We have a fairly high energy toddler and a 3yo son. Our daughter is usually friendly and high-energy, but could rarely self-entertain. We've slowly gotten to a place where she will fuss or cry 80% of the time when her mother is caring for her. When others care for her, she is much calmer. However, if her mom is even present, the fussiness factor goes way up.
The lead up: For the past several months she would often fuss until one of us picked her up. My wife would cater to her more than I would. I'd say I'd carry her around for 20 minutes out of an hour and my wife would carry our daughter 40 minutes in an hour. Her fussiness slowly grew until it got to this "crisis" point over the past two weeks.
My biggest concerns: It is really starting to affect our son. Whenever my wife watches both kids, our daughter gobbles up all the attention with her fussing/crying. My wife is also extremely stressed out and calls me crying from the stress. Our son is not getting the attention he needs.
Solutions? I keep coaching my wife to try to start weaning our child from carrying and let her cry a bit. (Update: Don't do the following) I believe we just need to teach her that crying is not the way to get the attention she wants. Unfortunately, when my wife starts to try this our daughter just cries her head off and clings to our feet. I think we just need to let her cry in an isolated place, but return to keep reassuring her. Or something like that.... ???
I'm very eager for other ideas or validation that this might be a good approach.