Barnacle

Nora has been extra clingy lately. She wants Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. She wants me in the middle of the night. She doesn't want me to leave the room. She doesn't like it when Milo gets up, because then my attention is diverted from her. She wants me to hold her all the time. Yesterday after Jake got home I tried to do some grading before dinner and she kept trying to demand that I hold her, she wouldn't play with Jake or Milo, and she dragged a chair to the table so that she could sit next to me (and complain constantly about how I wasn't holding her).

Sometimes I worry that her clinginess is born of insecurity and if I were just a stay-at-home mom who was with her every day, all day, she'd feel much more secure. So maybe I have brought it on by working and not being with her as much as she would desire.

For a long time we would describe Nora's clinginess as a phase, but I have begun to realize that this phase has lasted pretty much her entire life. I wonder if this is not a phase, and if Nora is just going to be one of those people who is super attached to her Mommy? I have to admit this doesn't sound entirely bad. I wonder if she's going to want to go to college in her home town so that she can stay nearby? Or maybe it is a phase of early childhood, and when she's a teenager and totally shunning me I'll wistfully remember back to when she always wanted to be near me.