My big, big, big girl….

Shipping my baby girl off to Hermit Island this week, up in Maine.  Not my baby baby, but my eight year old little love bug, my Miss Miz (short for Misery – Jessie was a toddler who really embraced her emotions).  I’m sending her off with my sister, who I love and trust more than anything.  And of course, my mother, my cousins, my aunts, etc… so she’ll be surrounded by family and I know she’ll be fine, but I’m still a little panic stricken at the thought of her being gone for an entire week.

But I am looking forward to being done getting ready for Hermit Island.  Jess is a girl who loves being prepared, and has a deep and personal attachment to many, many of her stuffed animals, and between packing her clothes, and repacking them after Julianna has unpacked (seriously – this kid adores throwing clothes all over the place) and figuring out which stuffed animal(s) should make the trip… it’s been a two day effort and she’s not leaving until Saturday.  I’ve now got all of her stuff in one laundry basket and am seriously considering just sending that up instead of a bunch of little bags.

House is still in shambles.  You’d think I’d either get used to it, or get a lot better at either forcing the kids to pick up or start picking up more often.  But nope, I just sort of do all three, I try to make them clean up after themselves, try to pick it all up myself at least twice a day, and mostly, I try to just resign myself to it.  Both Jess and Sam love to create these worlds with figurines, and while Jessie has mostly outgrown it, Sam is really just starting to get into it.  Sam is even willing to put up with Julianna crawling in the middle of it, mostly.  Jessie used to hate having Baby Sam in her stuff, and she’d happily set up in her room, but Sam doesn’t like playing alone in his room, so I’m constantly dealing with army men and trucks and monster figures scattered willy-nilly thru my house.

Julianna is still struggling with nighttime issues.  She’s okay once she’s down, for the most part, but getting her to sleep at night is now taking hours.  Literally.  I’m distinctly ill amused – and vetoed Marc attending a committee meeting tonight at the synagogue so he can handle her.  I need a break 🙂  Bedtime used to be his special time with Sam when Sam was about this age, so perhaps that’s just the transition that we need to make.  As it turns out, I’ve started reading Harry Potter to Sam at night before bed, so this might work out perfectly 🙂