Yesterday was a very strange day for me. I had written in yesterday's post that it was oddly quiet in my house, and indeed that was the case. I had a few chores to do, so I tackled them fairly quickly, not sure what else to do with myself. My four loads of laundry seemed to get finished faster than usual; the dishwasher was emptied and refilled at an Olympic pace; toys and things and whatnot were picked up and put in their proper places. All was done in that strange quiet.
When my chores were finished, I found myself wandering aimlessly from time to time around my house. Thinking about doing one thing and then winding up in a different room. I wasn't sure what to do with myself. If I was a thumb-twiddler I would have twiddled. If I was a hair twister I would have had dread-locks by that point. I felt a kind of nervous, or anxious, energy -- not for anything in particular, but just in the waiting. In the afternoon, around 2:00, I found myself glancing at the clock more frequently. I wasn't sure what time Aidan would be home, so the open-endedness was a bit unnerving. I found myself very, very eager to have him back.
And then there's Grace ... a little girl so completely and utterly different from her brother, unique in her own right (as of course it should be). I looked at her a little differently yesterday, as if she was a stranger in my house. She got out all her Little People, set them up, held conversations, surrounded herself with the house and the circus and whatever else she could find. For a long, long time she played so nicely -- she didn't need me. She didn't need me. Aidan always needed me, but Grace had a more "whatever" attitude. I tried talking to her but at that moment she wasn't interested. Aidan always wanted to talk, and about pretty interesting topics too. I didn't see a single car or track or boy thing all day, and I'm actually really great with cars and tracks and boy things. Now I have ponies and Little People and Barbies about my feet. Aidan was very self-sufficient -- he got his own snacks, he poured his own juice, he even worked the (very complicated) remote control. Grace ... well, she's in a different world. A world I'm really not familiar with yet.
Grace doing her thing as only she can do, in her favorite spot in the house.
The dynamic here is soooo different. I know I will come to love this phase, this one-on-one time with my girl that we've never had before. I feel like I have to get to know her, though -- to really know her -- and that's a good thing. But this odd quiet ... it's still unnerving to me. I have to sort of get over this part first. Lunchtime especially is the strangest part of the day, just the two girls at the kitchen table. Sometimes she'll chatter but it's about ... nothing, really. Just silly chatter, gibberish even. I'm not used to that. It will be wonderful, I know, this new chapter.
I just miss the old one a bit.
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