Too Sensitive???

I am thinking I am just too sensitive about things. I tend to be a pretty relaxed person and rarely get too hyped up about things but strangely I get really irked when people make negative comments on my blog. Maybe the negative comments are meant from a good place (concern for Mia) but they just really bug me. Maybe it is that I am too sensitive and should just shrug it off and not let things bug me but I just take things way too personal. I know I am a good mom and I don't doubt myself in that way, but when you read negative things it just makes you think that maybe there is something you are not seeing in yourself and that needs to be changed. For example, I just read on a friends blog that her son has been having emotional issues at school and their way of dealing with it is to make a children's book. Are you joking me-- a children's book??? That is amazing and the fact that Kim came up with that way to have her son work through those issues is just amazing!! Talk about feeling bad about myself as a parent. I think about issues my kids have had and I think how I have minimized them or gotten short with them or just didn't give the issue the proper care and attention. It makes me sad to think of all the ways I am and have screwed with my kids emotions and it makes me worry about the future. I know my kids love me and they know (as I tell them 10 times a day) that I love them but I worry about the little things. Usually I don't-- just upon criticism I tend to reflect a bit. Maybe it is good to reflect on these things but I tend to reflect and then nit pick and then criticise.

I think it is good to try to improve your parenting by way of reflection and I think I am at that place right now. I am starting to get really short with the boys and with Mia as well. She is really challenging me right now with her tantrums and just the normal 2 year old stuff, but it is really trying me. I know it is normal behavior on Mia's part and the boys are just being boys, but I have been feeling really guilty the last few weeks over my anger towards the kids. I pop off at them all the time and just feel unopen and unloving-- kind of like robotic towards them. Today I was angry at Ethan for making a mess and not cleaning it up after repeated times of asking and he yelled back at me "mom all you care about is keeping the house in order and clean." He got in trouble for yelling back at me (after I yelled at him-- great example I know) but my heart just sank. It broke my heart that he thinks that is all I care about. I know he was angry but if you analyze all the things I get angry over, picking up after themselves is really high on that list. I don't know-- I could go on but overall I am just feeling the mommy guilt's again. My kids are amazingly great kids and it is just making me realize that life is too short for me to always be mad at them. I am not always angry and I don't want anyone to think that I am raging all the time, but I do get irritated with the kids quite often and I am starting to think I need to chill on the irritance thing. Like I said, life is too short and I don't want to alienate my kids. I love them so much that I owe it to them to try to chill out a bit. Maybe the negative comments on my blog were a good thing-- getting me to look at things with a bit of perspective.

Anyway, I feel like I have done nothing but ramble in this post and sorry if I have, but I have just been thinking about this all day. Maybe some good will come from this.