City living

An unexpected day off today (my sitter was sick) ended up being a (mostly) lovely day. We're having sunny beautiful weather here in the middle; if you['re going to have an unplanned day off, might as well be able to get out.

Someone didn't want a morning nap, so we headed out to the library story hour, which is followed by open play. It's geared towards babies up to 15 months, so it's a nice time, and there were clearly a lot of moms who knew each other. There were a few I recognized, too, which made me feel good.

(One is a woman I go to church with; her girls were baptized the same day as Elle. She never seems to recognize me, though we've met more than twice, and doesn't make eye contact. Since she seemed not to make eye contact with anyone there, I'll say it's because she's shy, not because she hates me. But she probably hates me. Heh.)

Finally got Elle settled in for an afternoon nap, and was able to sit in on a conference call for work. As the call was winding down, about an hour later, I started hearing noise out behind my place. Sawing, of some kind. A quick glance at the video monitor told me that Elle wasn't moving; thank goodness. She needed that nap. She's a good solid sleeper; some sawing isn't going to bug her.

Within a few minutes, any hope of the nap going longer than an hour was gone. Because they started using jackhammers. Literally right under Elle's window.

She woke up crying and disoriented, and I gave up hope on both the nap and on getting any more work done and got us the hell out of there. The noise was so loud that there just wasn't anywhere to go in my house to get away from it, so we escaped entirely.

Again, thank goodness for the beautiful day-- long walk, a bit of window shopping, playing in the park (oh, we love the swings, yes we do). Really lovely end-of-summer day, and Elle was remarkably sunny all the way to bedtime, given her sleep deficit. She was out within about two minutes of hitting her crib. My poor girl.

She'll probably sleep most of the day at her sitter's tomorrow!

This is such a great age for her. I want to freeze her here, but I don't. I just have to enjoy every minute as much as I can. One of the hardest things about parenting is being truly present when you're worried about other things (bills, taxes, what's for dinner).

That stuff doesn't matter, really. What matters is your little girl holding a book up to you with an expectant look on her face, and dropping whatever you're doing to read it to her. That's what's important.