“Now you can chill out mom”, these are the words of my middle daughter before leaving on my business trip to Milan. And she’s right. On these kind of trips you can take it easy at times you would ordinarily be in frenzy at home.

Like taking a bath at six o’clock after spending all day in meetings and then getting ready for dinner. A moment, that if I were at home, I would spend running around with pasta in my hair with a child clinging to my leg while stuffing cucumber in two little open mouths.

The greatest part of having kids is being with them and the second greatest part is being without, if only for an hour. Last Friday I granted myself the second option. It was Good Friday, one of my girls went to school and the other two were with our nanny, Stella. I went off to a luxury spa for a few hours. No Frozen sing-alongs, “No, that’s mine!”, just me and myself. And a few friendly mellow spa visitors.

“in the background I hear a child’s voice yelling: “catch me daddy, I’m gonna jump.”

The moment I dipped my toe into the water I saw the contours of water wings and a green ball. Then somewhere in the background I hear a child’s voice yelling: “catch me daddy, I’m gonna jump.”

There are three munchkins in the pool. Three. Gone is that feeling of bliss and in comes the guilt. Off I went to Petite bateau to buy them bathing suits.

Yesterday I was sitting on the terrace at 10 Corso Como   with Liesbeth, the place only visited by fashionable people. We sat there until about eight. Then a buggy was pushed onto the patio. A ton of toys was deposited on the stylish little bistro table, hamburgers and fries were ordered, and there were cries of a high frequency that went straight into my ear.

Time to go back to the hotel for a long undisturbed night of sleep. Co-mothers know this is a luxury. Everything was fine until I woke up at 1 am, I didn’t wake up by myself. There was a baby in room 223 (I was 224) with outstanding vocal abilities and stamina.

(Sigh) I’m going to buy earplugs today and a gift for my own kids. They deserve it, they would never do something like that…..