Favorite Kind of Day
Last Wednesday I had a spectacular day. I’m going to try to remember what I loved about it so much. Oh! I had planned to take the morning off from work because Chiara’s preK class was going on a field trip and I had signed up to be a parent monitor. But when we arrived that morning at school, the director said he was postponing the trip because it was simply too cold. It must have been in the 20s or low 30s that day, and windy. A bitter, biting cold.
It was not good news for me, though, because I had no plans to take the morning off with nothing to do, plus I was just a mere 5 minute walk to my office, and about 20 back to my apartment. I decided to go to work and take the afternoon off instead. I switched around my afternoon appointments, too. Things were looking better now.
I worked a productive half day and headed home at around 2 pm — only half an hour longer than I planned to stay. When I got home, Ahjuma had lunch leftovers that I ate ravenously. And then we strategized the afternoon. I decided that heading to the gym — what I usually do on my half-vacation days, would not do today. I wanted to spend some time with my kids. So I took Jemma to a makeup class for Toddler Gym at the Y.
What a hoot! Jemma was so excited and played with absolutely everything. She tumbled, she scooted, she did puzzles, she ran the obstacle course, she picked up objects, she dropped objects, she bounced inside a bouncing castle. I was carefree and having fun, too, wiggling through the Thomas the Train flexible tube, running alongside the obstacle course. Then Chiara joined us after her yoga class. She said she didn’t get to have her foot massage at Karma Kids because she was wearing tights — mental note: don’t let Chiara wear tights to yoga class!
There’s a constant debate in my head: time with the kids versus time for myself. Lately I’ve been making more balanced choices. I chose to skip the gym this week and just hang out with my kids the way kids like to hang out: massive amounts of quantity time, instead of short spurts of “quality time.” We giggled, we played, we were silly and unself-conscious. It was absolutely perfect. I hope I can do it again, soon!
Jemma multitasking with big wheel bike and cones.
Chiara doing tree pose
