All About Mommy

At some point, all babies go from "just SOMEbody hold me" to "hey you're not my mom!" Separation anxiety.  Sometimes even Daddy is not good enough.  I think it's between 9-13 months when they start this, and it comes and goes.  Sonya was around 1o months or so, Lana about the same.  Georgia seemed to not care who she was with, even at her first birthday.  I thought maybe she was just THAT easy.  She wasn't even going to have separation anxiety.  Just when you think you have them all figure out...

It happened almost over night.  One day she was fine with anyone holding her, the next day she was screaming if anyone even thought about picking her up.  The worst part about this isn't just that she doesn't want anyone else, but that she wants me to hold her, or be within two feet of her AT ALL TIMES!  This makes it difficult to do anything in peace.  If we're sitting in the living room watching TV, and I walk into the kitchen to start breakfast, she cries.  If I'm outside playing with them, go into the house to get some towels, she cries.  If I put her in her chair to eat and go to the refrigerator, she cries!  Yeah, it's getting old.  I do feel bad, but there's nothing I can do about it.  I can't hold her every minute she's awake.  I do have to pee sometimes.  Well, that was the problem last week.

We were all outside playing in the girls little pool, a daily occurrence lately.  I realized I needed to go in to have some private potty time.  The two older girls were fine playing without me, but I knew Georgia would get upset once she realized I wasn't next to her.  So I decided to bring her with me.  I sat her on the floor and gave her a couple books to look at, but that wasn't good enough for her.  She kept pulling herself up on my legs and trying to get my attention away from the book I was trying to read.  She whined and whimpered.  She fell and pulled herself up again.  Eventually I picked up her and her blankie, and sat her on my lap.  What else could I do?  She stuck her thumb in her mouth, completely content and I got to finish my potty time.  For those of you without kids, this probably seems strange, even a little gross and you're thinking how you'll never do this. But trust me, those out there with kids are thinking, "I've been there!"

Even though it gets a little annoying to not even be able to walk out of the room without the crying, I keep trying to remind myself that there will come a day soon when she won't even want to be seen with me driving her to school, let alone give her a good-bye kiss.  So for now she can glue herself to me when it's possible.  Even if it is when I have to poop.