Separation Anxiety

I got an e-mail today from Babycenter that caught my eye.  I subscribed to several such mailings from various sites when I was pregnant and found them to be super helpful; however, I mostly delete them these days unless the title grabs me.  I could just unsubscribe, I know, but they may come in handy next pregnancy (Note: "next pregnancy" is not any time soon!). 

Anyway, for whatever reason, today I opened the e-mail entitled "Your 12-Month-Old: Week 2" to see what they had to say.  I was glad I did, because for once, the topic applied to what's going on in our lives: separation anxiety.  I honestly have not seen Lilly demonstrate much of this until recently - really I have only noticed it in the past couple of weeks.  Basically, it's just a fancy way of saying that Lilly now cries when I leave.  

In our case, Lilly's separation anxiety is pretty inconsistent.  Some days, L is fine and could care less whether or not I'm in her general vicinity.  Today, for example, when Carney came to pick her up, she happily squealed, giggled, waved and told me "bye bye" all the way to the car...no tears at all (although I guess this is not abnormal as she's always happy to go with Carney).  I have noticed that she is especially clingy with large groups of people, though (like at her birthday party, and yesterday when I hosted a baby shower at our home).  There have also been a select few days where L doesn't like for me to leave her sight.  She'll play happily as long as she can see me, but if I walk in another room and she can't see me she fusses and comes to find me, and then she's once again happy.  Mostly these have been days when she wasn't feeling 100%.

Luckily for me, this hasn't really been bad for us yet - as I mentioned above, big groups have been the main cause of it, so far.  It's funny, because while I was hosting the baby shower yesterday, Dan and Lilly had a date day.  They went out to lunch together and ran a few errands and then went to play with our neighbor, Bo (the shower was in honor of his wife, Meagan).  Dan brought Lilly downstairs when the shower was over, but there were still a good amount of people milling around.  If anyone else tried to hold her or if I tried to put her down, she fussed, to which Bo said, "She hasn't fussed the whole day until you were here."  Hilarious.

Per Babycenter, this is a perfectly normal development and essential to Lilly (or any other toddler, for that matter - OMG I have a toddler?!?!) in becoming independent.  I hope and pray that we never get to the point where L cries when staying with someone else (Carney, a babysitter, etc. ), because I am sure it will be very hard to leave her if that should happen.  The crazy thing is that most of the time when we're out and about, L is forever waving at/talking to/squealing at any and everyone that is in her line of sight.  Other times she acts like she's shy (which she normally is far from).  Fickle girl.

Has anyone else had any experience with this?  Is there anything that I should be doing to help her overcome it?  Any tips or advice, as always, would be greatly appreciated!