Reader, I am so tired. I don’t really know why I am blogging instead of passing out on the couch awaiting stern looks and reminders of chores unfinished. But we had a huge day.
In a life without kids, my day probably would have read like this: I went out and took some pictures, went to the gardens, had a couple nice meals, started the dishes, nightcapped with a glass of Macallan 12, and went to sleep. With the exception of sleep because I never sleep, I did all those things. Outlooks are different when you have a toddler.
We have started a tradition with our friends Rick and Kim to shoot each other’s kids. Calm down… with a Nikon. Every year (2 so far), we go somewhere where the leaves are pretty and shoot each other’s family Christmas card photos. We’re not Annie Leibovitz, but we do have a healthy respect for lining up a shot and remembering that our subjects have feet. After arriving late due to a prolonged fight about pooping, we had a fantastic shoot in Morgan Falls, which has an unfortunate juxtaposition with a beautiful playground. So, lets play a game. Were our children (a) excited to take family portraits or (b) completely flabbergasted as to why we had to stand in this boring spot doing boring things like sit when there was an enormous brightly colored playground JUST RIGHT THERE!… I can feel your anticipation rising, reader. It was b. We continued to shoot on the playground, then we finally went to lunch. We had a fantastic lunch. I bought a ceasar burger, which is essentially a Big Mac the way a Big Mac should have been, with perfect onion rings. Perfect! The burger was excellent. Sarah’s trout was excellent. Every bite of Charlie’s was a fight. The placement of the ketchup was a fight. He asked for ketchup, and he pointed to where he wanted it on his plate. So, silly-ass me, I put the ketchup where he pointed on his plate. Hindsight and all that, what he really wanted was a cup of ketchup so he could stick his fingers in and color on his plate. Shoulda known. So we paid, went home, and put him down for a nap. Sarah and I sat on the couch and stared into the middle distance until 30 minutes later when it was time to get up and go to the Botanical Gardens for their Holiday Lights. They have an amazing display of over 2 million lights throughout the park, and they have a new(ish) restaurant Linton’s that we go to whenever we are at the gardens. Sarah’s pot pie was 5-star gourmet and my beef bourgignon was amazing. Silly-ass me thought that Charlie would like meat, potatoes, carrots, and chicken because he mostly eats and likes meat, potatoes, carrots and chicken, and we asked him if he would like it, and he said yes. First things first, we gave him a bite of our tomato bisque, being that one of Charlie’s favorite food is a tomato, and he immediately spit it all over his lap. Guess he didn’t like it. Then we filled a plate for him, by which he was utterly offended, and decided he was too cool for dinner. We negotiated (I gave up and put on Curious George on my iPhone) and he finally ate, then we went to go look at the lights. Charlie really liked them, but didn’t want to sit in the stroller, or be told where to go, or when to stop. He loved the trains. We must have ran around the trains setup two hundred thousand times, then we headed to a fire pit to roast marshmallows. Charlie had his first S’more! He didn’t like it at first when his first bite was just burnt marshmallow, but now he’s a fan. After the s’more and about an hour and a half after his bedtime, he finally agreed to sit in his seat in the stroller and we went through the light tunnel and went out. The lights were spectacular.
The drywall in our house is up, mudded, and taped. I’m going to sleep.
– Josh