Just one more week

My reign as stay at home mom for the summer is nearing completion. There have been weeks that have flown by and there have been slow weeks. All in all, it has gone by fast. Everyone I talk to is repeating that same sentiment. Yet some days of summer have been really LONG. Yesterday was one of those days.

Riley, Mallory and I spend a lot of time together. The three of us. This week we had no specific camp or activity. I believe Mallory is showing her apprehension to starting big school by needing to know where I am EVERY moment of the day. If I move from the room that I am in, she runs screaming and crying to find me and saying, "Where are you?", "Why did you leave me?" So yesterday we were at home most of the day and if I moved from a room, I had to announce where I was going. Now more than half of the time, she doesn't listen to me because she is involved with something else. She has been attached to me in this way for a few weeks. It came to a head yesterday, when I told her I would be in the kitchen, cleaning. She went to watch a movie in another room and after a few minutes, she came back and checked on me. I had walked into the mudroom which is attached to the kitchen and she pointed to the threshold of the kitchen/mudroom. She was telling me I should have announced that I was going into the mudroom.

OH.... MY.... GOSH!! Could this BE any more annoying??? I guess I need to wear an ankle monitoring bracelet for her. Yet, I can tell how fearful she is. I can tell there is something deeper going on that she has no control over as she is just four and three quarters years old. I hold her and hug her and tell her that I'm not going to leave her. I ask, "Do I ever leave you by yourself?" etc. I try to be reassuring. This doesn't seem to squelch the behavior. I realize it is a phase. A draining phase. I lose my cool every now and then because it goes on ALL DAY LONG from 6-7am to 8pm at night. And then there is the fighting between siblings.

So around 2:30pm, we were coming to a really ugly place and the kids were bored and I was losing my mind and we called GaGa to see if we could resume our original plans of going swimming at her indoor pool. Earlier in the day, it had been black outside and rained something fierce with lightening and thunder, which contributed to Mallory's post Gustav fear of storms and THE clinginess.

Then I went further and had a brilliant idea to see if one of the kids could spend the night with her. It was Riley's turn and we had done this another week when I was at my wit's end and it was BEAUTIFUL. We went and swam, expended some energy and I left Riley. The sisters were ecstatic not to be near each other. I was ecstatic to have some seperation as well. I was getting a break. George got home at a reasonable hour! and I had some downtime. Some beautiful, wonderful, non ankle bracelet wearing time by myself. Namaste.