Alex is going through a clingy stage. Even when he is playing happily, he’s keeping one eye on me to make sure I’m not thinking of leaving the room. If I walk in the general direction of the stairs or the kitchen, he goes on full alert and drops everything. If I (heaven forbid) actually start to climb the stairs or go into the kitchen, the howling starts.
There’s a lot of howling going on these days.
The other thing that seems to infuriate him is naptime. He’s happy to go to sleep in the car seat while I’m driving, and he’ll sleep for thirty or forty minutes (which is a normal nap for him). But he seems to feel that the crib is for use only at night. Even if he’s yawning his head off and rubbing his eyes at 11:30 AM, a trip to the crib is cause for lusty protestation. At night, it’s a different story — we put him down and he goes to sleep. In the daytime, he will yell for as long as we leave him there (my limit is about 20 minutes).
I have to admit, listening to all this yelling makes me tired and stressed. Especially the yelling that happens just because I’m going down to the basement for five minutes to check on the laundry. But I just remind myself that I don’t understand what’s going on in Alex’s head. And that this is surely a stage that will pass.