Last year when I was five months pregnant, Bryan and I hosted a Passover seder — our first one — in our tiny little condo and we made lots of jokes about how “next year, we’ll have one more person at this seder and we’re not talkin’ about Elijah!” (If you’re not Jewish, that’s not funny. And if you are Jewish, that’s probably still not that funny).

Well, my mind is blown, because that “next year” just happened. Past tense. Last weekend. And Elijah didn’t actually come, but Madelyn did!

It was a lot of work to prepare and cook for the seder when I was pregnant, especially since my belly was three feet from the kitchen counter and I could hear my feet as I walked. I thought it would be even more difficult to host a seder with an infant, but I did a lot of prep work while Madelyn napped and I put my Seder assistant to work and my assistant’s name is Crock Pot. I’d like to cuddle with my assistant. Is that an HR issue?

The Seder turned out lovely! The food was good and the company was even better. Both sets of grandparents and Madelyn’s great grandparents were over and I’m not sure what I loved more: their gushing over my matzah ball soup or their gushing over our little matzah ball. I made both, you know.

Our reading from the Haggadah was fairly quick and painless thanks to Bryan’s genius adoption of The 30-Minute Seder book that he printed for everyone. We got to the food, inhaled it, and followed the meal with a little song session for Madelyn. She loved hearing her Grandpa Jay play guitar and we all enjoyed singing some of Madelyn’s favorite hits. A little lullaby ended the set and the little matzah munchkin went to sleep.

And then after everyone left, Bryan and I collapsed and joined Princeton on the couch. He’s a lazy dog. A smart dog, but a lazy dog.

Our second Seder was a success and we are glad that we started the tradition for Madelyn, who is, of course, the new reason for celebrating holidays. Guess every day is a holiday since we celebrate Madelyn every day.

Happy Passover, everyone!