The First Monday in January

I am thankful for waking up early after a good night's sleep. This is rare in my world. Coffee by myself. Abe wakes up way too early, so I tell him that he doesn't have to go back to sleep but that he does have to stay in his bed until I come get him. I give him books to look at in his bed. As I leave, he says, "Thanks, Mom." He gets dressed and gets straight to work on that sweater for his sister.

A neighbor and her daughter come over for tea. She's brought a bag of wonderful hand-me-downs from her kindergarten-aged son. She is a thinker and an artist, a true nonconformist in the city of pseudo-nonconforming hipsters (a whole show is being made about this very thing). We talk for a couple of hours while the kids play like angels. She sees a photo of Princess Bee and says, "She looks like Natalie Portman!" I hadn't thought of it before, but I can see a resemblance once she points it out.

Abe and I meet a friend in the heart of hipsterville for a birthday lunch. The food was really good. I took home my own leftovers as well as my friend's, which will be my lunch tomorrow. I drive her back to her house, and we sit in my car in the middle of her street because we have just meandered onto the subject about how hot fire-fighters are, and you can't just leave a topic like that unfinished.

After playing with the grandson of another neighbor, Abe snuggled onto my lap as I read emails. Before I knew it, he had fallen asleep. This is extremely rare. Our boy was pooped. Because it was after 5pm, I only let him sleep about 15 minutes and then tried to wake him up. This was my attempt.

I stare at him as he eats his dinner of black-eyed peas and carrots, thinking I just might die from love of this boy.

(and yes, I snuggled him and let him wake up slowly in case that last part of the video seemed cruel. Abe is a full-force kind of guy, so seeing him so determined to sleep was simply cracking me up)