This morning was one of the tougher ones to drop off dd at camp; she was nearly inconsolable. Clearly, some of this is related to her being SO INCREDIBLY TIRED from running around all day. She’s used to the more quiet, academically-focused day care environment she spent the last five years cloistered away in. Now, she’s in a day camp that spends the majority of its time outside, playing sports or swimming. It’s not that she’s led a completely inactive or sedentary life; she had some measure of time outside playing back when she was at day care. It’s just that this is so much more concentrated active outside time, and her brother’s still at day care, so she can’t see him whenever she wants.

So, while I have yet to see her do the legendary “face plant into the dinner plate” I heard so much about, she’s coming home beyond tired, and that exhaustion breeds a massive sensitivity that seems to turn her into a great melty mess. Of course, this has then gotten her into whining extensively about how much she wants to go back to day care and how she doesn’t want to go back to camp.

I’m hoping that some of this will be fixed with some sleep, and I’m trying to see if I can work from home on Fridays during the summer so that I can let both kiddos sleep in a little and get picked up a little earlier. There are no guarantees that this will fix everything, but it may make coming into the weekend a little easier. Since it took me nearly 10 minutes to dislodge her iron grip this morning at camp drop-off, I have to figure that there’s more we can do.

We also need to find a way to get her to bed earlier. It’s tough when both parents work full-time and you’re struggling, as it is, to give the kids enough time to eat their dinner and get a bath or some play time before bed. To have to try to push bedtime up to an earlier point is difficult without sacrificing something on the other end. We haven’t yet figured out how we’ll do this, but we need to do something.

I’m open to hearing from those who’ve been through this before, the transition to camp (and kindergarten) after a long stay in day care…maybe we can pick up on something that’ll be a magic bullet to solve this problem, even if it’s only temporary.