Where's the love?

let's face it. kids can be frustrating. some days, you truly want to rip your hair out, throw in the towel, and give up. the past 2 days have been like that for me. for some reason, aria adamantly refused to go down for naps. for 2 days straight. she wasn't sleeping well at nights (translation: josh and i weren't sleeping well at night either) and then wouldn't take naps. after 6 hours of her exhausted crying yesterday, i thought i was going to lose it. you can't discipline a 7 month old - they have no idea what's going on; she laughs if we try to say "aria!" in a stern voice - she just doesn't get it yet, and that's ok because she's only 7 months. but how do you cope with a child who refuses to cooperate. it's so easy to get frustrated and, eventually, angry - you're exhausted, emotionally drained and just want it to stop. how do you react? do you react in love even when you don't understand?

I know this is something I really have to work on. for me, a lot of the frustration doesn't necessarily come from aria (although after a few hours of screaming, it comes close) but more from the fact that I don't know what wrong, or how to fix it. i'm a typical mom - i hate when something's wrong and and i desperately want to make it better. what mom doesn't? but sometimes when we can't make it better, our frustration with the situation gets taken out on our kids. we need to always react in love, but do we? like i said, this is a huge thing for me to work on, since my daughter's attempt at communication is currently not in my native language. i want her to know, that no matter what happens, what she does, i will always love her. i guess babies can have bad days too :)

PS - as soon as Josh got home last night, aria was happy as a lark. (i'm assuming since i've heard this saying my entire life that larks are happy birds, although i have yet to personally confirm this) she's such a daddy's girl .