Major career opportunity vs parental responsibilities

We spent Saturday watching bits and pieces of the Live Earth concert. Two of Baby’s friends came over around 11h00. The mother is going to the US for a month on a work exchange programme, so I was supposed to distract the kids while she did final packing and preparations. She leaves tomorrow.

It's a great opportunity for her to travel and gain some international experience with a global PR agency. It will improve her career prospects, but it's hard to have to leave your kid for so long to realize the opportunity.

“If you had a chance to travel overseas with your job, would you take it?” Baby asked me.

I told her it depended on the timing. If the trip was scheduled for April or August, I’d take it without blinking. That’s her end-of-term holidays and she usually visits her mother and my mother those two months.

There was no need to mention that my colleagues (at my day job) travel extensively, and I already made the decision not to travel too much. I find it very stressful leaving Baby with my helper for days on end. So I prefer to do short trips if I’ve been dying to see the place/attend the event.

I don’t feel like I’m missing too much. I traveled extensively when I worked for the Non Profit Partnership and Charities Aid Foundation SA, and I’ll travel more when Baby is older/ when I can afford to take her along on some of the trips.

Fun, fun, fun!

We had lunch at McDonald’s. I hadn’t really looked at the décor properly, and found the pictures on the walls encouraging people to eat fresh vegetables very interesting. I guess McDonald is trying to shed the image they sell “junk food.”

They are also doing a strong Shrek promo, so staff was dressed in Shrek T-shirts, food boxes had images of the movie characters. The girls got him as a toy for the day, which pleased them no end.

They spent the rest of the afternoon playing netball and sliding on the grass slopes on the playfield across the street from my house. They got dirty and sweaty, but had a lot of fun and there was little mention of the mother’s imminent departure.