These Days are Just Packed

This Calvin and Hobbes book pretty much sums up my weekends in a nutshell. I use to think this was such a childlike conceit, the idea of doing so much while doing nothing much really. I just didn't think this was something you could embody as an adult. But now that we have the little munchkin, my stance on this thought has done a 180.

The days, they are REALLY packed. To the gills even. Our days may be an 18 piece matching Louis Vitton set is how stuffed they really are. There's breakfast to fix for the little one and laundry to sort and the munchkin to wrangle and breakfast to grab for the bigger ones and an outing to plan and a diaper bag to pack/check and a munchkin to continue to wrangle and a stroller to wrangle into the car and that zoo is not going to walk itself and and a bottle to mix and elephants to see and otters OMG Otters and then there's a rice and beans to feed the baby and a burrito for my mouth and other errands and strolling and walking and driving and home and laundry and 'Hey, why don't pop over to the pool with the baby?' and splashing and swimming and dinner and bottle and bed and then TV for us. And that was just Saturday.

There are moments of utter and pure bliss in the busy that make the busy worth it. Take the zoo. The Oakland Zoo, bless it, can be a bit of a slog at times. It's built on a hill, with a lot of slopes. If you park your car at the top of the hill, that means, you'll walk down through the zoo but it also means you have to walk up that slope to get back to your car. Thank goodness we finally learned something this trip and parked on the lower level, which means the slog back to the car is downhill.  But my point is there's a lot of walking, which means, the munchkin whose chilling in the stroller entertains herself with an endless string of consonant and vowel sounds with an occasional mouth fart (ppppphhhffffttttthhh) added in for good effect and a couple of well timed EEEEEEEEs just to break up the monotony. But then we'll get to an animal exhibit, and if she can actually see them, it's incredible. She's a fury of sounds one second and then she gets really quiet and watchful. She particularly loved the bears and the giraffes. The camels also seemed to have her rapt attention. I just love to watch her in these moments. She's so studious and serious and then the next second, she's all bubbly smiles. It is pure glee and it's what I live for, maybe even vicariously a little bit. To peek inside those moments of joy from her perspective is a thing of beauty.

Going to the pool is the same way. You get her close to the water and she lights up like a Christmas tree. She splashes and giggles and plays and splashes and kicks and attempts to swim as we walk her up and down the pool. She's the life of that pool when she's there. There's a neighbor kid who loves to play with her and splashes her hands and she splashes back and they both laugh and giggle and it is pure mirth. No matter how tiring the build up is, those moments are what make it, all of it, totally worth it. 

My days are just packed. And I wouldn't have it any other way.