Goodbye For Now

How can I leave this face:

or this face:

Not very easily.  That's for sure.  I am leaving for nearly two weeks tomorrow morning for a tour with a fantastic group whose website you can see here.  I am really looking forward to making great music with wonderful people, but this will be the longest I've ever been apart from either Charlie or Jason.  My heart breaks to think about how long I'll be apart from them, but unfortunately, that is often the nature of my job.  And when it comes down to it, I think it is good for Charlie to see her mom using her talents and doing what she loves! 

I am also consoled by the thought of how much time these two will get to spend together:

We are adding one extra day at daycare for Charlie next week and she'll get to spend the other two days with her Papi.  They are planning on hitting the park a lot:

And I'm sure they'll read a lot of books:

After that first week, my mom will fly in to spend a week bonding with Charlie.  The opportunity for Jason and Charlie and my mom and Charlie to spend such quality time together just wouldn't happen if I weren't going away, so I'm grateful for that.  It doesn't make it much easier to leave, but it warms my heart to think of Charlie growing closer to both of them while I'm gone.  My mom hasn't seen Charlie since she was seven weeks old, so they'll have a lot of catching up to do:

Luckily, international calling cards/plans, email and Skype make this a very small world.  We hope to skype at least once a day and will hopefully get to chat by phone a lot as well.  It won't be the same as being there, but it is so much easier to do this now with all this available technology, than it would have been even five or ten years ago! 

So, now I'm off to finish packing.  The harpsichordist, John, is staying with us tonight (he is currently studying at Cambridge) and we fly out tomorrow morning.  I already have a huge lump in my throat thinking about saying goodbye to my Charlie and my Jason, but I have no regrets about my decision to keep working.  While I'm gone, Jason and I will both be posting about what we're doing in our respective locales.  His posts will hopefully have lots of pictures of Charlie and my posts will have lots of pictures of Maine, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and lots of crazy musician types.  :) 

Now where did I leave that manual breast pump for the plane ride . . .