After a pretty quiet winter, we've had a wonderfully social spring. There's something about not socializing that makes you (maybe just me) quietly paranoid that all of your friends have gone off to find someone more fun to spend time with. That's one reason why, as most of you guys know, we like to throw giant barbecues right around this time of year, so we can see everyone all at once and be like, "Oh, right! Friends! Eat our food and never leave us again!"
No barbecue this year, but now that we have Sadie, it's made more sense to spread out our visits and do it often. Things we wouldn't have bothered to do a few years ago -- going to the beach, going to the pool, having people over, social daytime visits that don't involve getting smashed on margaritas -- are finally appealing.
Spring began with a trip up north to visit my Mills friends, which I wrote about a little while back. That was like the spring kick-off tour. I felt like a vampire slowly crawling out of her coffin and blinking in the sunlight that is interaction with people her own age. We drank wine and ate homemade vegan risotto and stayed up past my bedtime.
After we came home, I started lining up play dates for Sadie. Aside from seeing our friends David and Tara and their son Sam, who's almost two now, we also had an afternoon with Addy, a girl Sadie's age whom we met through physical therapy. One afternoon soon after, we went to the LA Zoo with my friend Birge and her daughter Nova. A few days later, we were at Scott's best friend's house hanging out with their two kids, and another pair of friends and their young daughters.
One of the better evenings was last Saturday. My old friend Matthew and his wife Sarah (who read this blog -- HI, YOU TWO, WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE BURGERS AND ELMO) were in town for a wedding and brought their 18 month old son Zachary over so we could fire up the grill. In retrospect, this was kind of a foolhardy idea -- I'd already forgotten that 18 months is smack in the middle of the "let's see if I can crawl up on THIS dangerous object" phase of life. How neither of our kids managed to walk into a flaming hot grill is beyond me, but we stayed emergency-free. And even if something had happened, Sarah is a doctor, so we'd have been totally good.
I am what they call a "casual mom," by the way.
I used to be afraid of little kids, especially ones who could walk and talk and judge you with their eyes. Now, I like them okay. I still like my own the best, though.
We TOTALLY enjoyed the burgers and Elmo (as opposed to the Elmo burgers -- that would have been odd.) It was great to see you guys, catch up for far too short a time, and get to meet Sadie, who is every bit the doll you make her out to be. Hope we can do that sort of thing more often than once, ever, but couldn't guess when the next time might be. I'd say come to Houston, but really, who are we kidding? Hope you're all well!
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