to parent him in a way that makes him feel safe, but also lets him know that he has boundaries that he can't cross.

I'm scared that today he didn't feel safe. That today mommy was too busy worrying about what other people thought and trying to make sure he didn't hurt himself or others, and in the process forgot about his feelings.

So tonight, we cuddled on the couch. I indulged his every whim to sit on my lap, or to hold my hand. We snuggled and played to our hearts content until it was time for bed.

That's the beauty of co-sleeping. No matter what our day is like, my baby boy can go to bed knowing that mommy has her arms wrapped around his beautiful sleepy self, and he is safe.

So today was a bad day. Not just for bubba, but for me. Not in levels of stress, but in levels of parenting. I will make today the exception to the rule. Moving forward, I'm going to yell less. I won't say I'll stop because sometimes he scares the crap out of me and it's a knee-jerk reaction. I'm going to take extra care to be gentle with him when I pull him out of somewhere he's not supposed to be. He's old enough to express pain so I know that I didn't hurt him by accident or anything, but I don't want him to think that one day I will.

He's my baby boy. Parenting is hard, but it's so worth the crazy days and the terrifying moments when you get to look over at your baby's sleeping face and know that he feels safe and loved.