Abby is my daughter

One interesting thing I realized on this trip is that Abby is truly my daughter. My sister’s kids are fairly outgoing and gregarious; they’ll play with and be held by (more or less) lots of people. Abby’s not like that at all – she’s an introvert, just like me. Put her in a big group and she’ll basically not want to be held by anyone. But put her in a situation with like me, Jieun, and one other person, and she’s happy and interactive. The contrast between how she acted with lots of people around and when we retreated to our hotel room was striking.

And that’s fine with me. I hate being the center of attention, love being in the periphery, so I naturally extend that desire to her as well. Jieun, in contrast, is a ham, so maybe she’s sad about it, but what can you do. I actually apply this to conversation as well. I love her to death, and will talk about her with pleasure when asked, but I don’t like dominating conversations with other people about her. Again, this stands in contrast to Jieun, whose phone convos with certain mother friends are apparently battles where each side tries to talk about their own child(ren) more.

I also realized that she’s a giantess. You don’t realize that when you just see her by herself, and I guess there are no babies at church of comparable age, but yeah, put her next to other kids and it’s shocking.