24 Hours Alone Together

So yesterday I surprised Jason by driving the kids to my parents' (and, due to the snow situation, this took far longer than it should have) and showing up at his work Christmas lunch. We had a giant, delicious meal with his staff and then went on to enjoy a leisurely afternoon of Christmas shopping, the downtown tree lighting and the art museum, cocktails and sushi at the JW Marriott, and a late dinner in front of the fire.

The girls spent the night at my parents', so we woke up this morning to a quiet house. We made coffee, ate chocolate croissants, addressed Christmas cards, wrapped Christmas presents, watched the Food Network, and organized over a year and a half worth of photos that have been lying around sadly, just waiting to be put in albums.

If this sound magical, it was. It was leisurely, luxurious, relaxing, fun, merry, spontaneous, and festive. None of our activities were planned; we just did what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it. Not since last August have we had the house to ourselves while the girls were elsewhere, and even then, I was taking a class and Jason was working, so there were no late nights or lazy mornings. It might be the single thing I miss most about pre-children life - the ability to wake up on a Saturday morning (whenever your body wakes you up) and decide what to do with your morning. We still manage, with sitters and generous grandparents, to go out at night plenty. But mornings . . . .

Looking through all the photos as we put them in albums was like watching almost two years of our girl's childhoods fly by in a blink. Look! There's Jemma's baptism. Look! There's Annie's first dance recital. Look! There's brunch at Bay View on the fourth of July. Look! There's Jemma's first birthday. Look! Look!

I know people are always saying (and I'm always concurring) that it all goes by so fast. But for me, truly, it didn't used to. During that first winter of Jemma's life, I did not take kindly to the random strangers in the grocery store who would coo over my children (one of them a newly-sassy two-year-old, one of them a colicky, screechy, spitting-up newborn) and tell me how quickly it goes. IT WAS NOT GOING QUICKLY. And I admit that there were many, many dark days when I woke up in the morning and was filled with only dread at the thought of so many hours at home with them on so little sleep: no preschool, no gym, no dance, no playgroups, no outdoor play. It was literally freezing outside, we didn't really know our neighbors yet, and our pediatrician had scared us silly about letting Jemma be exposed to any germs for the first six weeks of her life. So it was us, inside, all the time.

But now. Now, although I have a few moments almost every day when I wish for my "old life" back - for silly reasons, mostly - those moments are outnumbered a bazillion to one by the moments when I am not only so glad to have them, but glad to be with them.

I talked to them on the phone this morning, their voices all high-pitched and elfin on the phone. In a half hour or so, my parents are going to be back with them. They'll pile in the house with all their bags of gear and clothes and snowsuits and dolls, and we'll eat dinner all together, three generations, and I won't mind the chaos a bit, no matter how magical and completely necessary the last 24 hours have been.