Turns out that sometimes staying home can be just as adventurous and exciting for Sienna as going out. Yesterday Elaine and I had planned to take Sienna into the city, but the weather report was foreboding (and eventually wrong), so we wound up staying in our apartment.
We spent the day playing with Sienna, trying to appease her insatiable curiosity by naming everything she pointed to: door, wall, wall, Phil Rizzuto (an autographed pic hanging on the wall), ball, duck, wall, etc. We took turns reading to her from books we’d read so many times they were engraved on our brains: “A cow says moo. A sheep says baa. 3 singing pigs say la la la!” We gave her a bath. We watched “Spongebob” and giggled as Sienna tried to sing along to theme song.
The day wasn’t without its literal bumps. Sienna slipped in the tub and cried. She banged her head in the bathroom and cried. She caught her finger in something and cried. A collage fell off her door about an hour into her nap waking her up and leaving her hysterical. And dinner was saucy and not in a good way.
We had gone out for Italian the night before and Sienna enjoyed pasta and tomato sauce, so we figured we’d replicate it. It didn’t happen. Sienna barely ate the pasta and instead stuck her hands in the sauce and smeared it all over everything. This is something that normally would bring on massive anxiety for me and it started to for Elaine, but something happened. We tag-teamed it. We didn’t let Sienna’s toddlerness get to us. Elaine cleaned her and we switched to a bowl of cereal and milk and a cut up banana which our daughter gobbled up. We joked about the mess. We said Sienna was trying out for the part as the Red Skull in the next Captain America film
And then we danced. The three of us danced to “OPP” and “Rock Around the Clock” over and over, Sienna emanating pure joy. We played monkey in the middle using, what else, stuffed monkeys. Sienna ran between the two us laughing and clapping as each monkey soared over her head. We asked Sienna to point out her mouth, her cheek, her neck, Gleeb, Minky, a blanket. We clapped and cheered each time Sienna got it right and our daughter clapped and cheered too…she clapped so hard and with so much pride that it looked like she’d fall over (something she did later each time I spun her causing glorious dizziness).
But the highlight of the day was when Elaine had left the room for a bit, came back, and Sienna looked at her and said, “Mama!” Everything stopped. Elaine and I looked at each other and I watched as Elaine nearly burst from happiness, my own heart warm and proud. We were a family. We spent the day inside having fun as a family. Elaine, Sienna, Minky, Gleeb and myself. No trip, no outdoor experience could ever replicate those shared feelings of familial closeness, fun, and love.