Parents' Night Out

Well, Biscuit's first solo social outing was a big success! He's just now winding down.

I picked up Biscuit at 4:30, the had to take him right back at 5:30. Kids could get dropped off as early as 5:20, but since it seemed like we had just gotten home, I waited and got us there right at 5:30. Big mistake!

Many parents hadn't paid in advance, so there were two huge lines of people waiting to sign up. Luckily, this guy stepped out and said, "If you prepaid, come into the middle line."

We still had to wait about 10 minutes, but it was nowhere near as long as the not-yet-paid line.

I had to give Biscuit's name, his teachers name and his grade. While I was checking him in, I told Biscuit to walk around and see if he could find anybody he knew. And before I could get him checked off the list, he was trying to spread out his blanket next to a boy from his after-school class.

I walked over and Biscuit and the boy were already involved in conversation. So I helped him spread out his blanket adjacent to the other boy's blanket, and Biscuit crawled on. I couldn't even get him to say goodbye to me.

That's always good and bad. Good because he's independent, and he isn't at all nervous about me leaving because he knows 100% that I'm coming back to get him. Bad because he's growing up too fast and doesn't need me as much anymore.

Biscuit is sitting on the red firefighter blanket. It's one of those
tie-together blankets with firefighters on one side and horses on the
other side. His aunt made it, and he used it as his everyday blanket at
day care. I think he's been missing it because he pulled a long string up
on the side, and said, "Check it out, Mom. This is snakey." I think he
knows it pretty well if he can point out a particular strand of fabric.

So I was later leaving than I had hoped. I didn't get away from the school until about 5:45. I met Jeff at the fancy kitchen store to spend my gift card. Jeff did a really good job of pretending to be interested!

If you read the paper they sent home about the event, you'd see the time listed as 5:30 to 8 p.m. But if you put it into real time, you'd see that I didn't leave the school until 5:45. I didn't get to the shopping center until close to 6 p.m. I spend some time walking around the store, until about 6:45. We had to wait a little bit at the restaurant, and we knew we'd have to leave the restaurant at 7:40 to get Biscuit. So Jeff and I had about 40 minutes together for our "date."

We did have a really good dinner, though. We went to a Japanese restaurant we like. We've only eaten there at lunchtime, and we were quite surprised to find a whole different menu for dinner.

I can count on one hand the amount of times I've taken a picture of my dinner, but tonight, I couldn't help it. It was pretty, and it smelled great, and it tasted even better.

It's called Tendon (pronounced 10 Don). It featured shrimp tempura with a teriyaki sesame sauce, broccoli, carrots, zucchini and yams. All over rice.

The shrimp made a little teepee, and the circle around the top is a
big onion ring. The rice and veggies are under the shrimp structure.

We finished just in time, and I dropped Jeff off at his car with exactly enough time to get to the school by 8 p.m.

When I pulled into the parking lot, a PTA member was directing traffic. It was basically curb service for kids. You pull up and give your kid's name, then on of the volunteers stuck her head into the multipurpose room and yelled the kid's name.

Biscuit came right out, and he talked excitedly all the way home.

I'm really glad Biscuit had a good time. Biscuit is pretty open to trying new things, but if he doesn't like it the first time, he doesn't want to do it anymore. But since tonight was as fun as it was, I think he'll want to go to the next thing, too.