My Girl

For the Girls Weekend, I actually ended up taking my little girl with  us, too.  She is 4, and although she was originally supposed to stay with a grandparent, that fell through so she came along on the trip.

I've done a lot of traveling in the two years since we moved to Arkansas.  I've spent a lot of time on the road, and it started when she was about 2.5.  I'm not someone who is usually dragged down with guilt - I don't "do" guilty very well anymore.  Somewhere in my 20s I decided to shed the ever-present guilt complex (not a good enough friend, not a good enough wife, I should be doing more housework, etc.) and I've really not looked back.  So while I do travel and I am away from my kiddos, unless I see that there are real problems with me being gone, I don't spend my time feeling guilty about leaving.

My boy, who is 5.5, has always been good about telling me when he's unhappy about my leaving, or if he's missing me, or just what he's thinking or feeling in general.  My girl, however, is much less likely to verbalize anything.  She's the one I try to spend a little more time with when I'm home, but I know our relationship is not as strong as I'd like it to be. So when the childcare plan fell through for her, I wasn't entirely disappointed.  And she was completely jazzed about getting to go on a girls' trip. 

She managed to stay awake with us the first night until nearly midnight - I'm not sure she's ever been up that late before.  She hung with us Thursday night staying up late, she was up early on Friday, and she was golden.  I couldn't have asked for better behavior from a 4 year old; actually, I wouldn't have expected it from a 5 year old.  She was simply wonderful.  We got to snuggle and spend some time together, she got lots of attention from her "aunts" and she was just amazingly well behaved.  We slept in the same room, and she woke up with the biggest smiles on her face.  She'd jump in bed and cuddle for a few minutes, but she was also ready to see what we were doing that day.  She was a little grumpy on Saturday (wellll, we might have both been grumpy), but she was still well behaved, and she held it together until last night after we got home.

Holy hell.  Last night, I'm going to bet that my neighbors thought I was killing my girl.  She had a meltdown of EPIC proportions.  I forget that 4 year olds may not meltdown very often, but they have incredible stamina and their screams can shatter glass.  Good god.  I made her get out of the shower earlier than she wanted, and she just lost it.  It wasn't the first time she'd dissolved into tears, but it was the first time that she just couldn't pull it together.  It culminated with me hauling her kicking, screaming, flailing naked ass up the stairs and into her bedroom with instructions not to come out until she had her pajamas on and had calmed down.  I'm pretty sure I heard shoes being thrown at the walls and doors, but I could be wrong.

I guess she just held it together as long as she could, and the effort meant that she had to get the stress out somehow.  But damn. I think my ears are still ringing.  Eventually she pulled it together, got her pajamas on, we read stories and she seemed much happier.  All in all it was a great weekend.  But damn did I pay the price for her good behavior.  At some point the temper tantrums stop, right???