Mommy Time...

So it's been a while since I've been here, and for that I apologize.  We've had a lot going on in the past couple of weeks:

• We traveled to Buffalo to spend Ellie's first Thanksgiving with my family.
• I spent the last couple of days of November writing furiously to complete NaNoWriMo.  I wrote a new novel, Otherwise Engaged, which I also blogged about on another Blogger page.
• Ellie is making it harder and harder for me to even touch a keyboard...

As for that last bullet point, that's what this post is about.  Ellie's recent phase: Mommy Separation Anxiety.  Yes, it's official.  My daughter can't stand to be parted from me, even for a brief enough space of time for me to pour coffee into a mug.  She screams if I sit her on the floor and don't immediately sit next to her, or if I strap her into the high chair and go to the cabinet for her food.  Our apartment is tiny, you can see almost everywhere wherever you're sitting.  It's not like I'm disappearing from sight... I'm just walking elsewhere.

She also can't go to bed unless I put her down for the night.  She either screams in Mike's face for nearly an hour or she wakes up every 30-60 minutes until after midnight.  On Sunday, she did this until 3 AM and even though I was the one rocking her back to sleep, she'd still wake up half an hour later.

It's hard on Mike because he wants to help me and he wants to spend time with her after a whole day apart.  It's hard on me because I have a writing job I'm supposed to be doing at night and I can't get any work done if she's either A) awake and screaming because I'm not sitting with her or B) screaming in the other room because she doesn't want Daddy to put her to bed.  And it's obviously hard on her because it's like a complete breakdown occurs, like she's overrun with anxiety about me being away. 

Meanwhile, she's started hitting and scratching and biting (all unintentional, I think) which means I get the crap beaten out of me all day long.  All. Day. Long. I have the marks to prove it, too!

Well, whatever this is, I hope it's just a phase. I trust it's just a phase, otherwise I'd probably go nuts.  This will pass eventually... but it sure would be nice if we could all just take a day off.  It'd be nice not to be so needed for even an hour.

Ugh.