My family recently took off to New Zealand. I think my husband was a bit nervous about solo parenting to two teenagery kids, while catching up with my family.
The kids themselves exhibited two very different styles while preparing.
My daughter found the perfect packing cubes. She had to explain these to me, and apparently they are essential to ensuring a tidy, organised suitcase experience (too much YouTube?!).
Two weeks to go, she had laid out the proposed items to be packed, and continued to refine them.
My son on the other hand… asked by his dad a week before about when he was going to pack might have grunted in response.
He finally got round to dumping some clothes on his floor a few days beforehand. My husband asked how I managed that and I somewhat flippantly responded I asked…
After highlighting that he was going back into winter, he’d grown a few inches in the last few months, there weren’t many usable hours left to actually check he wouldn’t be either a) embarrassing himself or b) freezing, and his dad was going to have a conniption if he didn’t get his A into G (which my mum used to say a lot and I only belatedly realised it was short for arse into gear – since the worst thing she’d said before that was golly gosh it made me look at her a bit differently…).
A cursory check of my son’s bag even made me suggest he might want to find some packing cubes….
Words I never thought I would hear coming out of my mouth!
Tough Mother 