I’m sitting in a hotel room in Durham, North Carolina trying to decide whether to finish reading another chapter or finally give in and just simply go to bed. It’s only 8:30pm. This is what it’s come to, I can barely stay awake longer than my youngest daughter’s bedtime.

Earlier tonight when I got back to the hotel after a long day of meetings, I was completely drained. I changed clothes, ordered dinner to go, and settled in to eat while watching TV. Nothing glamorous about work travel most days, but the peace and silence is a nice feature. (I still remember my first work trip after our first daughter was born, I was so sleep deprived that slept most of the trip. It was glorious.)

Then, right on cue I received the first FaceTime call of the evening from my youngest daughter, Sloane. She wanted me to approve a request to extend her tablet time and was wondering why I hadn’t responded yet. As she leaned close to the camera making her case, I noticed something.

Wait, is that a new tooth coming in?

Hmm… I guess it’s been a minute since I looked in her mouth. She sounded so cute and adorable and innocent… I didn’t want the Facetime to end.

But, end it did when her older sister Olivia chimed in. Suddenly she was Facetiming me from her own device, even though they were literally sitting right next to each other. Still, I enjoyed both conversations.

Olivia looked at me for a second and said, daddy, your eyes look even more hazel than usual. I was sitting facing the sunlight streaming in my room where I have a pretty gorgeous view of downtown. So that’s probably what contributed to my eyes literally sparkling. I know that’s not exactly what she said, but I thought it was cool that she noticed.

After speaking with the first two, I thought, who else can I get ahold of over there? Turns out there was basically a whole party going on at my house without me. It was day two of a multi-hair day process, so the lady who comes to braid the girls hair was over currently doing Riley’s hair. I knew Rile’s wouldn’t be interested in a long phone call anyway. London who gotten her hair done yesterday was at track practice, hopefully not sweating out her twists too much.

That left my wife, but she didn’t have much time to talk. She was in the middle of preparing her own hair to be done because in a few hours she’d be heading to the airport for a flight to New York. Meanwhile my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were over at the house too. I could hear them laughing in the background.

The longer I lingered, asking random questions like… have you packed yet and who all is over at the house, what are y’all doing… the more she could tell that I was homesick.

Aww, you’re having fomo missing us? My wife asked, playfully mocking me. Of course I was!

As much as I’ve gotten used to traveling over the years, it’s still the same rhythm every time. It’s hard to leave, and I can’t wait to get back home. But in between, it turns out that I do enjoy myself quite a bit. It helps that I like the people I work with and the work itself.

It also helps that in less than 24 hours, I’ll be home and at least my two youngest daughters will run to greet me at the door like I’ve been truly missed (the two teenagers are way to cool for that now).

But hey, I’ll take what I can get!

PS- I was able to stay up for one more Facetime call, and this time I got to talk to everyone (though they did have to play pass the phone).

SDW3