Sometimes you don’t realize how much you need a vacation until you finally take one. In these past two weeks, the stress has rolled off me like so much water. My neck has loosened up. That throbbing behind my right eye has gone away. I’ve stopped clenching my jaw in (usually) unexpressed frustration.

Yes, really, I was that stressed. It’s hard to be a mom to a mischievous, active, learning-by-trial-and-error two year old. It’s even harder because Cedric is overworked, and doesn’t finish until seven, and boy those last three hours of the day are long ones. And then the town we live in promotes isolation and anxiety – part-time childcare is non-existent (unless you want the meth-cooking high school dropout looking after your kid), and family activities are very, very sparse. It’s an unhealthy combination.

I dread going back to that life. I do have one small consolation; that Lou is almost preschool age, and by enrolling him in two different programs in different schools, I’ll have freed up seven whole hours a week! To add to that, we’ll probably pay a local college student to baby-sit a few hours. Because I was feeling so burnt out, we considered paying for full time daycare, and using it only part time. For so many reasons, I ultimately wasn’t comfortable with that solution.

For all these reasons, at a point when most people have at least foreseeable plans for the second baby, I have not been able to consider the possibility of adding another child to our family. Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I feel like it would be the straw that breaks the mommy camel’s back. And I don’t know if I will ever be ready, honestly, as I taste those hints of freedom and sanity that will come with the fall. But I’ve had moments here, on Belle-Ile, where it seems like a good idea. When I watch other families on the beach - siblings playing and life-long bonds being forged, and I think perhaps we’re missing something, just the three of us. But those visions are fleeting, and I can’t tell, squint as I may through the fog, where the future will take us.