miunOMa: The day when we did nothing

This morning I woke up to darkness. It was 6:30 am. It reminded me of the dark winter mornings in Finland. Dark!! But, it was a summer morning in August in New Jersey, and it shouldn’t have been that dark. Nevertheless, it was. I pulled my blanket up a little bit more and continued to snooze while O was sitting next to me in bed playing Angry Birds on the iPad. After a few minutes go by…OK, maybe 30 minutes…I start to really wake up and figure out what is going on around me. Wow! It’s really dark. K is putting his socks on and is ready to go to work. “Is it raining outside?” I ask him. “Uhm. Yeah!” Oh ok. And, was it ever. It was dumping. We even got a flash flood warning sent to our cell phones. I had never gotten one of those before. The East Coast weather can be so dramatic.

So, it was going to be a rainy day I think to myself. In a dark and stormy summer day like this, we must have a permission (from whom, I don’t know) to stay home and do nothing. Right? This sounded great! Day with nothing to do…well, you have to do something. You can’t just lay in bed. I mean what a waste of time that would be. And, with almost four-year-old, you have to do something. I soon find myself thinking about things that we could do on this gloomy rainy day. We could paint. Or, we could watch lots of TV. Or, I could sew and O could play. Maybe I need to get some laundry done. Wouldn’t today be the perfect day for baking some pulla (Finnish cinnamon rolls)? And, on and on, my mind goes. After awhile, I am happy with my plan for the day: We are not going to do anything.

It is 8 pm as I write this now, and here is what happened today: O watched 3 hours of TV (including her iPad time while I was sleeping), I took a shower and sorted all the laundry, O painted her new treasure box for her rocks while I started to cut tulle for her dress-up ballerina skirt, I finished a pillow cover that I had started last week, O played with multiple different toys and created a huge mess in the playroom, we cleaned the playroom, I finished the ballerina skirt and texted my friend about it, we drove to my work and O’s preschool to pick up materials for the coming session and checked out O’s new classroom, we visited the library and picked up new books to read, we stopped by Stewart’s and got some milkshakes, we drew outside with chalk, I made dinner, O took a shower by playing on her new $5 slip n’ slide on the backyard (which is now broken and explains why it only cost $5).

And, as it turns out, we did something. We did a lot of things today. And, it was a fun day

Here is our day in pictures: