Overall, I think that "nice" is a pretty generic kind of non-word. It's about the equivalent of saying, "Oh." You know you have to say something, but you don't know what to really say so you just call it "nice". Nice dress, nice paint color, nice dog... But, all that aside as I went throughout my day on Saturday I realized that we were just having a nice day.

Ben woke up around 8:00 and Andrew got up with him and went downstairs. I was awake, I just wasn't exactly moving yet. I was celebrating the fact that after six weeks of it I wasn't the only adult in the house anymore and so someone else got to respond when Ben squawked. I admit that I did try to go back to sleep, but I couldn't mostly because I just really really really needed to pee.

I meandered my way downstairs after about twenty minutes. Benjamin's diaper had already been changed, which was...nice. There's nothing good about a diaper that's been on for 12 hours. Okay, so it was laying in the middle of the living room instead of in the washing machine, but oh well. I wasn't going to focus on that because Andrew was making French Toast. I really like French Toast and it's one of those things that I'm not usually going to mess with in the morning. Plus, Andrew makes really good French Toast.

Ben was wandering around the kitchen and living room reacquainting himself with his toys (all eight million of them). There was coffee brewing. I've recently reached the point in my pregnancy where my stomach is stable enough that I can handle drinking again....HA! That was a typo...I can handle drinking COFFEE again, is what I meant to say. :) I still can't brew it myself because the smell is just too strong, but I can drink it. The great part was that we were out of coffee filters anyway and so this was French press coffee, which doesn't have as strong of a brewing smell to it. Nice.

I sat down at the computer and started checking my email, reading blogs, finding new blogs to read, catching up on my Yahoo Groups, some websites I like etc. I had been doing this for about .5 seconds when Ben started saying and signing "Eat, eat, eat. Hungry, please." I promised him breakfast was cooking, but he went over and pulled the cereal boxes off the shelf and brought them to me as a visual adi since I was apparently being a little too dense about his desperation. So, away from the computer I went and set him up with enough dry cereal to tide him over til the French Toast was ready.

I actually ate a hot breakfast that I didn' t have to make while it was still hot. AND! (I know that's not proper punctuation, but it really does fit my excitement here) I ate at the computer while Andrew tended Ben. Amen! Afterwards, Ben got down and just wandered around the house like usual playing with everything. I sat at the computer. Andrew was reading. We were all still in pajamas and stayed that way for a long time.

I won't go into this much detail about the whole day, but it was all in the same vein. Niceness. Ben and Andrew played with Ben's box of dry beans. It sounds weird, I know, but I guess you have to be 19 months old (or a parent) to appreciate the entertainment value here. I cleaned up the kitchen and started some laundry.

I was able to go around the house and do little odds and ends that were hard to do while Andrew was gone because Ben was always underfoot and it meant lots of trips up and down the steps. I took a blisfully long and hot shower without Ben either being in the shower with me or wrecking havoc in the bathroom. I put on makeup with care AND! blow dryed my hair. I folded laundry while Ben played with his newest love Playdough.

I finally got around to dressing Ben right before it was time for his nap. He slept. And slept. And slept. Another amen. I cleared the clutter off my kitchen table, I swept the floors, I put the laundry away. I remembered how much better my brain feels when I actually keep my house under control. I made some sandwiches and veggies for Andrew and I for lunch. We sat down and ate and talked. I read a Newsweek magazine. I did some more emails. I played a few Hoyle boardgames on the computer (Hey, it's Saturday.)

Ben woke up after about 3.5 hours and was cheerful and chatty and just happy to play. We just hung out for awhile the three of us. We had a snack and then went out to run a few errands. We picked up dinner on the way home. We ate, we played with Ben, we puttered around the house.

Ben went to bed fairly easily, he's getting a lot better at this, and Andrew and I watched, "Enchanted". It was supposed to be funny. I guess it was mildly funny, but I could have done without it. No matter, we just sat on the couch together and ate popcorn (I LOVE popcorn when I'm pregnant.) and enjoyed a quiet evening, which was good because I don't think we have a lot more quiet evenings coming our way for awhile.

It doesn't matter though. We'll get there/here again. It wasn't that we did anything special, but it was just a cheerful, pleasant, fun, relaxed, NICE kind of a day and it makes me so thankful for my family.