She's BaaaaAAAAaaaack!

After about a week of feeling under the weather, Monroe was back in action today, at full cuteness and ready to play play play.

Unfortunately, her parents were feeling a little bedraggled after days and days of sick-baby care. Not to mention all the work I'd missed and the general state of chaos in our home. So when our regular babysitter Cruz had to cancel, leaving me to miss ANOTHER work day, Daddy sprung into action. While I was trying (and failing) to get Monroe down for a nap, he let his co-workers know he'd be in after lunch and he packed up the stroller for a morning out. They went down to the park above the cliffs in Santa Monica and set up a blankie in the shade where Monroe practiced sitting, rolling, and playing with her toys. Then Eben took her down to the shore and they flirted with the waves. Eben says she thought the approaching-but-not-quite-arriving water was really funny. Then Monroe fell asleep in the front carrier while Eben walked in the sand. This was really healing for him because of the past 6 hours he's spent with Roe, she's been screaming and crying for at least 4 of them. So getting to be with her while she was back to normal was perfect for him.

Eben then hefted the collapsed stroller, the diaper bag, the baby, and the blanket BACK through the sand (just think how hard it is to walk in sand... and then add 40-50 pounds... 20 of them wriggling pounds...I don't know how he did that!) to the park at the top of the cliffs where I met up with the gang. I'd been home furiously cleaning the house and catching up with the minimum I needed to do on work to keep from getting irredeemably behind. We fed Monroe, then grabbed some lunch before Eben was off to work. Monroe played with a long stem of tender-crisp steamed broccoli almost the whole time we were eating lunch! :)

So now we're back in business over here: Mommy back to work while baby naps in a decent-if-not-"clean" house with sanity pretty much restored. And all it took was a few hours of vacation time!!