Spring Break

This year was our first experience with a "Spring Break," and it just happened to coincide with a week-long work trip for my husband. Now, though I'm getting better accustomed to taking on single parenthood while daddy is gone on his trips, I could not legitimately look at a week where E would be out of school, I would be at work, and daddy would be in another part of the state, and still imagine a world where I was able to keep my sanity...so E and I made plans to head north to my parents' mountain house for the week.

I have to admit that although I was looking forward to some much-needed one-on-one time with E, I was also somewhat dreading the sun-up to sun-down responsibility of cooking, cleaning, pottying, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, pottying, cleaning....that was sure to take up most of the days ahead. However, it turns out my little girl has been doing some growing up herself over the past few months at preschool. Looking back on the week, I realized that about ninety percent of the times she called my name, she was genuinely requesting that I come engage in some kind of play with her, and only about ten percent of the time did she truly need help with daily activities.

It was a week of precious bonding between this mama and her little girl. Though I didn't get a ton of pictures, I did force myself to carry my camera with me on a few occasions, and it was of course worth it. I caught some priceless faces on camera, ones that will surely capture the memories of that week for years to come. We even got to spend a few of our days with JJ - one of my very best friends. Because E loves her almost as much as I do, we had a little turf war the first day over whose friend JJ was, as E was completely convinced JJ had come simply for her personal enjoyment. :)

With every stage of childhood so far, I keep catching myself thinking/saying, "Surely this is the best stage. There's no way it gets better than this." And even though the "3's" are peppered with attitudes, sassiness, and disrespectfulness at times, as I look at these pictures I'm still catching myself in the midst of the thought that this is most certainly the best stage so far.