I Had a Date With My Son Yesterday...

and it was really sweet.
This last weekend our little family headed up to Carmel Valley for a much needed visit with my parents. It had been way too long since we had traveled all the way up north-as opposed to meeting them in SLO-and it was wonderful, relaxing, and fun. I will post pictures soon, but the short story is that Bennett did great in the car (7 hours each way without a single gripe! Better than I can say for myself), and great during the day (he pulled out every vocab. word he has for his Grammy, Bumpa, and Mombo). He struggled with sleep, however, which is normal for him when we go out of town. This brings me to our date. Yesterday morning little B. and are were both pretty tired from a few nights in a row of interrupted sleep, so I wanted to do something a little more mellow than our usual park/play date/etc. So we headed over to the marketplace where we usually walk around the pond to look for ducks before shopping at Trader Joe's or Bennett's favorite store. Lately Bennett has become more and more interested in visiting with people as we pass by the coffee shop than he is in duck hunting. So today, we stopped in and I grabbed a drink, and as we headed over to the duck-filled waters, I asked Bennett if he would like to sit for a minute with all the other coffee and tea drinkers. He thought this was a brilliant idea (sit on a grown-up chair, say "hi" to the passers-by, and look for dogs and tiny birds-what almost two-year old could pass this up?). So we sat down for what I thought would be a couple of minutes, and those minutes turned into a half of an hour. It was so nice to just sit, chat, and look at the birds, dogs, and people with my little guy. I think it was our first real date, so I needed to write about it.

Here's a quick video of Bennett dancing while Bumpa plays his guitar.