Today's teatime was long and dark

For the first Sunday in weeks, The Husband, Jack and I went to church together as a family. Normally, The Husband goes to the 9:00 Mass and I go to the 11:15 and sing with the choir. Jack is usually napping at 9:00, so and The Husband has a hard time wrangling him all alone at the 11:15, so this is what has been working for us lately. But today Jack slept until almost 8:15 which meant no nap for him at 9:00, and I have laryngitis which meant no singing for me at 11:15. Thus, the family went to mass together.

As much as I like singing with the choir, today was actually quite nice. We only live about a quarter mile from the church, so we always walk and today was a beautiful sunny morning. We left the stroller at the back of the church and as Jack and I walked down the aisle together, I reveled in the expressions of the churchgoers admiring my adorable child. There was a minor kerfuffle when I accidentally chose the only pew with an electrical outlet at the end of it, but overall, Jack was pretty well behaved. I can't say I remember an awful lot of the homily (that's "sermon" to you non-Catholics) thanks to my reading "Little Duck" while the priest was speaking, but we didn't have to take Jack outside or anything. He hit his nap wall just about when Mass was ending, but that worked out pretty nicely for us.

And that is how we found ourselves at home at 10:15 on a Sunday morning with a sleepy baby and a whole day stretching out ahead of us with nothing to do. At first it was fantastic. I read the whole paper. The whole paper! We had coffee and doughnuts. I tried to do the Sudoku. Jack woke up from his nap and had some lunch, and then... it was Sunday afternoon. With nothing to do.

The day just stretched interminably. If Jack were older, I would have suggested a movie, but alas, that was no option. We brought Jack outside for some fresh air, and he had a great time throwing the leaves around. When he started to get cranky I said, "Let's go inside and have some supper," only to discover that it was merely 4:15. There were at least thirty more minutes to endure before we could reasonably give Jack his dinner.

Thank goodness Jack thoughtfully was ready for bed by 6:30 ending our Sunday afternoon ordeal. The hours between 4:00 and 6:30 are usually difficult, but today 4:00 seemed to start around 2:30 or so. And now I've reread this and feel like an enormous jerk for complaining about having a lazy Sunday with a basically well-behaved adorable baby. Man, I have such problems.