Eeney Meeney Miney Mo...

We recently attended Tyson's cousin's graduation celebration in Santa Barbara. We missed the ceremony, since it was on a Friday afternoon, but she had a family gathering of sorts the following Saturday and we gladly accepted the invitation to attend her celebration at an old favorite restaurant from when we lived there.

Our kids are finally getting to an age where they are slightly more... portable. We can actually leave the house at any given moment without packing 2 sets of spare clothes, blankets, pacis, snacks, strollers, back up strollers,diapers, wipes, more wipes, baby carriers, bottles, sunscreen, books... ahh! My head is spinning just in the memory of it all. Its a beautiful thing to be rid of... I definitely don't feel sentimental AT ALL about having them be old enough to ditch the gear.

The only problem remaining (at the moment, anyway) is... well... they are both still at pretty high maintenance and all together unpredictable ages. You never can tell if a new surrounding will scare them into their best behavior disguises, or cause them to come unglued all together. They may choose to be best friends for the car ride, or poke, tease, spit, and throw toys at each other the whole way....

So, in the interest of not making Courtney's high school graduation party all about accommodating our adorable little loose cannons, we came up with a new strategy:

Divide the risk.

Genius!

I cant believe we hadn't thought of it before. Anabelle could spend a day with my Mom... special grandma time. She wins! Dawson gets to go on a special grown up trip with Mommy and Daddy. He wins! Everyone goes home happy.

This would generally be the part of the story where my water tight plan starts sinking faster than the Titanic. But you know what we found out?

Having one kid... is bliss.

Dawson was SO much fun to watch as he soaked in the experience of the restaurant, and he was SO well behaved sitting between us with no one to gauge or skewer while developing his chopstick skills...



And no 'lovely assistant' to teach this new 'light things on fire at the dinner table' trick to...



We had a quick errand to run after the lunch and before heading back to the house for cake and presents, so we took a leisurely stroll up (and down) State St, amongst the beautiful people, wearing our cheesey 'matching' outfits Dawson had specially requested...



We fit SO much into our day trip. We lunched, we caked, we ran errands, we hit the park, we even broke Grandma Violet out of her retirement home for a hot cocoa date.

This would NOT have happened so smoothly (if at all!) with the 2 of them (or at least not 2 of our children!). But... with just the boy, this day... was perfection. It was such a complete joy to feel like for one day the world stopped spinning in every direction around us, allowing us to focus on Dawson as he drank in all the new sights and sounds and places and things.

It made me feel validated for wanting to be a parent. And desperate for more quality one on one time with the 2 greatest kids I know.

I'll let you know which one we decide to get rid of in a later post. HA!