Better weekend coordination

While Sunday is not yet over, I feel comfortable saying this weekend went better than last weekend. Partly, it was that there was no swim meet, and I wasn’t trying to run 10 miles. But even aside from that, things felt much more smoothly coordinated.

We started on Friday with a quick stop at one of my husband’s work events (cocktail hour) before we did date night at Cerise, a great BYOB in our neighborhood. I had beet soup and duck, among other things. This was our first date night in 2 months, so yay. Then it was my husband’s night to take the baby, so I slept until 7 a.m. Double yay!

Unlike last weekend, we opted for the much more sensible strategy of leaving the toddler at home during big kid sporting events. I took my 7-year-old to flag football from 8:30-10 a.m. It was freezing. My little football player spent half the game snuggled on my lap to keep warm. Then we switched off and I played and read with the toddler at home while my husband took the 5-year-old to soccer. The toddler was not thrilled with this set up (he saw us getting on shoes and tried to get his, saying “Take me!”) but both of us got to watch and cheer for our other kids.

Things almost went off the rails at lunch. We had not really made plans for the rest of the day except promising the kids we could go to the “Train diner” (Ruby’s Diner) for dinner and everyone was complaining about various things we proposed for the afternoon. But then we settled on going to the Franklin Institute once the toddler got up from his nap. I put him down and he slept quite nicely from 12:30-3. During that time I went for a run and made lots of drawings with the 5-year-old.

We got to the Franklin Institute around 3:30 and enjoyed the Robot Revolution exhibit, although half the robots appeared to be broken. I’m slightly less concerned about the robots taking over the world after that. Then it was off to Ruby’s, where we had burgers and shakes.

After baths, I watched the first half of the Texas A&M game before trying to go to sleep. Unfortunately, waking up at 7:00 makes it hard to go to bed at 10:00 p.m. I probably lay there for much of an hour — frustrating because the baby woke up at 4 a.m. I gave him a bottle in his crib and got him back to sleep by 4:30, but then I couldn’t fall back asleep, though that was perhaps just as well because he got up for good at 5.

I made my coffee and read various weekend essays and punditry while he watched Dora until 6:30, when we went to Wegman’s for both the regular groceries and fruit and cheese platters for church (we were the official greeting family and I wanted to spruce things up a bit from pretzels and Oreos). We got home a bit before 8, and started the process of getting ready for church. I had to be there at 9:30 with the 9-year-old because he was the child representative for a baptism. He read some of the vows, and presented the families of the babies with children’s Bibles. He did so well — reading loudly and clearly! We raced out during the last hymn to set up the cheese and fruit (and police the Oreos — wow, do those things go fast). We hit the playground for a few minutes before heading home.

This transition was tough — we were trying to get lunch and get me and the 7-year-old out the door, and my 9-year-old was being a bit rude in general (maybe the church performance took a lot out of him). But we sorted things out eventually, and my 7-year-old and I made it to Lincoln Financial Field for the Eagles’ game by about halfway through the first quarter.

I haven’t been to that many NFL games in my life, so I was somewhat amazed at the dollar figures associated with this. Our tickets were sort of a late birthday present/mollifying present to the 7-year-old since my husband had only taken the 9-year-old to College Station Texas for an Aggies game in September (and the 7-year-old had really, really wanted to go). The tickets for OK seats were at least twice the cost of really good baseball seats. The parking was also twice as expensive ($40!!!) And I guess I’d not been in football stadiums recently, because I didn’t know you couldn’t bring bags. Fortunately, I’d brought a pretty old tote bag, so I was willing to sacrifice it for the clear bag the guard gave me when we got to the metal detectors, which were about a mile from where we’d parked. My 7-year-old enjoyed the game, though I honestly think that getting a giant hot dog and a bottle of Gatorade might have been more exciting for him than the Eagles winning (Possibly because the game itself was not that exciting from our perspective: we missed their first touch down while climbing into the stands. We missed their second touch down when we were in the bathroom). But hey, any weekend afternoon when I can sit outside in nice sunny weather drinking a beer and not chasing someone is a good time.

Now it’s home, and I’m taking a little time to post this before my husband gets back with the other kids from their excursion (probably something zoo or aquarium related). I plan to be in bed at about 9 p.m.  because, unfortunately, with the way our family schedule works, I am on baby duty tomorrow morning.