This past weekend John and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. We actually got to celebrate twice. Our real anniversary was last Thursday and since Chris Thile and Mike Marshall (two of the best mandolin players in the world I hear) were in town, we decided we couldn't pass it up. I don't know much about playing the mandolin (OK, I don't know anything about playing the mandolin), but I do know that these guys are good. I spent most of the evening wondering how it was physically possible for a person's fingers to move that fast (and furthermore how a person's brain could remember all those notes to play that fast).
But the real celebration was to come Saturday night when we dropped Margot off at my parents for 24 hours! We spent the night at a hotel on the Plaza (the same hotel we stayed at the first night we were married) and pretended we were out of town for ONE WHOLE DAY. I wondered if we would know what to do with ourselves with an entire evening and day in our home city to do whatever our hearts desired.
The evening was awesome. We ate the most superb meal at Cafe Sebastienne in the Kemper Art Museum. We'd eaten brunch here once before, but I did not remember it being this good. We started off with spinach and ricotta gnocchi in a braised duck ragu. It was amazing. It's definitely one of the top ten things I've ever eaten. I followed that with grilled lamb chops with butter-roasted new potatoes in a roasted garlic-lamb reduction. John had the coffee-encrusted beef tenderloin on sweet potato gratin with caramelized onion sauce. Both were magnificent. We finished the meal off with flourless chocolate cake topped with fresh raspberries and cream. My mouth is watering just thinking about this meal. For those of you who live in KC, you need to put Cafe Sebastienne on your short list of restaurants to check out.
A movie was next on the "do whatever our hearts desire" list. This may not sound exciting to many of you, but since neither John nor I could remember the last movie we had seen in a theater, it was exciting for us. The winner: Walk the Line. For not knowing much (really anything) about Johnny Cash, I enjoyed it. It was difficult to witness (just a small portion I'm sure) of what he put his wife and children through. When the movie drew to a close, I found myself wondering what had happened with Vivian and the girls. Was she able to forgive him? Did he ever ask for her forgiveness? At the same time, I appreciated the redemptive nature of his relationship with June. It would be easy to make all kinds of judgements about their relationship, but I don't think anyone could argue that June was used in his life to help bring about redemption for him.
The next morning we enjoyed breakfast at reVerse (I wish I'd discovered earlier that they had great french toast) and then walked around the Plaza for several hours shopping at stores we normally visit and some we rarely do. Around 2pm, I must admit, we found ourselves running out of steam. I don't know if we just didn't know what else to do, if we missed Margot, or if we were craving our usual Sunday nap, but if eating a late lunch hadn't been an option at the time, I might have suggested that we cut the day short and go pick up Margot early.
Well, that ended up happening anyway. During lunch (eating out three meals in a row in your own city is a weird thing by the way), we received a phone call from my mom. Margot was crying hysterically b/c she had fallen out of her crib. Our "pretend day out of town" ended abruptly, but we weren't too disappointed b/c I think we were both secretly thankful that we now had an excuse to pick Margot up early.
The only downfall of the 24-hour day away? -- the subsequent several days of adjustment it has meant for Margot. Our daughter is amazing and I am VERY thankful for her sleeping habits (she sleeps until 8:30 almost every morning, she typically goes to bed without a peep, she says "bye-bye" in the most adorable way when you tell her goodnight). I definitely have no right to complain about Margot's sleeping habits. The only sleeping quirk of Margot's that can occasionally be difficult is she cannot stand to sleep anywhere but her own bed. And she especially dislikes the crib at my parents' house. She screams and screams and screams when my mom puts her in it, which is traumatic enough for my mom, but can also cause enough trauma for Margot in one night that for the following week she thinks we are going to leave her and continues the screaming pattern at home, even in her own crib. To complicate matters, since Margot got mad enough this time at my mom's and figured out how to crawl out of the crib (well, she crawled out one time, fell out the next), she is now able to crawl out of her crib at home. This is not a good thing. Not only because she could hurt herself on the launch from her crib to the floor, but also because she could mess herself up falling down the steep flight of stairs in our old home.
For the past three nights, John and I have tried to get creative with getting Margot to sleep while at the same time planning ahead for her protection should she choose to scale the crib walls again. In the meantime, we're trying to make the big decision of, "Do we transfer her to a toddler bed now, or do we just wait a little longer and trust the crib-jumping will pass?"
Oh the questions that parents must answer. This is serious stuff people.
And since I missed posting photos of Margot at Christmas, here are two shots of her trying to be the conductor of a train that is supposed to be a pull toy. She's not the best driver.
