A Day with My Lady

I skipped out on work today to stay home and hang with Celia, who had a daycare holiday. "Stay home" is a relative term, though--we were out and about most of the day, forced out of our place by waves of photographers, realtors, surveyors, and cleaners who are prepping our home for its grand re-entry to the market on Sunday. Yup, we're back on the market, wiser but probably poorer for our experiences last year.

It's only now (9:45 pm) that I am enjoying the creature comforts of home, two kids snug in their beds after a looong day. And it's going to be a looong weekend too. Natalia is on a train to NJ for her sister's bachelorette party, so I am fully in charge for the next few days as we negotiate birthday parties and swimming and an open house (with the occasional tantrums and frequent whining thrown in). Monday (Patriot's Day here, but a work day for me nonetheless) will feel like vacation.

Today was fantastic. Exhausting, too.

"Fantastic" means something different than it used to. For example: I would call most weekends my senior year of Haverford fantastic, as I was out playing ultimate at various tournaments along the East coast, surrounded by friends and having a blast. Unconcerned with anything beyond the final score, it was easy to dive headlong into these weekends and just be consumed by them. They were fantastic in a very ego-centric sense.

Today was fantastic in a different sense. Far less exciting than a weekend of ultimate, but the same feeling of joy. I love spending time with Celia. She is often overshadowed by her older brother (this can't really be helped) and sometimes I see her only as an extension of Andres--his little sister, the co-antagonist, Thing 2. But obviously she is her own person, and moments that I can spend one-on-one with her are so special because they are so rare.

Given a blank slate of a day and basically only one requirement--don't be home--I decided to take her to the Discovery Museum, where she had been a long time ago (when I could still carry her in her Bjorn). I even managed to score some half-price passes from the Waltham Library despite planning this trip at about 11:55 last night.

Celia enjoyed most of the rooms. She lingered longest in the rainbow room, first taking down all the pieces from a giant wall puzzle (but deciding not to put them up again), then spending a lot of time sorting beanbags into pouches of different colors. She was hard at work here--there was clearly a method to what she was doing, and she didn't need me to provide any structure at all. In fact, she preferred that I stay out of her way (she made this clear a couple times).



Again, the Celia I most often see at home is sibling Celia, the one who competes with her brother over everything, the one who is either tugging or being tugged by him about something. So it was illuminating to see her work (and think) in this environment, unpestered by him, able to focus on one thing for an extended period. It turns out she has a good attention span.

We managed to stay for 2 hours. In the restaurant area, a random toddler decided to join us for a pretend breakfast, so Celia made a temporary new friend. She also reimagined the captain's deck in the attic as a disco, showing off her dance moves.



I also learned the following: she gets scared by plush lions and alligators, and the ridable brontosaurus outside was too much for her to take. She humored me by allowing me to carry her close to it, but I noticed that as I was carrying her away, she had covered her eyes and had a discernible frown on her face.

We left at noon, hungry for goldfish (her) and coffee (me). Luckily we found a place in Acton that could accomodate both of our preferences, and we enjoyed a leisurely lunch before heading back to Waltham.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how every so often I get nostalgic for the old days (however temporary) of being a stay-at-home dad. This was another one of those days. As I watched Celia explore ramps and play with other kids on this day, I thought about how little time I really spend just being with her. Weekday mornings are always a rush; so are weekday evenings. I miss out on the core hours of her day. Weekends are better, but they have their own hectic pace too, and she usually falls into the shadow of her brother.

She's a fun kid: serious when trying to figure something out, but also silly most of the time. For one fantastic morning, at least, it was nice to reacquaint myself with her.