Leaving The Kids

Leaving kiddos for a time away is such a mixed bag, isn’t it? It is so nice to have time away from those little rascals, but leaving them is so hard! They work it too, with pouts and tears and “don’t leave, mama!” ‘s. Oh, it just breaks my heart.

To relieve the stress for me, I disperse little love notes in unexpected places. There’s nothing like construction paper and some fancy scissors to let them know you’re thinking of them. I cut up a bunch of hearts and started writing.

We have an idiosyncratic way of telling the kids all the great things about them. Years ago, it started out with the question, “Guess What?” The answer soon became obvious to them, “You love me!” This is always their first response.

Sandy and I began to expand the game. Now, we have plenty of other answers in our arsenal:

We make the kiddos guess what we have in our heads. They end up spewing out all sorts of great things about themselves in the mean time. Playing off of this, on each heart, I wrote “Guess What?” and wrote something different on the back of each one.

Then, I left them all sorts of places, in their hat drawer, on their pillows . . .

On their pants pile (ahem!! messy closets all around) . . .

With tooth brushes . . .

and in their coat pockets (they may never find these). I left one for each day that we are gone for the person staying with them to put in their lunch boxes. It made me feel better knowing that they would have little reminders that we are thinking of them. It quelled my stress just a tad, at least enough for me to walk out the door.

Boy, yesterday was crazy. I started off by dropping the kids off at ski practice, going for a run in the mountains–so beautiful and peaceful . . .

. . .and ended the night on Bourbon Street in New Orleans–what a scene!