Millie was fever free and happy as could be when we put her to bed. Then at 1AM she crawled into our bed and was burning up. We took her temperature and it was scary high. She took some Tylenol and chugged some water and fell asleep. Then in the morning it was normal again. A medical mystery. We hemmed and hawed about sending her to camp. After she ate a good breakfast and seemed fine, we decided that she should go.

She was predictably nervous. At her normal school she is so comfortable with drop off that she usually neglects to say goodbye to us. But after almost 2 months being with us 24/7, she had some separation anxiety. We hung out at the camp for about 45 minutes with lots of tears, and then decided to rip the bandaid. This bandaid has 10 very strong fingers that we had to pry away from our clothing while she cried. Rough drop offs are always very hard on me but I reminded myself this was good for her. And us. I hope.

An hour later we got this photo of the campers, which quelled my guilt. They had a fun day doing art and exploring the city.

Nick and I walked back to our hotel. We got through a lot of boring but important tasks: organized our stuff in our tiny hotel room, made a to-do list for the week, researched and got the ball rolling on upcoming visas, got our budget spreadsheet up to date, and paid a traffic violation we got in England (whoops).

We were reminded how fast time flies when we have our heads glued to screens and no kid to care for. Before we knew it was 1PM and we were hungry. It wasn’t quite enough time to do any of the touristy things we wanted to do before pick-up, so we decided to lean into the downtime theme of the day and walk to a canal-side pub/cafe for a leisurely late lunch. It was very, very nice to just talk and be together.

Unfortunately as we were about to order food I got a WhatsApp message from the camp leader asking if we could pick up Millie early. I worried that her fever was back but she was just tired and missed us a lot. So we ate just a snack and headed to go and pick her up.

We got a celebratory stroopwaffel to reward her bravery, hoping we can speak it into existence for tomorrow’s drop off. We walked slowly to Troost Brewery and had a pretty greasy dinner. Need to have something fresher tomorrow. Then we walked back to the hotel to get Millie ready for an earlier—and hopefully more restful—night.