Firsts are sometimes hard to bear

This week will be E's first entire week away from me. We've never been apart for more than 3 or 4 days at a time, and he'll be gone for 10 days total, at his biological father's.

In our state, we have carefully developed "guidelines" for what visitation is supposed to be like at every age. But unless a particular judge chooses to use those guidelines, you're screwed, and there is no real recourse. So the temporary visitation schedule allows for every other spring break to be alternated between parents. Fun for kids, right? Wouldn't it be more in the kids' best interests to have long holidays shared (or split) between parents every year? Well, it's not like that because that would be more inconvenient for the parents, I suppose. Those things were taken into consideration when developing the guidelines, but again, the use of said guidelines is subjective.

At least mine has been relatively well protected from the vagaries of the courts until now...But when he asks why he has to go, what do I tell him? I think answers like "Because your daddy loves you, so he needs to see you and spend time with you too" are already growing old. They don't really have manuals on explaining visitation to your preschooler.

So this will be a rather lonely vacation. Motherhood shouldn't have to be this painful.