Date Night

Posted on January 31, 2012 by megan

So Brian and I finally decided to go on our first overnight away from Luke since he was born. I mean, Brian has been away for work, but I have not. This has been a long while in the making, just ask Brian. Until now, I really did not have the need to stay away, and really, until two weeks ago, the thought of it made me physically nauseous. I know that I should be embarrassed to be saying I don’t need me time, especially in this day and age where women everywhere can get all the me time they need, but to use one of Luke’s phrases, “I didn’t wannit.”  But the opportunity arose, and I suddenly felt okay about it all. So we booked it. Four whole days in advance.

The hardest part of the night was leaving Luke without showing him I was crying.  But I did it.
We were dressed up, like adults on a date night. No diaper bags, no snot mark on the shoulder of my new dress, no crayons or playdough in my purse to let everyone know that we were parents. The only tell we showed, was my phone placed strategically face up on the dinner table in the dim light of the dining spot reminiscent of a Tuscan ristorante. That, and the fact that I tapped it approximately once every three minutes to make sure I wasn’t missing the frantic texts describing how a bird swooped in the open window, caught fire on the stove and misconstrued Luke’s efforts to help him as an act of aggression leading them to swirl around in the flooded kitchen in a death grip…oh wait, that was Rachel Green’s fear. Mine was based on Luke not going to sleep for my parents and brother who so bravely took on his care for the night.  Spoiler alert-he fell asleep, very easily, and slept the whole night with no issues. (Yey, Uncle Michael!)

We took a packed cable car on the way to dinner. Standing room only, and only on the loading deck with the rear brake guy who had to use his whole body weight to use the break while swinging vigorously back and forth on the platform which included Rear Brake Guy, me, Brian, and three other guys. Oh, and since I was the last one on, I was almost the first one off during a sharp left turn. Once we got to dinner, we tried to keep our conversation off of Luke, but that was hilarious. Dinner was delicious, as was the bottle of wine we shared like grown ups. On our walk back to the hotel, we realized that the martini bar we had read about was at the top of the hotel in the next building. How do we pass up that opportunity??? We didn’t.

Top of the Mark is an amazing martini bar housed on the 19th floor Penthouse level of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, offering a 360 degree view. It was established in 1939, and has been a huge hit ever since. It did not disappoint. We listened to a live band complete with a gorgeous singer, watched dancers, chose from over 100 martinis and even danced ourselves! And we laughed at ourselves the whole night! (Sample from our conversation: Me: “Do you think our waiter is French?” Brian: “Well I would guess so, his name is Luc.” (Said in the tone of the movie French Kiss) Me: “Really?!” Brian: “No, his name tag said ‘Mario’.”) It was perfect! We stumbled down the hill after they played the last song of the night, took a few blurry pictures of the night skyline, and fell into a fitfull night of sleep on a dreamy bed. (It will take more than one night for me to get comfortable sleeping without the monitor next to my bed-at one point, I actually got up and checked my phone as if it was the monitor.)

When it was late enough for me to feel like I had “slept in,” we decided to get up, get out and head to breakfast. (7:25 am is sleeping in, right?) We enjoyed a hungover relaxed breakfast at the Ferry Building, bought the requisite gift (super cute Jellycat frog) for the child we left in the care of the doting grandparents and uncle, and made our way home. Luke ran to the door like we had been gone overnight and we got smooches and hugs, and then he promptly grabbed the frog and went back to playing with Grandpopper, whose parents we found out were married at the Mark Hopkins! Who knew? I knew I felt a connection there, I guess it wasn’t just the French 75 martini!

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Drama!

Posted on January 28, 2012 by megan

One of my best friends in college had a bit of a flair for the dramatic, you might say. Well, you would definitely say that if you knew her.  And while she is beautiful, she did not always embody grace.  She often regaled us with stories, dramatizations complete with sound effects and staged choreography, so we could relive her moments with her.

One event in particular sticks with me from our freshman year. She was rollerblading and she fell and took a few layers of skin off her knees. (Well, that is the short version.) But if you were listening to, and watching and experiencing, her retelling, you might have thought the road had it out for her, that it was hiding behind some pavement in order to jump up at the last second to grab her wheels and knock her off balance. You might have thought that the shadows were conspiring against her with the dips in the road in order to seduce her rollerblades towards danger. You might have thought that her roller blades needed a vacation in the back of her mini dorm closet underneath winter sweaters and were trying to plot their own grounding. These dramatizations were often complete with the replaying of any and all sound effects or dialogue (or often monologue) from the event, as well as my friend throwing herself on the ground to display how she was almost maimed.

Tonight, while we were getting ready for bathtime, I hear Luke running up and down the hallway (usual pre-bathtime event in our house-Naked Running) and then I hear a crash. He is in front of me in an instant. After I ask him if he’s okay, he says, in his two-year old run on sentences, “I running, and running and I fell and I have booboo, I running.” And when I ask if he’s okay (obviously without the fanfare he desired) he repeats in a higher pitched voice, with repeated phrasing, “I running, running, running and I fell. I running and I fell and I have a booboo!!!! Running and fell and I have a booboo. Like this!” At which point he proceeds to channel his “Auntie” and replays himself running, and falling, in. slow. motion. What could I do? I broke into peals of laughter, squeezed him tightly and deposited him into open mic night in our bathtub.

