Staying away
Last week I had a couple of days out of the office and away from home on a European departmental work conference. It was meant to be 2 overnights in Barcelona but was changed to be local to our work. Given the logistical issues of sorting out childcare and nursery runs earlier in the year for 2 ½ days in London, I was quite relieved (although obviously gutted to be losing the chance to visit Barcelona again) that it was pretty much normal working hours with only one overnight.
I just had to ensure that
- I was packed including work laptop, plus virtually the whole of our medicine drawer as I’d had conjunctivitis the week before and then came down with sore throat, cough and cold and
- OH had everything set out that would be needed for 1 day at his non-nursery childcare, night time, and then 1 day at nursery.
Along with everything being set out, I also had a list of timings for everything, which nappy is for night/day, and what needed to be transferred from one day bag to the nursery bag. Yep, he’s almost 2 and I still need to leave lists for all of this stuff. It obviously works as there were no panicked phone calls or texts asking questions.
I did ring in to speak to them before dinner on the night I was away. As per usual on the phone, N was too busy playing and jabbering in the background to work out that it was me on the phone, or that he could talk down the phone to the voice of mummy coming out of it. Usually he’s quite happy to play talk on the phone, but he gets really confused when there’s actually someone on the other end.
The best bit about being away is going to pick him up from nursery after getting home and him being so excited to see me. I picked him up earlier than usual because there’d been a bit of snow and I didn’t want to leave it til it was dark. So it was a bit of surprise, plus probably got his little friends het up thinking their parents would be coming soon as many of them get picked up earlier than N usually.
Hopefully, soon I won’t need to leave a list if I’m away….probably by the time he’s 12 and can do everything by himself. I don’t think the OH would ever get used to automatically thinking and knowing what N needs for going anyway.