Postcards from a traveling Mom.

I have just returned from a 7 day work trip. This time not far,  just to another city in our country, but when you are away from home, the distance does not really matter, except that you can get home faster in an emergency, if you are closer.

As you would have realized, if you have read my husbands posts before, I have the most wonderful and supportive husband who looks after our one year old on a full-time basis,  while I work full-time. Every now and then I am reminded of  how lucky I am to have him around.

This week I had a conversation with a colleague, who as a single parent who also travels for work and have to rely on a live in nanny to look after her toddler. She told me that she is about to fire the nanny as she came home every day the last week to a toddler with soaked clothes. Her daughter has regressed a little with her potty training  and she asked the nanny to just take her to the loo every hour and a half so that she does not have these accidents. My colleague told me how upset she was to find the child every night with every layer of clothing soaked through. I wanted to cry on her behalf. It must be heartbreaking to have to leave your child with someone, just to find out that this heartless individual does not give a hoot. So, although my husband and I some times have to deal with insensitive comments of people who does not understand our situation, we are very lucky that at least one of us can be the primary caregiver.

It is not easy to leave my family to travel for work, but it is what it is and for me to change jobs to find one does not require traveling, I would have to uproot my family and move to a big city, as there is not enough jobs around here for me, that would allow me to support my family. In a big city my son would not have the same quality environment to grow up in. I choose at this stage not to do so.

When I returned to work after my maternity leave and had to start traveling again, I thought that I would feel guilty all the time while being away, but this did not happen. Do not get me wrong, it is hard to say goodbye. Most of the time that I walk from the security check to the boarding gate, I struggle to hold the tears back, but when I board that plane, I remind myself that my job is to ensure that my beautiful son has food to feed him in his high chair, has a roof over his head and that we can send him to school and university one day. I am so grateful that I have a job that I love and a family that loves and support me at home.

Time to go and do some laundry so that I can pack my suitcase tonight. Off again tomorrow on the 6am flight. Until another time...

Creating space for a growing boy.

We started the week (Saturday) with frustration and tiredness. This started to reduce by Monday and on Tuesday, things picked up again and we looked forward to Friday, when mom comes home. The week has been the opposite to the weather, sunny and warm from Saturday to Wednesday, cloudy, raining and winter cold again to Friday, a week of lost and found, losing bottles, finding them, losing my mind and finding it again. It has also been a week of creating space for my growing son.

I used our nanny panels to block off some areas, but his play space doubled. It means we do not have enough blocks and some tile space is now open, but it must happen at some stage and after a month of walking, he seems to protect himself better, still a keen eye will be necessary.

The blue bin is used to add and remove toys for the day, also to teach him to put them away. He also loves playing with the earth ball. It is used to kick (dribble), throw and I try to show where mom is, when she is away.

Then the 80 + year chair gets to be pushed around again by another baby. He loves this, squeaking, as the old chair works its magic again.

Above, his favorite bottle, loaded with milk and tea, usually! So glad we did not lose it. He also loves sitting on his haunches, while inspecting and doing things.

What a week we had, we got new space to play in, learned all kinds of new lessons. For now, we are focused on MOM, she is coming home tonight. A mother's touch is definitely needed now and then, even for an active little boy and his dad.

Kalahari

We love traveling to various spots in South Africa and one of these trips ended in Red Sands Country Lodge, about 15 km outside the Northern Cape town of Kuruman. The town is in the green Kalahari.

We love the drier regions of South Africa (Karoo, Little Karoo, Namaqualand and Kalahari), because these areas are sparsely humanized and it is a real recharge for the soul.

[caption id="attachment_333" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Red Sands Country Lodge[/caption]

Although we usually barbecue ourselves, we also had a big T-Bone at the restaurant, and in all cases the food seemed just to taste a little better, maybe because we were relaxed and peaceful, I do not know, but it just tasted better. Maybe we were just hungry!

[caption id="attachment_334" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Kalahari[/caption]

Our mission is to do birding, look for animals and just be. We tend to drive with my 99 suzi (Isuzu), to get where we want and then find a spot, drop the back and sit there.

[caption id="attachment_337" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Taking in the scenery and being.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_335" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Another stopping point.[/caption]

The idea for this post is to introduce this Kalahari stop. I will add a link to a page and as time goes by add pictures of birds and animals in the old fashion of our previous posts.

[caption id="attachment_336" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Impalas[/caption]

Here are some more shots of this stop and I hope with them you can get a feeling of "tranquility and peace", as we enjoyed on this trip.

[caption id="attachment_341" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Red Sands - Kalahari[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_340" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Red Sands - Kalahari[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_339" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Red Sands - Kalahari - Sundown[/caption]