The journey begins

[ClingingToHope]

Yes. They'll have to adjust. I'll do my best to keep up my end of the bargain. You see, when I grew up my mom was a stay at home mom so when school ended I was free!!!!!!!! Baseball, swimming, riding bikes. Summers were awesome.

STBXW's mom didn't work either and they spent the summer swimming at the campground.

Well, both STBXW and I have to work so I've always tried to pack in as much fun for them as possible.

That was a point of contention with STBXW. She thought a couple of summer camps, mostly daycare and weekends at the campground were enough.

She didn't even like taking weeks off in the summer.

Me. I save my vacation for the summer so the girls at least have a few weeks of freedom.

Luckily, they are old enough that they can just go out and have fun with the neighbor kids. Now that they both can swim, we'll spend more time at the public pools.

But here's the deal. It'll never be the same.

I had a very good childhood. In some ways my life improved after the D -- especially in terms of moving into a house with a pool, which kind of made me the center of attention.

Still, my sister and I agree that we had two childhoods -- one before and one after the D and there's a lot of sadness there that we both buried.