Posted in drama, toddler injury | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Some Things I Learned in 2011 (from my housemate, the Toddler)

Posted on January 24, 2012 by megan

These are in no special order whatsoever, unless you count the order in which they were scribbled on the hotel notepad sheet special.

  • The best toys aren’t toys at all. They could be anything:  your watch, wallet, keys, steak knives, scissors, dental floss, your old computer, the new computer, iPhone, Droid, remote control for the tv, and even the child safety locks.


  • It helps to be a thesaurus (or have constant access to one) to have a conversation with a two year old…(at least it helps to think of different ways to answer the same question so you don’t go insane from repeating the same same same answers.)

  • Connected with the last one, it takes a new form of stamina to answer the Toddler’s “why?”s.

  • Swim diapers are NOT absorbent. I mean, AT ALL. Which makes sense if you think about the purpose, but who has time to think about that when you’re worried about your kid going under water at swim lessons?

  • There are so many reasons a two year old has to speak and it is amazing that so many sentences just automatically form:

“I have it.”                  “I do it.”                      “No MINE.”

“No MY [insert noun here]”  ie: keys, diaper, toilet, beer, coffee, knife, razor…

“No MY [insert ANY word here] ie: ‘yep’, ‘nope’, ‘my’, ‘me’…

“Myself.”         “By myself.”   “On my own.”                        “My Self.”

  • A two year old may not want to go to day care during the week, but during the first lull in your Saturday or Sunday will ask repeatedly if we are going.

  • When on a six hour plane flight, it is apparently normal for the Toddler to ask to “get off this choo-choo train.”

  • Videos of my friends’ toddlers are a Godsend during meltdowns with my toddler, especially if I can get them on his my phone.
  • One version of one of the following will perpetually be running through my head at any point of any day for at least the next five years: Wheels on the Bus, Old MacDonald, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Five Little Monkeys, and so on.

  • While there is never any privacy for me anymore (check back for future post), and this is the hardest job I have ever had, I wouldn’t trade a moment.
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Charlotte’s family came over for a glass of Zinfandel

Posted on January 19, 2012 by megan

So I was all excited about starting my first blog post with a post about things that I learned in 2011…however, that has been put on hold due to my unexpected visitor(s) tonight.

Picture me, snuggled on the couch with my glass of wine, Facebook on the laptop so I can discuss why my kid is asking (literally, “timeout Mama?”) for timeouts (I’m sure this will be a post in the near future) ready to watch the first episode of the newest season of The Biggest Loser. Brian looks over at me and says,  “So have you noticed? The tree has one of those spiderwebs all over it that you would call gorgeous…”

Now I know what you’re thinking…”Does she realize it’s January 4th?¹ Why would she still have her Christmas tree up, decorated, with lights on and all????” Yes she does, but she just drove back from LA after flying back yesterday from Maui after a week’s vacation, which was preceded by five days in LA, all with a two year old. (And I hate talking in the third person, so I really wish you wouldn’t make me do that.) So I was leaving it up for ONE MORE NIGHT and taking it down tomorrow.

So I say, “Really?” And get up to take a look. Well it is gorgeous. And HUGE. And covering my Willow Tree Angel of Teaching, Luke’s first Christmas ornament, and our giant Mickey Mouse hat with ears holiday ornament we bought during our first trip to Disneyland this Thanksgiving. So I take a closer look and think about how long it’s going to take me to go in and around the webbing so I don’t disrupt whatever created it to retrieve our belongings from the tree (real of course, cut down from the Tree Farm which would have been a post I would have linked to here had I had a blog then) which is when I realize it’s bigger than I originally thought and has gnats in it. I think, well at least they are there stuck in the webbing instead of flying over the house because minutes before getting snuggled on the couch I had found our back door had been left open a crack by a Realtor and Client coming to see the house to give us false hope earlier this week (because remember, we just arrived home today). Then I notice the gnats are moving, and I think, they really should be stuck to the web…yeah, you’re right. They’re not gnats. They are BABY SPIDERS that hatched in my Christmas tree sometime during the almost two weeks that we were away.

Needless to say, Brian’s “Christmas” came a day early, and we carefully removed ornaments (saved the Mickey ears) and literally ran the tree out of the house, ripped the lights off of it and ran back in the house and shook ourselves silly…when I tried to do Brian the favor of vacuuming (or Dysoning as it is in our house) up all the pine needles, he looked at me like I had just received a lobotomy and said, and I quote, “Oh no you DON’T take my Christmas away!”

Stay tuned for what I learned in 2011 next, provided Charlotte and her babies stay outside tomorrow…

¹ Author’s note: this just exemplifies how long it has taken me to get this blog up and running.

Posted in holidays | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Who knew?

Posted on January 14, 2012 by megan

Who knew it would take me so long to get my blog up and running? While I’ve been working on figuring out how to purchase a domain (thanks Mr. Mo for all of your help), what to call it when my original idea was not available (thanks Brian, Mom, Michael, Mo, and Carolyn for being a sounding board), and then choosing themes, styles, layouts, etc…I have already written a couple of posts, so while I’m behind, I’m a bit ahead as well. 🙂 Stay tuned for more!

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