This weekend I flew to London to attend a conference. As one does. If one is mad.
I do not like going away because I miss the kids terribly and because I know they miss me terribly and because I have to re-allocate all my mom-shifts to friends and family. I usually spend most of my time away pining for my kids. It is a sad state of affairs, I am pathetic, I know.
This trip was easier however as I was away for only a few days. Only four days to arrange lifts etc. As I always do, I wrote up a roster. But this one was an easy one. In previous years I had at least five people on the roster, each with colour-coded shifts and responsibilities. However as the kids get older and my trips get shorter, the roster gets simpler too. Plus it helps to have a Jayde to do some of the school lifts.
I prepared as much as I could beforehand (we had practised the oral, we had flash cards, posters etc, all done).
As part of that preparation, I put money in their school bags for the cake sale on Friday. R20 each as I usually do. I also put in an extra R100 in Adam's wallet and explained to him that this was for emergencies in case he needed to pay for something while I was away. He might or might not have been playing Minecraft on his iPad while I gave him this instruction.
On Friday afternoon I get a Whatsapp from Marko:
"Just got home from work, Adam bouncing off the walls, totally hyper. He came home with buckets fulls of sweets he bought at the cake sale. He said you gave him R120 to spend at the cake sale?"
R120 at the cake sale!!! I didn't know it was possible to spend that much money at a primary school cake sale!
I can't believe he spent the entire amount at the cake sale. When questioned as to what on earth he was thinking, he said that he thought that I had put the money in his wallet for the cake sale. Yeah right. I have always given R20 for cake sale, never more. He obviously looked in his wallet and thought "I wonder why there is so much money in here....oh well, let's go shopping!!"*
(Kate spent R7 at the cake sale.)
The really great thing about going away is seeing how happy everyone is to have you back. I am not sure who was happier to see me - the kids, Rose or Marko. (I know who misses me the most, it is definitely Kate. Max has Rose and Adam has Marko, but Kate and I are tight. She is a tough cookie, but we are very close. She loves her mommy very, very much). Marko was just so relieved that he didn't have to do the morning routine. He told me it was an absolute pain to get the kids up, dressed and fed on time. They dawdle, then Kate's tummy is sore, then they moan about everything.... (Um, yeah. I know alllll about that). Kate told me that Dad was very rude and that she had hardly started eating when he said in a loud voice "RIGHT KATE, THAT IS ENOUGH, GO BRUSH YOUR TEETH AND LETS GO". She said she had only eaten like two strawberries and as a result had a sore tummy that morning. Apparently Dad is not nearly as nice as Mom.
* I wonder what the moms at the cake sale must have thought. "Look at this child, how irresponsible of his mother to give him so much money. She obviously spoils him way too much. Bad mother." THANKS A LOT ADAM!
PS Adam usually really good with money, he loves money. Which is why I usually make him in charge of finances. However he is a total sugar addict and I think his sugar craving must have made him temporarily lose his mind. I always say that if you sprinkled sugar on dog poop Adam would it eat.
![Medsitters Au pairs](<a href="http://medsitter.com/" title="Medsitters"><img src=" http://www.tertia.org/medsitter.png" /></a> ){kind=link}