People keep telling us to enjoy this time, this holiday season, the two weeks we have off with no plans. “It’ll be different next year,” they say. “And for the next many years,” they say.

We know it will. We’re ready for different, and we’re looking forward to it.

But I am also very focused on what is happening right now because I know this is the end of a time in which our worries are pretty simple and pretty solvable. That’s not to say that there aren’t stressful times, upsetting times, uncertain times – of course there are, because that’s what living means. But now is certainly a time of fewer variables; our family consists of one fewer human now than there will be in a matter of weeks!

So I’m enjoying sleeping in, spending half a day on a puzzle, going for a spontaneous walk in the sunshine, waking without a plan and letting the day proceed as it will. There are things to do, of course, and things I want to get done (nearly all of which relate to baby planning), but rather than rushing into all of them at once, which I am prone to do, I’m trying to do things one at a time. I’m just trying to slow down.

Because this is the time where I can. I can indulge in not having to think too hard or do too much, and I am trying to enjoy this feeling because I know everything is going to change. And as I can be pretty tightly wound and all too efficient for my own good, slowing down is somewhat of a challenge for me.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions because I firmly believe that the time to change something is the time when one recognizes there’s a change to be made. Over the course of the last few months, I’ve made a very considerable effort to slow down because I know that’s something that doesn’t come easily to me. I would like my child to be a little more relaxed than I am, and I thought it would be helpful for us both to just take a step back. Approach the to-do list with the confident calm of someone who knows it will get done. Do one thing and then the next thing rather than trying to fit all the things into one moment.

As I’m writing this, the Chanukah candles are burning. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit back at watch.