Mom guilt

Ok, I'm hearing that pictures of moose and Allen's news are nice, but news of Ashlyn is in demand. So, here was our day.

We started the morning with Ashlyn’s second of three doctor’s appointments for the week. She has her 3rd ear infection and they are injecting antibiotics for three days to get her over them quickly, we hope. (This starts my first mom guilt of the day. Have we done something that causes these infections?)

We were out of infant motrin that I thought she might need if the shot bothered her. So, I dragged her to Walmart. She was so tired by the time we got home that she just nursed and went to sleep. (Second mom guilt of the day. Why didn’t I bring her home earlier, so she would eat lunch? Of course, she ate lunch, just late.)

This afternoon, we went on a walk with Ranger. For some reason, I didn’t put her snowsuit on her, thinking it was warm enough with just her coat and a blanket. Of course, even though the coat sleeves normally cover her hands, Ashlyn managed to wiggle her hands out. I tried covering her hands with the blanket, but she would have none of that. So, I took my gloves off, thinking that I would at least know when she was getting too cold. Ashlyn then decides to kick the blanket off. So, I just go with it. At which point she pulls off her socks. Naturally, it is only 20 degrees, I put them back on. She pulls one off again, and we are awfully close to home, so I just keep walking. (Naturally, this was my third mom guilt of the day.)

I have more mom guilt, of course. Am I doing something wrong that she isn’t crawling, standing, walking? Am I ignoring her too much? Or, holding her too much? Is it even possible to teach your child to do these things? And, yes, she did fall off the changing table Sunday morning. More mom guilt. I’ve been told that everyone’s child falls at some point, but I was standing right there, and she just rolled right off.

Ashlyn was mad at me tonight. She made her mad face and yelled at me for a bit. She’ll be ok, I’m sure. This is her mad face. I did not feel guilty about this. I just laughed.