Bonus Time

Since I’ve become a mom, I look forward to non-weekend days off from work even more. Every extra hour of daytime that I’m not working means the chance for bonus time with Lexie. It’s amazing how much a few more hours with her makes a difference to my happiness and sanity, even in the scheme of a whole week.

Today was one of those days. It’s Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year, for all the unaware goyim out there), and I took the day off to go to temple and spend time with the family. Of course, we weren’t planning to actually bring Lexie to services. Sure, some people certainly do bring young children and even babies, but a) I’m not that hard core and b) I wouldn’t punish myself, or the rest of the congregation, in that manner.

There are some one-year-olds who could sit quietly through most or at least some fraction of a two-hour temple service, but Lexie is most certainly not one of them. I’d give her three, maybe five minutes tops of sitting angelically on someone’s lap before she either crawled down to go tearing through the aisles, started loudly calling out “ball” upon spotting anything remotely resembling a circle in the near vicinity,  launched into a tantrum because she wanted to tear out the pages of the prayer book and we wouldn’t let her, and/or started hungrily chewing on a stranger’s yamulke or  the fringes of someone’s tallis.

So you can see why the plan was, instead, to have Jennifer spend the morning with all three of the girls as usual and then bring them to meet us for lunch after services. But since we didn’t need to leave for temple until 9:30, for the early part of the morning Lexie was all mine.

It was glorious.

I’d hoped she might sleep in a touch, maybe until 6:30, but she was up at 6:15 and we headed downstairs for breakfast. Afterward, we played and read books and watched through the picture window in the dining room as all the neighborhood kids walked (slowly, unenthusiastically) by on their way to school. Just as exciting for Lexie was watching the parade of moms driving their kids to school in their minivans, SUVs and those newfangled station wagons (that pretend not to be station wagons but most certainly are). She’s particularly obsessed with cars and trucks of late, though amusingly, only says the word “car” in a whisper.

Such an adorably quirky (some might say eccentric) girl.

Around 8 a.m. I loaded her into her stroller to walk down to Jewel to get milk and a few other basics (eggs, strawberries, turkey, avocado – some of her favorites). The weather was gorgeous, and Lexie was happy to sit and watch the world go by for the duration of the trip. We passed the rest of the morning until naptime to leave with more play, and then I got to see her again when we arrived at the restaurant for lunch around 1 p.m.

She looked impossibly cute as she waited with Jennifer and the girls outside, watching us approach and calling, “Mama!” Jennifer had even managed to get a tiny pink barette into her hair, matching her pink collared onesie and navy jumper. (Hilarious side note: We’d all wondered at the fact that she allowed the barette to remain in her hair – it’s just unlike her somehow. Later, Andy and I realized why – she didn’t know it was there! The second she spotted it in the mirror in front of her carseat on the way home, she tore it right out.)

She behaved beautifully at lunch, spending most of the time doing laps around the big square of long tables we had in a small private room. The only threat of a tantrum came when we wouldn’t allow her to leave the room and roam the dining room freely, stopping to stare intensely at various sets of diners as she is wont to do.

Once we were home, after her nap (an hour and a half of her lying in her crib, chatting with Ducky and occasionally fussing but not actually ever sleeping), we were back in the stroller, heading to the park. The lack of sleep didn’t hold her back from cavorting all over the slides, swings and other climbables. The best was watching her practically glow with glee as Daddy held her up higher and higher on the swing.

Now it’s a little after 8 p.m. and she’s been down for an hour. Andy and I are relaxing with our laptops and the first football game of the season. I’d meant to catch up on a little work, but then I remembered my vow to write regularly here again. Is today’s entry the most interesting story ever? Not so much. But most of all, I’m writing here for me, so I can go back and remember all the small moments that add up to this time that everyone keeps telling me goes by so, so fast.

And it’s days like this that I want to remember especially.