The missing link

Packrat is travelling. I know many families with at least one parent that travels on a regular basis. Most children adapt to it. Because Packrat's travels for work are only about once a year, the twins are some what disturbed by it. No doubt, the both of us occasionally leave them with their grandparents and skip off for a weekend. When it is the both of us gone, they seem to know that it's a vacation and we'll be back soon and meanwhile, they get to run amok at Grandma's.

This time, there seems to be some cognitive dissonance and difficulty adjusting. I am here. Their father isn't and we're staying with the grandparents for the week. Both children show it in different ways and it is a little bit exhausting. Evan is generally happy, happy to do his thing and run around. But occasionally, he shows his true feelings.

Sending the twins to school is usually a Papa-Mommy affair. Papa makes a big deal of it, taking the route with the most humps because going over humps seems to send them into a great chuckling fit. He'll also open up the sun roof for them so that they can see out the roof. So, getting into school yesterday, Evan realised that the equation was incomplete, clung onto me and started to wail. This is usually behaviour that Jordan displays. The clingyness, the crying and the staving off anyone who tries to pry him away from me. Plaintively, he asks "Where's Papa?" so heartbroken that his father isn't in school to send him off that it breaks my heart.

Jordan, on the other hand is quite pleased that I'm around all the time. I sleep in their room and am the first thing she sees when she wakes up. The only problem with that is because she knows I am around, she wants me all the time and she wants me for everything. Bath, meals, naps. When I am in the bathroom, she will sit at the door crying till I come out. I have nicknamed her and her behaviour Koala Bear. And she knows it. She knows she's the little shu4 dai1 xiong2 (koala bear) in her book and by extension of that, I am in her own words shu4 dai1 xiong2 ma1 ma4 (koala's mommy). You got to give it to the girl, but she knows when she needs to be clingy and will let me know by switching over and calling me ma1 ma4 rather than the usual Mommy.

So, because of their combined efforts, I'm plainly exhausted. And on top of that, I miss my husband too. So, it isn't just the twins who look forward to Packrat's return.

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