Learning to be humble

I admitted something a little embarrassing at an Easter egg hunt last a few weeks ago. I confessed that, prior to my second child, I had, well... I thought that moms with clingy kids were doing it wrong.
There was a small part of me that felt a little smug that my daughter was perfectly fine with me leaving her for any amount of time. When I took her to MOPS and left her with the teachers, she gave kisses and went to play; that was it. There was no temper tantrum, no screaming bloody murder that she was being abandoned. I had never had a teacher retrieve me to care for her.
Enter second child.
My son has a completely different personality. So much so, that he was the one screaming bloody murder that I was abandoning him at that egg hunt when I walked as little as two yards away. I was trying to photograph the event and didn't need to be that far from him, but any distance was unacceptable to him. (Unless, of course, he was the one to walk away, but that's a different post.)
So, shame on me for believing I had some level of superior parenting skills. It was really my daughter's outgoing, fearless personality exhibiting itself as early as 3 months old.
These lessons are both easy and difficult to digest. Easy because it's just another one of the near-daily lessons I get in parenting that prior to kids, I didn't understand. Difficult because it's no fun realizing you were that mom.
I guess that's why most families have more than one child. Something—or someone—has to teach us that sometimes, it's the kid, not the parent.

This wasn't the Easter Egg hunt but a good impersonation of it.

 I love my little momma's boy. Occasionally, or in the middle of his meltdowns, it is a little hard to appreciate the differences in personality between my two kids. As in, You can still see me! Why are you so upset? Go follow your sister around! But I do appreciate the differences. It's just taken me a while to understand them.