The Cling

Calling Bernadette "clingy" would be the understatement of 2012.
I have no idea what is going to happen when we introduce this new, more legitimately needy child to her and let her know that she will no longer the only one on my hip. It scares me.

see how scared I am?

I know it will be fine, I hope so. Ok I feel no confidence at all in how it will go. I can only hope that in the next 2 1/2 months she will find some pet outside that we can domesticate for her to attach herself to, or a 5th "beeka" (pink silk/plush blanket), which will top all the rest and be her new stand in mother.

notice my nervous smile?

The thing is that I have no interest in detaching her prematurely since I am super sentimental and sad about the fact that very soon she will no longer be "the baby" and that these are my last weeks of being able to give her the sort of only partially-divided attention that so longs for. (Yes the attention is divided but she seriously lucked out that she has a very non-clingy/independent older sister.)
So...  I pick her up when she asks me to, I snuggle with her as long as she wants me to, I give in almost every time she is expressing preference for me over Mike or another person, I am definitely enabling the clingy-ness.

Am I being selfish? Probably. Is this a disservice to her? I don't know, probably in some way someone could make the case that it is. But I will never have these exact moments with her again when there was no sibling younger than her outside the womb and I want to soak them up a like the little sappy sponge that I am. 

And so I say, cling on, oh clingy one, you have about 100 days of this paradise left...