Weekend Overfloweth

What a great weekend!

Saturday morning I got to sleep in until 8.  It would have been perfect except that I woke to the sound of a screeching toddler telling her Daddy "NO MAMA DOOOO IIIIIITTTTT!!!!".  Oh boy.  So I got up and tried to reason with her, explaining that, in fact, Dada CAN help her put her pants on - not just Mama.  Turns out, reasoning with a teenager 2 year old is pointless because they will just yell "NO!" and slam the door in your face.

Saturday afternoon/evening, while Eliza spent the better part of the day with her Grandma and Grandpa (and also fell asleep for them - WOOHOO!!), hubby and I went to dinner with my brother and SIL to a really cool new(ish) restaurant in our area.  It was, in a word, epic.  In every way - the FOUR HOUR WAIT for a table was epic (no reservations accepted - OMGZ PEOPLE), the 10-course chef's tasting menu was epic, the bottle of wine that we brought was epic, and the hour at which we got home - the latest since before Eliza was born - was epic.  I'll stop saying epic now.

Sunday morning, after 5 very interrupted hours of sleep, I woke up with the girl and we made coffee.  Well, actually she made me coffee.  She now knows how to work our k-cup machine.  WHAT THE?  Then Daddy woke up and we made breakfast.  My brother had given us some venison potato sausage that he made (like, from beginning to... er... end... let's not talk about it), so we cooked that up along with some Norwegian waffles.  I didn't know the Norwegians were big waffle people, but, apparently, I was very wrong.  And I'm glad, because those things were YUMMY.  We all helped - Eliza sat at the counter and took fistfuls of flour "for pizza dough" (?) and spread it on the countertop (wait did I say help?), Dada cooked up the sausage, and I womanned the waffle maker.

Later in the morning, I left Daddy and Daughter on their own (and in their pajamas) to go have lunch with a dear friend for her birthday.  There were four of us there, but I didn't know the other two women.  It was so delightful and... much needed (though I chastised myself on the way home for talking so much; I do that when I get nervous, I've realized).  The two women I didn't know turned out to be veteran mamas who had nursed toddlers, nightweaned/weaned them, and were on the other side.  It felt really good to ask them questions, find support and understanding in their experiences, and, honestly, just to be meeting new people!  It struck me that I don't do that often.  Remember when you were little and you made new friends easily, and all the time?  Anyway.  It was nice.

And then I came home and took a nap!

Sunday night, we took Eliza to her first musical!  It was a Children's Theater performance of Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We didn't know what to expect from Eliza during the show, being newly 2 and not known to sit still for 90 minutes at a time, but with $10 rush tickets, we didn't have much to lose.  But the minute that curtain rose, we knew we had nothing to worry about.  She was captivated.  She smiled, laughed, clapped, stared, and was completely in love with the entire experience.  I had an unexpected emotional mama moment when I saw her face as she watched the show - I actually teared up.  I know.  Come ON, Ella, it was HAROLD. AND THE FREAKING PURPLE CRAYON.  But something about the whole experience - the specialness (I know that is not a word OMG I just looked it up and it turns out it's a word), making such a fun memory together as a family of three, having it hit me that, yep, she IS big enough, old enough, READY for big kid things like this... it just alllllll hit me and made me cry a little bit right there while a slightly overweight (and 40-something) Harold was leaping and dancing across the stage in blue footie pajamas.  It was so much fun, and I didn't want it to end (It was the perfect length though, so I'm also glad it ended when it did!).  It was the cherry on top of a perfect weekend.

Without a doubt, this weekend delivered.  And once again, I asked myself how I got so lucky.