It's hard to know where to begin or if there was something I could have done differently.  I keep going back over the last few months, the last year, the last two years really and beyond that and wonder if there was something I did that brought us to where we are today. We knew this summer that things were different with The Fifth Element.  We chalked it up to the "terrible twos", the new summer schedule, all sorts of things until somewhere in the middle I began to think it was something else.  The tantrums, the hesitancy to play with kids she saw daily, the whispering of "no, no, no" until it became screams and frantic pleas to be held so close it felt like she wanted to meld into me completely. The sheer anxiety and desire to be held almost always was more than I could bear.  I … [Read more...]