At the start of each week I have a look at our calendar, laugh like a hyena, and say—out loud, to no one in particular—well, at least it’s not as busy as last week.
Only I am fooling exactly not a single person because lately it feels as though every week is busier than the last, and when I think it can’t get any busier, it does. Now, I’m not complaining, because there is so much good in my life right now, and the things that are keeping us busy are almost all exclusively good things—dance for the girls and swimming lessons and and workouts and photoshoots and family get-togethers and high-stakes games of Clue and Shabbat dinners and Josh’s baseball and fun work events and interviewingSusanLucciOMG. Of course, there are the less-than-good time-sucks and tasks, like waiting in line for far too long to get my license and health card renewed—only five days after they expired—and getting our family’s first cavity filled after 12 years of parenting. Milestone, indeed. Congrats on all the sugar, Isabella Rose.
But I just realized this one little bitty fact.
In 41 days I will be sending 2/3 of my offspring off to sleepover camp for 3.5 blissful weeks of single-child rearing.
I cannot wait.
Last year we sent one to sleepover camp. (Sleepaway camp? Overnight camp?) Now granted, she is our noisiest one—her life is lived with a play-by-play background soundtrack that she sings herself. It’s like One Tree Hill, only with more Taylor Swift. Nonstop. So, we were one man down, and it certainly changed the dynamic of our family to have just the littler duo.
But two men down?
Depeche Mode was right, yo. I am really going to enjoy the silence.
Sure, I’ll miss my young grasshoppers desperately. I will feel a little less whole, a little less ME.
I will anxiously click, click, click my way through the camp’s daily upload of is-my-child-having-fun-at-camp photos. I will wonder what the last thing they’ll think about before going to sleep is, and I will wonder what the first thing they’ll think about when they wake up is. I will run to the mailbox in the hopes that there’s something a little more, uh, handwritten than bills, flyers, and anthropologie catalogs. I will long for my Clue opponents.
I will miss them.
Of course. Obviously.
But I will be happy to have them gone.
A wee bit more.
And not just because I will only have one child using my bathroom.
And Isabella, my lovely third children, is going to love the heck out of being an only child.
She’s not even going to know what hit her.

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