Family

We had the best evening yesterday! It started with a rough day. Elise had a hard time napping. She went down for a nap at her usual time, around 11:30am, and slept for a whopping 25 minutes. Then she woke up all congested and mucus-y, which always upsets her. Every time she wakes up like that, she is very, very upset. So I rocked her back to sleep, but she woke up again. All in all she slept for 45 minutes, with two fairly significant waking periods breaking up the already insufficient nap. A bad start to the afternoon. She was okay for most of the afternoon - a little sensitive, as she usually is when she's tired, but not as challenging as I expected her to be, considering the poor nap. Then just before 4:00, she started to show her classic tired symptoms - crankiness, clinginess, poor coordination. Without much hope of success, I decided to try for a second nap. Elise dropped her second nap a month or so ago, and since then has only reverted to it when she was sick. But lo and behold - it worked! She slept until 5:30! Andy and I quickly recognized our opportunity. Normally Elise goes to bed at 7:00, but we knew there was no way that would happen with having allowed her such a late nap. So we gave her her dinner and piled into the car.

I had planned to be out that evening anyway, albeit alone, as I had to check on the nursery at church. A friend had graciously agreed to work in the nursery last night, which was so nice for me. It was the third week in a row, and fourth out of five, that I was short one person in the nursery, and I had filled in myself on all the other weeks. It was really nice to have a break and not have to fill in again. I don't really mind doing it, but it was still a nice break. But anyway, so I had to just stop in and make sure someone had unlocked the nursery for them and they had everything they needed, etc. That was our first stop, and after that, we were free! We attempted to do some Christmas shopping, but didn't find what we were looking for. Then we decided to try going out for dinner. By that time, it was 8:00, one hour past Elise's normal bedtime. She was in a good mood - had had a fabulous time playing with a ball and walking up and down the aisles at Target - but we were afraid that dinner would really be pushing it. We decided to try anyway. She was so good. We were amazed. She was playful; she stayed in her highchair the entire time, without fussing; she waved at every single person she saw until they either were out of sight or had waved back. It was so great. On our way home, Andy and I agreed that it was the most pleasant evening out we've had in quite some time.

We're not planning on making a late afternoon nap and 9:00 bedtime the norm for Elise, but it certainly did make for a fine night. I realize, as I read back over this, that this account does not make our evening sound wonderful. So we ran errands and had dinner. We didn't even find what we were looking for at the store. Big deal, right? Well...yeah. It was a big deal. And you know what we enjoyed the most? It was at dinner, while we were waiting for our food. We pushed everything to the far end of the table and played with a small toy fire truck that we had brought in for Elise. I would push it to Andy, he would push it to Elise, she would push it to me. Elise made "vroom, VROOM!" sound effects and was just tickled pink, laughing and waving her hands and getting so excited. It was a good time. If our waiter had been a genie and had given me the chance to go anywhere and do anything I wanted right then, I would have asked to stay where I was. It was just a perfect moment.