Date Night

Good news...life as parents is progressing!  Several weeks back, Geoff and I decided it was time for us to get out of the house minus Baby and figured my birthday was a good reason to do it.  We made reservations at a restaurant here in Houston called Mark's.  We had never been there before, but had heard good things about it from friends for a long time. The restaurant is in an old church building, so it has a very romantic and intimate ambience.  Choosing the restaurant and making the reservation was the easy part.  Next came finding a babysitter.  Fortunately, our good friends Jonathan and Blakely had volunteered to babysit whenever we needed them, so we took them up on their offer for the evening. 

Olivia did great with her first babysitters.  I think her parents did pretty good too.  We didn't call or text Jonathan and Blakely to check on her.  Plus, I don't think we really talked about her that much either, which is a good thing.  It almost felt like our pre-baby days except now we have the extra bonus of having a super cute baby and her sweet smiles waiting at home for us.  :)

After our successful first night out, we decided to leave Olivia behind for a more extended period of time while we went to our work Christmas parties this past Saturday.  The parties both happened to fall on the same night, so we were going to double dip.  We didn't want to take up another evening of Jonathan and Blakely's so we needed to find another sitter.  Geoff's running coach had referred a college girl to us as a potential nanny.  After meeting Nora, we weren't ready to hire her as our nanny, but she seemed like she would be a good babysitter.  Saturday had been a very busy day for us and Olivia was a little off her routine, so when Nora got here, Olivia was abnormally fussy and not her usual self.  Not a good start, but we were able to get her calmed down before we left and the evening seemed to be another success.  I think Nora will be a good babysitter for Olivia going forward.

Geoff and I had a great time at our parties.  I enjoyed getting dressed up after spending much of my time these days with spit up or worse on my clothes.  Plus, it was really fun to see a lot of my co-workers I haven't seen in months.  We were gone almost seven hours which is the longest that I've been away from my baby.  It was hard.  I missed her a lot and tried not to worry that she was taking her bottles, going down to sleep, etc.  I kept telling myself that it was good practice for when I go back to work (Only four more weeks....ahhhhh! More on that to come soon in a future post.) and am away from her for much, much longer periods.  I'm sure I will get used to it and it will get easier over time.  At least that's what I'm hoping for anyways.  We'll see....