Two, Two, Two Awesome Days In One!

23Mar08

Yesterday, man, you could have sliced it right down the middle (OK, maybe right around 3:00) and it really would have been the best weekend we’ve had in ages. As one day it’s almost overwhelming how good it was.

Too good? Nah. But GOOD.

The birthday party was so much fun – just the right amount of chaos with seven kids ranging from 7 months to 4 years old – and made Brian and I leave going, “Aw, wouldn’t it be so much fun to have a really big family?” By dinner we were wondering what we’d been thinking earlier – must have been something in the cupcakes?

(This is Ben’s first-ever cupcake, which he decided to play with but definitely not to eat. Instead, he satisfied himself with the candle that had been on top, which he chomped on for several minutes while his cousin Chloe devoured her cupcake.)

It’s so neat watching Evan interact with other kids now; a few months ago other kids sort of put him off a bit but now he really likes touching other babies, “talking” with them, playing side-by-side with them. I don’t know if it’s his age or daycare or, probably, some combination of the two things, but it’s really amazing to see.

I wish I had a pic (Dawn – you’ve got one, right?) but probably the cutest thing all day was Evan, his high chair turned away from his little fried Chloe (one of the two birthday babies at this joint party), literally bending over backwards over the back of the chair to see her. I almost died.

(Here they are once we turned Evan around to be next to her, just chatting away and reaching out to touch hands, arms, faces… They were pretty darned cute.

I gave the birthday boy this book bag, which for some reason I just really enjoyed making. It’s navy corduroy with a royal blue flannel lining and an orange hand-embroidered helicopter on the front:

I gave Chloe her own Peanut, made with pink and green flowered fabric that I never get to use for baby things because every other baby I know is a boy. I forgot to take a picture, though. I’m always doing silly things like that.

The second half of the day was spent celebrating my birthday (which is tomorrow!). We left Evan with a sitter and had such a fun afternoon and night. We hit the short north (the arts district in Columbus that even five years ago (when we lived there) was kind kitschy but now is pretty posh) and walked through all these wonderful stores – vintage and consignment stores, fancy-schmancy clothing stores, and the most incredible store we’ve ever been to, Collier West, where we both fell in love with everything, absolutely everything, by this guy.

Swoon. (At the goods and the prices, frankly.)

After Collier West we ended up at Substance, a clothing store where we saw loads of lovely clothes I wish I could have but can’t afford and where upstairs, a woman sits sewing at her Singer. It was really neat and, frankly, inspiring. It really made me want to just sit in an upstairs loft sewing beautiful clothes all afternoon.

We ended with dinner and dessert at an excellent Italian restaurant where I would have taken some pics but, honestly, got too caught up in the conversation with my hub. It was what single people would call a perfect date – we spent six hours together ad never ran out of things to do or say, we laughed, we talked about things we didn’t even realize we hadn’t talked about in awhile. It was truly excellent.

Everything an almost-birthday girl could ask for. Including free tiramisu for dessert.

Swoon again.

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