In praise of praise

Something lovely happened to me yesterday.
But typically, I couldn't fully appreciate it.
Tash and I were out with the dogs when a woman who lives along our regular route and has followed our progress with reformed devil dog Mully was on her way out.
I already know her to be a lovely, kind person because she has previously taken the time to come out of her house to say how well she thinks we have done with the aforementioned devil dog - clearly she watched our early dog-owning days which mostly involved running after him as he sped off after a dog/bike/skateboard or anything that moved and ignored everything we said.
Anyway, yesterday she said we had done a great job with our dogs and were now doing a great job with our daughter as well. As Miss T was walking Megan beautifully at the time I did have to admit she looked very cute.
Unfortunately, a few minutes later it went a bit wrong when she stepped into the road and I had to shout at her.
And it went a bit wrong in my head as well, as I couldn't accept what she was saying.
It's so odd - if anyone says anything that could be construed as criticism I'm immediately accepting of it. But anything vaguely positive gets immediately dismissed by my internal filters. If it's from someone who knows me, I assume they are just saying it to be nice. If it's someone who doesn't, well, clearly, they don't know me and if they did they wouldn't say it.
On a more positive note, we've had a good few days with lots of fun, variously involving sand, babies, drawing and even shopping, and for once I'm not looking forward to work in the morning - I could actually imagine doing this mothering thing full time at the moment.
But Tash is asleep so that could all change as soon as she wakes!