My youngest daughter, who is moving 8 hours away soon, cried SO MUCH in her first 6 months. I don’t know why. I guess she wasn’t happy to come to this dimension. We loved her and held her and I breastfed her. I was with her pretty much always. She was my 3rd child, and I loved being a mom. But this baby was inconsolable.
Perhaps she was aware on some level that her father had not wanted the responsibility of a 3rd child. Of course he eventually fell in love with her. She was pure delight, a loving being, fun and funny. She actually carries his creative nature. Like him, she is also a lover of children and dogs.
I tried to return to work cleaning houses with my crew when she was a 2 or 3 months old. After 2 weeks of part time day care, my friend said to me when I came to pick my baby up up that she wasn’t going to continue caring for her. My daughter was too unhappy and needed her mother. She just cried all day long. I had never heard that this could happen, but I am grateful to this woman for telling me that she thought I should find a way to stay home with her. I did find a way to put off returning to work.
When she was 6 months old, I REALLY needed to get out and go to the YMCA for some exercise. I went for an hour – and came home to a screaming child, her father holding her.
I got exercise videos.
She also strongly preferred to be home. When we went to a friend’s house, the lake, a hike, a playground, she cried after about 30 minutes. That was enough adventure for her.
By the time she was one, we had tried daycare again and it went well.
But travel wasn’t her favorite thing. Ever. When she was 7, we took a family cross country trip for a month; she was homesick for her dog after a couple weeks. When she went on a trip to Mexico with her senior class, she spent the week sick.
She has always had a flair for the dramatic, so it’s hard to tell what’s really at play, but she missed the big hike to the butterfly migration sanctuary in Mexico.
When she went to Italy with her traveling dad, she wanted to come home.
She decided to go to NYC for her first semester of college. Hated it. She got her degree at a combination of a local college and online.
For the past couple years, she has been traveling a lot for her job – from Knoxville to Texas to LA, etc. It has grown to about 50% travel. She doesn’t love it, but has come to terms with it.
Now she is required to be at a “hub” – a city where there is a headquarters of the company she works for. She managed to put it off for a while, but she is moving in 2 weeks. I believe this limits her need to travel, which is a positive. And she will be sharing a home with her new husband, her brother, and her longtime childhood friend. She loves and trusts all of these men.
I feel a bit of trepidation on her behalf. She has talked of having some biological children. (Her 18 year old son was her first husband’s biological child who she adopted.) These 3 men she loves and will be living with enjoy boating, golfing, going out to the club. I hope it works out for her, between moving so far away and wanting to have kids.
She will miss her son, and he her. but he has a car, and an open invitation.
Oh – they also have 5 dogs between them, and she often finds herself the primary caretaker. And nobody likes cooking from what I can see. She seems to do it for the most part.
They are all devoted to her as well as she to them. They all have good hearts.
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8 hummingbird way 