Tonight my wife and I came home from a full day away from home to see Audrey and Grace.
Lucy, the babysitter, had Grace in bed asleep and was reading Audrey books in her bedroom. Audrey jumped into my arms and hugged me when she saw me and then asked where Mommy was and when Mommy showed up she did the same. Audrey informed us she had had some Oreos and two juice boxes that day, as she always does when she gets treats, and we were fine with it.
Lucy and the girls had clearly had a successful day. And a one-and-only day. Because there will never be this day again. Tomorrow will be a different day with a different flavor and a different beginning, middle and end.
Audrey and I walked out to the porch to blow giant bubbles from her oversized bubble wand. I would blow the bubbles, carefully trying to make them as large as I could without blowing them up, and then send them on their way, across the air, for Audrey to chase. She would either pop them or they would hit the grass first. Or, if she was quick enough, she'd grab them the moment they left the bubble wand.
When we came inside Audrey ran downstairs to play with Mommy in the basement. She has her red tent set up down there adjacent to a toddler-sized play house such that she really has merged the two to make a bigger house. And it is filled with plastic balls (the kind you find in bouncy castles) and a pretend stove and a miniature baby cradle and the like. And she invites everyone who accompanies her downstairs to visit her house. Clearly Mommy has missed her little girl because they are still down there as I write.
Her cash register and computer sit outside the house. The register has fake money colored red, green and purple but is mixed with real bills and plenty of US coins which she has managed to save herself. Her computer is a plastic box that needs to be plugged into a real computer to work but it has the keys and other buttons that suffice for pretending. Usually we play "store" with these machines after playing in her play house. Stuff tends to be pretty expensive at the store but fortunately it's (mostly) play money.
Meanwhile Grace's baby monitor emits a low static in the kitchen which means she is sound asleep and hopefully dreaming about luscious baby bottles. Kudos to Lucy for doing a great job getting one baby to bed while the other was inevitably causing a distraction.
What's worth reflecting on is that there will never be this day again. The time when Grace is asleep in a crib will pass; the time when Audrey wants books read to her at bedtime will end. One day we won't come home to a home full of babies - one day we will come home to an empty house. There will be no babysitters, no tales of the sugary foods that were eaten that day, no bubbles in the front yard.
It makes you want to embrace the present. Because there will never be this time again.
