We had set an alarm to wake up at 8 a.m. on Shabbat morning, and I did indeed wake up when my alarm went off at 8 a.m. on Shabbat morning...and then proceeded to lie in bed for thirty minutes until I heard an excited "wah!" from Laila's room. This proved to be a mistake, because we got out the door later than we wanted to (out into the -11°C wind...) and just missed the bus by two minutes. We sat in Dunkin Donuts while
sashagee drank coffee and Laila marveled at all the donuts behind the counter until the next bus came, and then we boarded it and made the trip down to Ravenswood to Mishkan's main office for
baby ShabbatRise and Shine.
Last time I was at Rise and Shrine, Laila spent the first half of the service very nervous and only really got into it around the halfway mark. This time we didn't even arrive until the halfway mark, so Laila spent all the time hanging around us. She only got braver once the actual service ended, the singing stopped, and the people thinned out. Then she latched on to
rabrams210 for hugs and ran around for a bit before it was time to go. By the time we left, it was 11:20 a.m. and
sashagee was pretty hungry, so we walked down the street to a place called Early Morning Delight for brunch. Shabbat brunch is not really a thing the way Sunday brunch is--generally, Jews go to each others' houses on Shabbat rather than out--but I like
sashagee's suggestion that we make it a tradition to go out for brunch after Rise and Shine. Especially if we find more places like Early Morning Delight. Before we even ordered, they brought us out a churro cake slice with nutella and fresh strawberries, which Laila absolutely loved, and then:
The fruit cup came
with the omelet without me needing to order it! Now that's service.

It was very good, much better than the Greek omelet I got a couple weeks ago where I asked them to remove the gyro meat and it turned out that gyro meat was all that was holding the omelet together. This was the artichoke omelet, with artichoke, roasted tomatoes, spinach, caramelized onion and goat cheese, topped with pesto. It was delicious (which was good because every other omelet on the menu had was treif) and I ate the whole thing. We got a children's quesadilla set for Laila and she ate most of one quesadilla and took at least one bite out of each of the other. She obviously had to make sure they were all just as good as the first one.
With brunch eaten, we took advantage of already being in Ravenswood to go to the Chicago Vintage Fest March Market a couple blocks to the north. Right inside, we found a Thai woman selling jewelry who was happy to hold Laila while
sashagee picked out a little purse and some barrettes for her, and we bought them before looking around more. It was mostly clothes, which definitely wouldn't fit me and which
sashagee wasn't that interested in, but we did get a set of iron butterfly sculptures that we can hang out on the back! At that point it was approaching 1 p.m., so we waited for the bus, it was a ghost bus, we started walking to the L when another bus came, and we caught that bus and a second bus and made it home and put Laila down for her nap.
Near the end of her nap I noticed that
thosesocks had messaged me very early in the morning about not having any plans, and after some consulting with
sashagee we had an impromptu Shabbat dinner of leftover chicken
nikujaga with hamantaschen for dessert. We all got Laila hugs, I talked with
thosesocks about how we'll both be working downtown about three blocks from each other, and everyone went to bed a bit happier.
The next day
sashagee wasn't doing super well, so we spent most of the day relaxing and playing with Laila. As I wrote in
the baby update, Laila's latest new obsession is drawing. She'll go over to her play area, look down at the paper, and then look over at us while making the
baby draw sign and saying "doraw? doraw?" over and over again. She did that a big chunk of Sunday, and I got a video of her drawing with a black marker. Like abba, like daughter. Please ignore that I used the black marker because she drew so much that the other markers temporarily weren't working.
Monday always feels a little like the weekend is leftover for me since I work from home, but because I had to work we didn't have big plans. The biggest plan was take Laila to the park, where she hadn't been in weeks, because the weather see-sawed up to 10°C and it was sunny out, so just after work we got Laila all dressed up and walked to the park where we saw Rabbi
jonathanposner613 and his daughter Baila! Baila was very shy--
jonathanposner613 said she's going through a phase where she's extremely leery of men other than him or her grandfathers--but we chatted with him a bit. I mentioned that I hadn't immediately recognized him because his beard had gotten much more magnificent since the last time I saw him at the Mishkan baby group. Laila and Baila didn't interact but--Laila reached out to Baila once or twice but Baila didn't respond--but I was talking to
sashagee about how cute it would be if they became friends. They're the same age, their families go to Mishkan, Laila's name means "night" (from Hebrew
לילה), Baila's name means "white" (from Yiddish
ביילא)... but one thing having children teaches you is that the blank slate theory is completely nonsense. If they want to be friends, they will.