Elisa sits in the dinning room chair as I put on her socks and then shoes. Elisa does not like to wear socks even as our apartment’s floor gets colder and colder with each passing winter’s day. I zip up her Angry Birds winter coat and we head down to the parking garage. On the slow walk to the car Elisa tells me she wants to hear the songs I like on the drive. This is a first. Normally she just wants to hear Coldplay’s “Yellow” as many times as I can bear it.

We get to the car and I let lower the passenger seat so that the headrest lies on the back seat. Elisa climbs up and lies down as I buckle her in. I get in the car, start the engine, and then start the music. By the time we are out of the parking garage Elisa is nearly sleep and by the time we get to the first stop light, she is out. I drive to one of the ring roads, today the forth, and go in one big circle until I reach the nearest exit for Aidan’s and Lydia’s school. It takes about and hour and by the time we pull up Elisa has had a decent nap. This is just the latest of our Elisa nap time routines we’ve done over the past year.

When I first stopped working I noticed the ayi would put Elisa in front of the TV after lunch and she would eventually fall asleep. I didn’t really like that and as the days started to get warmer I would take Elisa for a walk at nap time. It felt like I was cheating her. We would leave under the premise of going to the playground and then she would be asleep in the stroller before we got to the end of the block. I would walk with her and sometimes just sit in the park listening to podcasts. As the year progressed and it started to get colder again I tried just asking Elisa to nap and much to my surprise she walked over to her bed, climbed up, and napped. She didn’t like it much, but she did it. Then the driver who took the kids to school could no longer drive for us and I started to pick them up. Elisa would want to go along and she started to nap on the way. As that became her preferred way to sleep I started to extend the drive for her to sleep more all the while getting sleepy myself.

Tomorrow I go back to work in an office for the first time in almost 14 months. Elisa will be back in front of the TV, not wanting to nap. She will be bored because her playmates are all in preschool and it is still too cold to spend much time outside. This makes me sad but I am grateful for having the past 14 months to spend with the kids at home and especially Elisa. We have a closeness now that is worth more than the money I would have made or the ego of career advancement. The trick now is to keep it going.