Tonight was a good night, if you disregard the part where Grace and I were pretty frustrated with each other. The part where she was bored out of her mind and I was trying very hard, without the help of a Daddy who was at work, to get us ready to go somewhere interesting. Because that part was pretty bad. She insisted on being held and I insisted on not holding her and she SCREAMED and SCREAMED and I was this close to joining her. But then I realized that with 27 years of life experience compared to her short 10 months, that me screaming would be wrong while her screaming was justified. Either way, it's hard to think rationally when so much screaming is to be had. Just saying.BUT!!!!
We made it. We got out of the house with cheese and ham and juice and graham crackers and sweaters and sunblock and a baby WITH a cute bow dang-it and went to a great little concert in a beautiful little community garden (and I ACTUALLY used all the stuff that I brought which is great because you hate to think that you spent a bunch of time packing stuff while your kid was screaming that you didn't actually need anyway...)
And Grace loved watching the singer (who reminded me what I want to name the next tiny girl one day, by the way...) and then she enjoyed crawling around, and then she would have enjoyed eating the bark-chips that lined the flowerbeds, but I decided she had consumed enough bark-chips last Tuesday at Gramma's house and licked enough dirt off rocks last night in the garden that her clay-dirt-vitamin-mineral-germ-bacteria-iron-bug quota had been met this week. Plus people were watching---which is the real reason I made her stop.
And then we went to In-n-Out, bought a strawberry shake which we shared with Daddy at work while he watered plants, and then, because no one was watching this time, we let Gracie play in the water and I took a sopping wet, very happy baby home to take a bath. And when she cuddled me with her wet hair and towel draped body, I knew that in spite of its very loud beginning, the night was, well,
Perfect.
