Priorities.....

What a day. Cookeville office for consult, case planning, updates, feedback on ways to help, yadda yadda, it was great. Good planning. Good planning for work. Home in time to pump, spend a little quality time with squirt and let daddy out of the house, and then off to a meeting for a partnership with Kroger. AWESOME outcomes! Then directly to Madison Christian Counseling Center for my practicum. Great planning, sit in w/ the Doc on a marital session, good input and insight, handed off to me for continuing, and Doc gave great feedback on my skills and awarness of things.

Feeling good....7:30, heading home, unlock the door...and bam. My sweet wonderful mother was pulling out all the stops on trying to console an inconsolable Annabelle, and suddenly, nothing else matters. Stephen had to leave for work at 6, and Thursday is our overlap night for him to head off to work and my finishing up my practicum hours. So, momma helps out with little bit. Tonight though, Anabelle was a mess. I mean it was heart breaking. Poor momma. I know how much it hurt your heart. But she settled down with me after a few minutes, we gave her a bath and she was great, and she was super super tired, and is now down for the night.

Here's my issue. WHAT is going on with this!?!? With us, she is all smiles, all coos, and happiness all the time. And she is fine with others for a little bit, but often...too often...she just really really prefers to be with daddy and me. It's great because she has a strong attachment, but this is just not quite "normal." Does anyone out there have any experience with this? And NOT at the age of 7-9 months, the typical time for attachment anxiety, but 3 and 4 months? Ahhh...it just breaks my heart. I don't want her to be remembered as the fussy baby.

Is it her temperment? Is it over-involved parenting? I don't know??

I do know that priorities have to remain home. Stephen #1, Annabelle #2, and everything else comes later. I also know that I feel like I am being pulled in about 42 different directions. Selling the house is on hold. I need to finish grad school. Get her in CKC/mother's day out 2 times a week and get her used to to others more. Once that's behind us and it's just work and family, then we can look at selling.

Right now...I ask this my friends, my family. Pray. Just offer a shout out our direction for balance, for peace with where we are and the decisions we are making that may not be what we "want" but are what we NEED, and for wisdom to know what advice and wise consel to seek and accept during some of these challenging moments that parenthood brings.

I have an amazing husband who loves babies, and is a pediatric nurse for goodness sakes! He MORE than helps with raising our daughter, supports me and my career and education, challenges me to be a better person, and is the Spoon Full of Suger to the medicine that life sometimes makes you swallow. Huh...I just made that up. But it's true. I love you honey, you are my life line in this journey God has sailed us on. Friends, kiss your husbands. Find the good in everything. And remember my favorite favorite verse to live by....

James 1:2-4 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Perserverance here we come!

All my love-
jo