Week One

Being born is no excuse to fall down on your holiday season social obligations. Alice has had a busy first week.

After leaving the hospital in a steady rain and attending the preschool Christmas play on Thursday, she stayed home Friday with Mom and Dad and prepared to greet out-of-town guest and old friend, Ashley.


Saturday she hung out with both Ashley and Mom-mom and Pop-pop, who returned to town for the weekend to help with laundry, cleaning, raking, and childcare.

Saturday evening she attended a Christmas open house at the home of church friends. The only sign that she and her parents were a bit loopy by this point was the fact that they arrived for the party at the time the invitation indicated it was ending and only discovered their mistake when Mom-mom pointed it out to them the next day.

Sunday Alice attended church for the first time, was introduced from the pulpit, and served as the prop in the children's sermon. It was the third Sunday in advent, and we lit the Joy candle. "What does joy mean?" Reverend Jana asked the children during the children's sermon. "It means a great thing has happened," answered Edith. I don't know where she came up with her answer, but it was good.

From Mom and Dad's perspective joy came that afternoon. After the wave of congratulations at church, after our standard Sunday pancake lunch at the local diner--the waitresses hugged and kissed us and exclaimed over the baby and gave Edith a big-girl present of a box of new crayons and $2--and after our visitors had gone home, Tom and I settled down on the couch to watch TV, something I rarely have the patience to do. Alice fell asleep on Tom's chest. Edith was playing in another room but soon came in and crawled into my lap. Though her abundant squirminess has made a vivid impression on me since Tuesday, now she was completely still. She didn't ask for stories or beg us to change to a kid's movie. When the show was over, she asked what it had been about. A few minutes later, I looked down and she was asleep. I can't remember the last time she fell asleep in my lap. And so we spent the rest of the afternoon resting on the couch, watching a movie together, with our girls asleep in our arms.

Then in the evening Alice had her first bath at home.


Naked Flying Superduck was the bathing assistant.


Monday Tom had to return to work and Edith had to get to school by the deadline, even though everyone's sleep was out of whack. T and E rushed frantically through the morning, poor things. Alice and I continued to snooze--and woke up at noon. Tom joined us soon thereafter for lunch and a dogwalk in the 65-degree weather (!). Alice and I enjoyed a wide-awake afternoon puttering around the house together before he returned to pick us up to get Edie from school. We'd planned on a couple of quick errands on the way home: get matching Christmas dresses for the girls at Gymboree, then pick up essential groceries at Wegman's.

Well, we get an A for managing two kids on errands with a minimum of fuss and smooth divide-and-conquer handoffs (helped enormously by Edith's being in great spirits and Alice's sleeping through the whole outing), but we get a D for time management. The outing went fine in the sense that we accomplished both missions, along with some Christmas purchases and a pre-dinner snack, and all were still on speaking terms on the way home (all of us who can speak, that is). But we didn't actually get home until a quarter to 9.

We'll rest up and try to improve our time on the next attempt. In the meantime, the joy of family time, whatever we're doing and however long it takes, is great.