Homesteading

We went to the Girl Scout property known as The Homestead this weekend for our last Girl Scout event. Well, it turns out there will be another, but it was supposed to be the last. Ami just keeps dragging the whole thing out, though. As if we all liked each other and were sad for it to end or something. We'll be having a picnic at some point to get pictures from the year and such.

Anyway, back to the weekend. It was fun. I played a lot of games, helped a couple of girls make pancakes, made up a rhythm routine with basketballs which one or two girls and I did ad naseum, walked on stilts, used the big swing, did chores and actually, surprisingly, slept a fair amount.

Davan ran around screaming, mostly in joy, did crafts, made pancakes and oatmeal, learned to stilt walk, learned to play chopsticks on the piano, moaned about this being our last Girl Scout event, did chores and played, played, played.

What I realized, though, over the weekend is that all of this behavior stuff I've been seeing lately - post Max - is a regression. She was back at least a couple of years in many behaviors over the weekend and in life in general lately. She was louder and shriller, less able to recover from a slight, less likely to see a chore through till completion, more whiny, more clingy....yeah. More like the first time we went up to Homestead, in some ways. That was two years ago.

In other ways, she's still the 10 year old I lived with pre Max, but yeah. There it is. This, too, shall pass, though.

I pulled her aside to try to make her feel special over the weekend from time to time and gave her extra hugs and extra leeway when I could. I also know that these weekends, while really fun for her, can be difficult in some ways because I often spend time (lots of it!) with other girls, making her feel like I like them better sometimes. We seem to have avoided her feeling that way this weekend, but, I'm sure, only because I was pretty aware of the tenor of her thoughts these days.