Quiet Days

Lately, our schedules have been much too overbooked. Swimming and gymnastics classes, Erin's baby gym class at the Y, storytime at the library, weekly playgroup and Beth's preschool two mornings a week have kept us constantly moving to the tick of a clock. The girls ask me each morning, "What's going on today?", and I inform them of the plan of attack for that particular day. They enjoy the activities, but the last few months have been so busy that we did cut out a few classes for this new session at the Y. Even so, we still spend a lot of time running from activity to activity.

The last couple of days have been very different. Beth is doing much better, but she doesn't feel 100 percent. She's still catching up on sleep from her night in the ER, her chin is sore, and she's just plain afraid of moving too fast and bumping her face again. So we've been taking it easy. We skipped all the classes and activities except for playgroup, and just spent time together. We went to the library this morning and had a great time chosing some new books and a couple of movies. When we got home, Erin went down for a nap while Beth and Amy cuddled up on my lap to read the new books. It's getting quite chilly outside now, so it feels safe and cozy, sitting together in the living room and sharing stories. We baked some bread. We watched a movie together. It was a nice, quiet day.

Of course I would never have wished for Beth's accident to happen, but sometimes it takes events like this to force us to slow down and just enjoy being together. By tomorrow they will be starting to go stir-crazy, but for a couple of days it was nice to not hear that clock ticking in the background. It was nice to slow down and enjoy the girls. By this evening, Beth was starting to climb the couch, stand on chairs, and jump off her bed. She's wondering when she can go back to gymnastics class. She's trying to turn cartwheels in her room. The stitches come out on Monday, and then she'll be back to her routine. I hope that I can manage to instill a little of this quiet calm into our days even after the busy times return. I think it's pretty important...for all of us.