Actual camp, actual quiet

It's a week of actual camp for both girls, and actual quiet for me. Kind of blissful, although I feel guilty to admit it. I'm getting a lot done, although, let's be fair, I could do about 3/4 of this work even when they're around, as long as my head is down and they're doing things reasonably on their own. And, I only get until 2pm, when I have to leave to pick them up.

I'm glad Ella opted to go to camp, and not just because of the time this gives me. She's been having such a hard time doing classes and things that don't involve me since January ("I have that feeling in my belly, Mom"). I had originally decided not to send her, just Madison, to this terrific nature day camp this year that they've gone to every year, but she said in June that she'd like to go. So, good. And both girls have a lot of fun. (The people who run this camp are really great, they're naturalists who promote science, not politics -- this camp has less of an environmentalist focus than Madison's engineering camp did at the beginning of the summer.)

So why does it annoy me so much that every single morning this week, Ella asks me in that whining way if she HAS to go? It shouldn't, it really shouldn't, given that this is difficult for her and I'm the Extraordinarily Understanding Mommy. I swallow my annoyance and cheerfully say, "Yep! What are you going to wear today?" while thinking to myself, "Isn't it about time that you stop whining at me, you 7-year-old, you?"

Okay, back to work.