not bad, for a day of rest

Day 6 of 7 (everyone, including me, says, thank goodness!)

7:30-8:40am. Wake up, shower, get ready for church while Abe gets up with Genghis. We have cereal, toast, and bananas for breakfast. In a bit of a rush to move the dining along and get Genghis ready for church as well. In the past we have been helping at a congregation of all young single adults, which meets at 1pm. However, Genghis is now old enough to attend the children's nursery during the second two hours of church. They don't have a nursery at the singles congregation, so Genghis and I are starting to attend the "family" congregation. Abe will continue to help with the singles until there's a replacement for us (in our church, we have a lay clergy, so the members are given assignments to help run things, and are changed in and out of assignments every few years).

All of that is to say that we need to get ready and out the door sooner than usual for a Sunday. Surprisingly, Genghis and I make it by 8:41.

9am-1:15pm. Get to church and find an open bench to take over for the next hour and fifteen minutes for services. The first 15-20 minutes of services are considered the most sacred, when we take sacrament. My rule with Genghis is that he doesn't get snacks until after this part is over. This turns out to be more difficult to enforce in the family congregation than the singles congregation. Genghis never saw the single members chowing on handfuls of snacks during the meeting. Here, we happen to sit behind some kids who manage to devour almost an entire box of Cheerios in this first 15-minute time frame. Genghis is going bonkers at the sight. We make it about 2/3 of the way through. The decision is clear: give him his graham crackers or take him out of the meeting.

Graham crackers it is.

We'll think of this rule as a stretch goal instead.

The rest of the meeting, Genghis eats grapes, makes silly faces at me, and sorts his foam alphabet letters into the empty grape container. I get to listen to most of the messages about the importance of scripture study.

After services, I deposit Genghis into the loosely supervised nursery and enjoy attending 2 more meetings child-free. Church has never seemed so ... relaxing ... before. And I'll get a whole 3-4 weeks of this before Baby #2 comes.

I pick Genghis up at noon and we head home for lunch. He gets PB and honey, and I get leftover Indian from last night. We are both happy with the arrangement.

1:15-4:30pm. Nap time for both of us today. Not long, though, since Genghis wakes up at 2:30. I spend the next 30 minutes trying to wake up while he wanders around with toys. Naps are like a rich, chocolate dessert. They are so wonderful while you're in the middle of them, but once it's over, the effects can be hard to recover from. And when a baby wakes you up from a nap it's like dropping your half-eaten chocolate cake on a hairy carpet. You just gotta let it go, cause it's gone.

We Skype with my parents for about an hour, talking about Genghis's new words, how I'm feeling with pregnancy and logistics for visiting when the baby's born. Genghis seems a bit stir crazy by the end of the call. I open the patio door to check the weather for walking and quickly decide to do an afternoon bath instead. We've moved on to the foam bath numbers, since Genghis has mastered the letters. He listens carefully while we go through 1-8 (can't find 9) and then decides to switch to blowing bubbles while on his tummy instead.

4:30-7:30pm. After bath I mash the potatoes that have been crockpotting all afternoon with the roast. Just as I'm finishing the gravy, Abe gets home from the afternoon congregation and we are all ecstatic to see each other. You'd think we didn't spend most days apart, but somehow it's harder to be apart on a Sunday. I spend dinner telling Abe even more details about the day than are recorded here. Then we head over to a neighbor's house for a small birthday gathering for their one-year-old daughter. Genghis is so distraught about sharing the giant ball with the other kids that it gets banned from the play area (if he were older, they may have banned Genghis instead...).

We head home close to 7 and put Genghis to bed. Abe and I talk for a few minutes in the living room until I realize he has fallen asleep. So I write this post and close up looking ahead to the rest of the night. The only thing on the agenda is a church activity planning meeting at 8:30 that I need to go to. Otherwise, I plan on catching my breath for next week.