Absence makes the heart beat faster..

My eldest daughter is on a school trip until Friday. For weeks I have been cajoling and extolling, enthusing and exalting about it. We've had long chats about what to do if she misses us (she's got a photo), or what happens at bath time (they don't have baths), or what if she wants to go to sleep before everyone else (go to bed) or what if she doesn't like the food (eat something else).

I've spent so long prepping her I forgot to prep myself.

And now she's gone.

And I've got a bit of a dull ache in the left hand side of my chest, especially when I just went into her room to put away some laundry. Her bed is perfectly made, her book by her bed where she left it last night. Her unfinished drawing on her desk. Her little bottles lined up neatly on her chest.

But the room is empty and cold and odd.

The whole house feels odd. It's weird only having two children. It's ridiculous but I miss her constant chatter, her happy whistling, her constant pleas to go on the computer, her tinkling away on the piano. In the evenings now she stays up when her sisters have gone to bed and we have grown up mummy/daughter time while I get supper ready. It is her special time with me and we have the best talks ever.

I miss her beyond belief. It is mildly ridiculous of me. After all she has slept away from home before. But never for this long, and never this far away. And she is my first born. My eldest. My precious little thing of whom I am deeply protective in a way that I perhaps am not of the other two. They've always had each other and have a much better coping strategy than she does.

How silly am I?