Responsibility has landed.

My posts are getting fewer and farther between, but I am not defeated yet. Lots of stuff going on at this end.

The main reason I have not posted for a while is that, like my title says, responsibility has landed, in the shape of my husband's nine-year-old daughter, who is here for the summer.

For those of you that don't know (and most of you do), I have not spent a huge amount of time around kids, and my general feeling has always been that they are VERY cute, provided you can give them back to their owners when they start to get annoying. So I always knew this was going to be a challenge.

The good news is, it has been just over a week, and so far I have managed to:

• not kill her
• not maim her
• say no (several times: it turns out that kids actually want all of that tourist tat they sell in the theme parks; fortunately, being in guest services, I say no on a daily basis to people a lot scarier than the mini-Jason)
• bust out the 'parent voice' ("for the last time, NO RUNNING BY THE POOL!!!")
• field the continuous barrage of questions and talking without losing my temper

So far, so good, right? I think so. But, I guess, I was kind of expecting some kind of internal switch to flick and I'd suddenly have all of these maternal feelings and it would turn out I'm a natural born mother. Not so - not yet, anyway. I appear to be able to cope, but I also appear to have precious little patience, which is fairly crucial when your small charge's favourite word after 'want' is 'why?'. So I haven't really had the epiphany I was hoping for.

The other big news is that we are finally moving out!!! I've been itching to move out for months, but the issue was kind of forced, and we were lucky enough to find a lovely little one-bedroom apartment in Kirkman South. There are two key things to realise about this:

1. My commute will be reduced from 45 minutes to 5. Oh the glory (and the money saved on petrol!)

2. It is walking distance from a supermarket and a bar. My cup overfloweth. (Being walking distance from anything in Orlando is nothing short of a miracle)

Our application was approved 2 days ago, and we move in on August 12th. The time cannot go fast enough. I have become addicted to surfing the Ikea and Pier One Imports websites and have started dreaming about paint colours (one big perk I have found about renting in the US over the UK: most of the time, you can paint, so long as you go back to white before you move out). Our married life has been on hold waiting for this moment, and for the last three months that life has been extremely difficult. Hopefully this will be the break we have been waiting for.

And the first thing I am going to do on our first day in our new pad: kick back on the sofa with an enormous beer. And a pizza. Don't underestimate what an important moment that will be.

(And I pledge to start writing more frequently...)