Vacation Day

Today I learned the greatest part of Joel and I both working in schools: we have the same holidays! An extra day of family time is really nice and having both of us home makes it even better. We started the long weekend off last night with dinner with some fellow New Leader residents at Lang Van. Of course as soon as we walked in Quin was the king of the restaurant. The owner snatched him right up and took him to see the cooks in the kitchen. Normally a mom might be freaked out having a stranger take her baby upon entering a restaurant, but the folks at Lang Van are hardly strangers. In fact, most of the staff knows exactly what I order (#72) before I have a chance to look at the menu! Quin had a great time and was a perfectly pleasant dinner guest. He ate a ton of chicken, rice and veggies straight from chopsticks.

I had dreams of sleeping in this morning, but I've come to realize that my dreams of sleeping past 7 are a fantasy at this point. I know I could have put my child on the 9pm-9am schedule, but I really like the 7pm-7am schedule on weekdays. It gives us a few minutes to be together in the mornings before I leave for work, plenty of play time when Joel and I get home, but most importantly time for Joel and I to spend together before we both pass out from exhaustion.

Anyway, after waking up at our normal time this morning we all got ready for the day, packed a bag for Quin and headed to Discovery Place just before they opened at 9am. I have been looking forward to seeing the Mummies exhibit and Joel has been eager to take Quin to Kid's Science. We spent about 2 hours at the museum. The Mummies exhibit was really neat, although a little creepy (especially the young children and babies). The best part of our time though was watching Quin play in Kid's Science. He crawled all around, rode on a little car toy and played in the water table. He had tons of fun exploring and watching other kids. He doesn't have a lot of interactions with other children since most days he's alone with the nanny (unless they go out for swimming lessons or story time). I think he's ready to start adventuring out into the world and seeing more babies and toddlers.

Speaking of getting out, I signed us up for Music Together. We are going to do the holiday session on Saturday mornings. It begins after Thanksgiving and runs up until Christmas. I'm looking forward to having this time to spend together. It isn't common for me to find these kinds of experiences on weekends. I appreciate that they consider the desire of working parents to participate in this experience with their children. It certainly doesn't help the working mom guilt much when you find a really cool activity you'd love to participate in with your child, but find that they only have weekday times (like swimming lessons!). However, we are very fortunate to be able to have someone that can take Quin to activities during the day even though we aren't home.

I'm looking forward to what the rest of the weekend has to offer - a baby shower this evening, Panther's game on Sunday, and lots of relaxation!