Born to be loved

 3rd child LL is around 8-month corner. She sits by herself, almost crawls, grabs REALLY well with a good pinch (ouch for long hair). We've been careful not to leave any small items accessible for her, which is hard especially with 2 lil boys. For the past few weeks, maybe around the time we've traveled to California , she's been getting to fuss a lot, day and night. During daytime she cannot be left by herself for more than, say, 10 minutes as she starts crying, often hysterically. At night, worse. She wakes up MANY times, no matter whether she just starts the night time sleep, or past midnight sleep. Sometimes she falls back to asleep easily, sometimes just by herself, but almost every night there's one episode where she gets wide awake, stays up for an hour or even longer in the worst cases. We suspect she's in separation anxiety period ( Ref. babycenter.com ), but also wonder if the environmental change over the inter-state trip and multi-family get-together may

 Entire family got infected for the 1st time...We stayed home the entire MLK longer weekend at home. Very fortunately none of us so far has suffered severe symptom. While boys are totally asymptomatic, adults are experiencing mild cold-like symptom (both are getting in stomach, which is unusual for cold or flu for us). Infant has been feverish, but even before the infection she had already been fussier than before, so hopefully she's just ok. Some neighbors offered meal so generously. We're once again reminded of the great community we moved in. 3 little kids staying home all day is of course a challenge. Although boys, 6-yr and 3-yr old, play together a lot, they bother adults A LOT. An infant is perpetually needy. All happen while adults are sick. We accepted this as a necessary time-off from the work and the mental drive for being productive (particularly my wife), trying to do things together with kids. Age dynamics with 6, 3, 0 is challenging as the gap between 6-yr and 3-

Happy 2022! Hope this year will be much brighter than ever or at least than the past 2 years.  This was the first winter break for our oldest HG at a public school, meaning it's our second time of the experience in dealing with child-stay-home-for-2-weeks while we have work (first time was when pandemic started ). Luckily, our winter break was well-planned, family get together with sister's husband's family in California, so we had a great family support.  HG (6-yr) and AK (3-yr) both did socialize, play, bother, really well I think with our mother's side of family as well as the spousal family. They hadn't seen grand mother and father for 2 years, but on the 1st day of grandma's arrival they already snuggled into her bed and read books together. Grandpa taught a number of things incl. Shogi (Japanese chess) spent a few hours each day. Also saw sisters, in-law brother who they've seen more recently. Huge addition this time was meeting in-law's brother&#