Quality Time

I had Isa with me all day yesterday, we were hosting a play date and I was not in the mood of rushing to the daycare to pick her up and make sure I was back before our guests arrived. So she stayed home, which presented a couple of challenges:

Challenge 1: take a shower without the Husband home.

Challenge 2: do some grocery shopping.

Challenge 3: get some work done.

Ever since she can move on her own, I have not had to try to take a shower with just the two of us home and her awake. Usually I make sure that I am ready before my Husband leaves or I wait until she is having her nap. But yesterday we both(Isa and I) slept in and I was not going to get up to have a shower before he left. I could not wait until she took her nap at around noon because I had to get some things for the play date and we would not have enough time afterwards.

So what do I do? I did what any desperate mother does...I sat her in front of the television and popped in a DVD. At least if was Sesame Street in Spanish so she was not watching just anything.

I waited to make sure that she was entranced and ran to the bathroom to take the quickest shower ever. I came out and she was sitting on her little chair 'singing' along to one of the songs.

With the success of challenge 1, I decided that we should be able to pull off challenge 2. Since it was such a nice day, I thought of stopping at the small park close to the grocery store for her to get some outdoor play time. We had lots of time to do both and she is used to going outside at daycare, so I wanted to do the same.

Well, we get to the little park and as expected it is busy...big surprise. The funny thing is that even though Isa goes to daycare and she is used to having to share the playground with lots of little buddies, she is still weary of a different playground. She has to evaluate her surroundings, evaluate the kids and then she will proceed and play. Well for some reason, yesterday after she evaluated she decided that she would not go and play. I blame it on this little boy who was running up and down the slide, with his mom yelling 'that's a 1'or 'that's a 2'.

So instead she went hunting for her favourite thing...sticks. By then I was bored and really wanted to get to the grocery store and go home. I was able to convince her to get in her stroller by letting her keep her twigs and we headed to the grocery store.

At the store the fun continued, she needed to hold everything that I picked up. At one point she had an avocado, a lemon, a zucchini, and a block of cheese in her little hands. I had to draw the limit at holding a package of meat. Needless to say this just sent her over the edge and she let me have it.

Thankfully, the store was not busy and I was done, well I had no choice but to be done. I payed and pushed the stroller home as fast as I could.

Even though the grocery store outing ended in tears it was not that bad, by the end she was hungry and tired. We got home had some cheese and she went straight to bed. And thankfully she slept for over 2 hours. yay.

Her long sleep allowed me to take care of challenge 3, I was able to get most of my work done while she slept and some of it while she ate her lunch.

In the end it was a great day, though she was extremely clingy at the play date. She would freak out if she could not see me, so she followed me around all day. This was really weird because she is a very independent child and the people who where over are those whom she has known since she was four months old.

By the end we were both exhausted, she was in bed by 6:30 and mama on the couch with a beer soon after that.

A great day!