Honestly, the prospect of leaving Mac is slightly terrifying. It’s no secret that I clearly have some attachment issues with that kid and am also a total control freak, so leaving him for 7 whole days has me spinning.

I’m trying to do everything I can do to prepare myself and prepare my family for our departure and that means compiling a lot of info for our parents in order to buy myself some peace of mind. Mac is splitting his time between The Husband’s mom and step-dad and my parents’ house. So not only will I be bombarding them with info via email, but I’ll also be making print-outs of info to stick in his suitcase.

Yes, all the stuff I’m doing is slightly overkill, especially in light of the fact that our parents aren’t exactly rookies at taking care of Mac. He’s done a countless number of overnights with both of them, so I’m probably being slightly totally overbearing, but I figure better safe than sorry.

First of all, even though everyone is familiar with how to handle a day with Mac, I feel like maintaining his routine (in order to maintain his good mood) can be a whole different ball game. So I’ll be writing out a rough schedule for everyone. What time he wakes up, eats his meals, naps, gets ready for bed, and goes to sleep. The second piece of info I’m going to include is all his emergency info — the name of his doctor, what clinic he visits, insurance info (we’re also including an insurance card but those are easy to lose), allergies, and where to find his social security info if they need it. I’ll also be including all our resort contact info as well as our flight info. Even though we’re bringing our cell phones down there, the calling is stupid expensive so we’ll be functioning exclusively off wifi and only using email and video chat to communicate.

The last thing we’re including is a sealed letter expressing our wishes for Mac should The Husband and I go down in a fiery plane crash or get swallowed whole by sharks. No, we didn’t write an actual will, but in MN all of our “assets” (hah! two crappy cars and a dog!) go to Mac anyway. As long as The Husband and I write our intentions for him in a letter, it will be admissible in court. So no, we’re not exactly dotting our ‘i’s’ and crossing our ‘t’s’, but we’re doing what we can in the short amount of time we gave ourselves. And I feel so relieved that it’s being taken care of.

As for packing for him — oy, don’t even get me started. I know that our parents would have no problem doing laundry for him, but I feel bad expecting that so I’ll be stuffing his suitcase to the brim with clothes and then packing a whole separate bag with all the sleep accoutrement. It’s going to be a headache and I’m sure I’ll get a zillion eye-rolls from everyone, but whatever. I do what I want!

So that’s how I’m prepping for abandoning Mac for 7 days. Anything I might be missing?