Our morning walk

lately i have felt like a not so great mom bc jack just seems unhappy.... and what i mean is that he is throwing tantrums a lot...which i know in my head is just probably being a 2 year old but it doesn't change the fact that i feel it is some reflection on me and my parenting. he is usually so content to "play" at whatever the chores for that day happen to be...planting, watering, shoveling, baking, mulching....to him it is a game and he finds fun in it...not so this past week. all this to say that today was a return to happiness and it filled me with such joy and a sense of accomplishment i didn't expect. i decided that before we started tending the garden, we'd go for our walk and he just bubbled with laughter throughout it...we walked past our sprouting corn into the woods where he quickly found a tent caterpillar (tom just asked me what these turn in to...so i looked it up... click on link to see the moth)...and bc he wore his boots, we slid down a ravine and walked through the boggy water, it was such fun...even though i forgot my boots so i sogged back to the house afterwards =)
i showed him what wild ginger looks like and we dug up some roots and munched a bit...i was impressed that he actually liked it...a sharp taste.
i realized today how much i inwardly view mothering as my "job" and how easy it is to feel "good at" or easier still "not good at" my "job"... i think there is probably a healthy mental removal that parents do...to not be swayed by the emotions of a 2 year old =) i am just not all there yet.

http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef423.asp