1 Mother 2 Another

Today is open gym day, and we’re
about to head out there for our first gym play time in three weeks.
Both girls are screaming with excitement, not unlike that of
waiting for Christmas morning to come.


Try explaining school holidays to a toddler.


We had a wonderful two weeks hanging out with Daddy and gorging
ourselves on gifts and goodies – I’m not saying we
didn’t have a fantastic holiday. But it is a relief to be
back into our normal schedule.

While both girls adored having so much
Daddy time, and doing all the fun things we did – visiting
the Arboretum’s holiday display, going bowling, roller
skating, playing with family, it’s quite a long list –
Maddie and Cora did spend a rather large amount of time trying to
figure out why they weren’t doing their regular activities.


“Are we going to playgroup today?” “No, honey,
it’s a holiday.” “What holiday? Is it Christmas
again?” “No, honey, it’s just a holiday time,
when lots of families are out of town visiting relatives.”
“When are we going out of town?” “We’re
not, hon, we’re taking our vacation right here.”


Silence.


“Well, when is ballet class?”


I think Cora cried, “Open gym!” almost once a day, and
her grasp of time is considerably more fluid than Maddie’s,
so we had many mini-meltdowns over the “new”
information that open gym was STILL closed. We drove past the gym a
few times, and each time Cora would scream frantically, “Hi
gym! Hi! Open gym soon! Open gym! Hi Cora’s gym!” I
felt helpless, and stuck in a time warp.


And it’s not as if we threw all our daily routines out the
window: we still did the same early morning routine, napped at the
same time each day, did chores and so forth. But instead of
“boring” mornings with play dates or doing errands with
Mommy, we did fun, vacation-type stuff around our city, even
fudging naps a couple of times and letting them sleep in the car.
So the girls quickly got used to a steady diet of going fun places
and doing fun things, and I think they’re a bit OD’d on
a little too much of the activity equivalent of junk food, if you
know what I mean. There’s only so much Chuck E. Cheese one
family can take, you know.


So while I’m sad that the holiday is finished (and I’ve
lost my childcare partner – boy was it nice having Brian
around the girls so much), I can sense we’re all happy to be
back in our normal groove. We had playgroup Monday, ballet on
Tuesday - and let me tell you, both girls were scratching at the
back door with ballet slippers in hand when it was time, so eager
were they – and now we’re off to open gym. And as
Maddie discussed happily at dinner last night, “Then
there’s my closed gymnastics class, then library time –
Mama, there’s so much to DO!”


Routine never felt so good.