Ahhhh.

Two days ago, if you would have asked me what I wanted to do this weekend, the answer would have been, "go to the Cayman Islands, drink Margaritas, and read the huge stack of medical journals that incriminatingly stare at me from behind the toilet (where Mike has decided to store them.)
WELL, I can't argue, what I have been doing this weekend isn't as good as Cayman...BUT it's been one of the best, most relaxing weekends I think I've had in the last five years of my life. You see, the two anal-retentive, type-A, detail-oriented (but lovable) people in my household have left for the weekend. Yup, that's right, Mike and Julia went away...Mike to Island Camp and Julia to Grandma's. I have been alone with Mary since Thursday night. Just us two...Mama and Squish.

First of all, I don't remember having one kid be this EASY. I recall that one time Mike left me home alone with Julia for two days and I panicked. Well, those days are gone. Maybe it's because Mary is so sweet, cuddly, and almost always easy-going...or maybe I've had more practice. Regardless, this weekend has been CAKE.

Friday night, I was on medicine call. So, I packed up my baby and brought her to the hospital with me. She was supposed to spend the night with a friend, but that fell through...so it was Mama and Squish in the call room together. For the first few hours, Danielle, Dr. Tieben's wife, came and watched Mary. After that admission, just for tradition's sake, I gave her a bath in the call room sink as her sister had done so many times when she was little. When I had another admission, I lent her to the nurses in OB for awhile and dictated my notes back in the call room with a squeaking baby in the background. Mary took a liking to the bananas and the TV in the call room. She got herself all comfortable on the couch clutching a banana and watched a whole episode of Scrubs. I swear she knew what was going on. When the laughing track would play in the background, Mary would start to giggle along with them. Then, in sheer delight she would squeeze the banana so the insides squirted out the top.

This repeated itself about every twenty seconds. I never noticed how many times the laughing audience plays during Scrubs. It is a LOT.

Mary slept well on the call room floor. This morning, we shared a St. Luke's pancake and headed home. We made two different kinds of homemade bread and a cake (it was -16 and I wanted to keep the kitchen warm.) Then we ventured to ShopKo and Cub for some errands. Mary was very good until the end of our trip where she "hit critical mass" in the checkout lane at Cub. She would only stop screaming if I would hold her and bounce up and down (not little cute bounces, but full-throttle, off-the-floor leaps.) The asian cashier guy was nice to us...I think. He kept looking down at the floor with a weird smile on his face while speaking a language other than English. Maybe he was praying.....

...

Well, I just read through my post and I realized...the first part talks about what a nice relaxing day I had...and then I proceeded to tell you that I took medicine call with a baby in my room and then had another one of "those" shopping experiences. Despite what you might think, I feel pretty good right now. Perhaps it's the fact that life has been so chaotic lately that I didn't bat an eye at anything today, or perhaps it's the absence of my toddler, OR perhaps I feel good because I ate homemade bread all day and not much else except for the empty margarita glass sitting next to my computer.