Engineering Good Times

It's been a busy couple days, I've had many child free times this week! Starting with a Wednesday movie outing with Libby! We both checked the kids in for the evening to see Coraline before we missed the 3D experience. I know - funny that our adult evening out is to see a "kids" movie but we'd both heard amazing things about it and had an acquaintance that worked on the film. Plus, I will say as an artist it was visually inspiring. 3D has gotten way better than when I was younger watching a black-n-white version of Swamp Thing or Night of the Living Dead wear the red-n-blue glasses with my dad.Wow, these movies always had my dad and I laughing.

This was a classic!

Thursday, we had a delicious dinner with Emma-Louise and Nathan at Dona Tomas in Oakland.
I'm going to weigh in and say I enjoyed the company better than the food. This is the 2nd time Patrick and I have eaten there. Both times we have felt the glorified Mexican did not meet the hype or it's overly-high price tag. I have had better Mexican at a small unassuming dive. I will say that this time, we did not catch any attitude from the hostess when inquiring about a table (as we have in the past). One time previously, we tried to have dinner here and got SO much arrogant snot from the host that I made us leave. You are probably wondering why I would even think of returning after all this.
The answer: I believe in the second chances AND the dinner company was stellar!

Friday Night was a BIG night. Our new parent friends, Alicia and Reuben called with last minute free tickets to Teatro Zinzanni, wacky circus of dinner theatre.

It's housed in the series of tent looking structures on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Many people have driven by this place a million times and wondered about it. (I can say I've had the pleasure of the Teatro 3 times now). I have a love of theatre and live performance, probably a hold over from when I was stage crew geek in high school. Sadly, Patrick and I don't go to the actual theatre as much as we should.

Anyhow, upon receiving such an exciting invitation to go to Teatro, I hopped on the phone too stir up a willing babysitter. Libby and Jen graciously volunteered for approximately 6 hours of babysitting! They are total rock stars! This was our first time leaving Alston. We had thought we'd ease into it by leaving him for a couple hours. Instead, we went from 0 to 60 real fast. The good news is I survived with little worry. I think I was more worried about our babysitters than I was about Alston, as I know he will survive even if he had a few tears. Even the best of babysitters can be at the end of their ropes, if an unusual uncontrollable volcano of tears erupts. Fortunately, all parties faired well...Alston, the babysitters and myself. Libby did say there was one hyperventilated crying spell that worried her for a moment. Alston has this gasping for air cry that he does sometimes...he can be a bit of a drama queen! All in all, it could not have been so bad because they offered to sit for us again. We are hoping to keep a regular babysitting trade going and watch Libby & Jen's son, Jasper!

The show/dinner was great! The food was surprisingly good for a dinner theatre. Patrick had a vegetable galette and I chowed on a steak. Mostly, it felt good to get out with some friends and not have to worry about wiping spit up or whether it was "feeding time". It was wonderful fun to get dressed up. Wearing something without nursing flaps is a novelty for me!

Yesterday, Patrick, Alston and I went to Jasper's 3rd birthday party which was slated to be steam train ride. Sadly, due to unpredictable weather Libby and Jen opted to relocate to their house. In the morning, I had a blast whipping up a "Pin the Engineer on the Train" game in case the kids were lamenting the loss of the days train activities. I say without a doubt that I learned the ability to think of (and do) something like this from my mom. I hope she is proud when she sees this post!
Here are the engineers ready to pinned (and colored if more activities are needed). I made them using the copy function on our home printer.
I do wish the train drawing was slightly better but hey, this is not half bad considering I had about 10 minutes and was drawing while juggling a 3.5 month old!

Another exciting milestone this week - Alston's first pair of JEANS! Looking very grown up and headed towards a modeling career!


Here is a shot of Patrick and Alston from the birthday party.