First date

Eric and I had our first baby-less date last Thursday. We are helping the symphony finish out the season, having swapped our tickets for the last performances of the season.

We got dressed up. I wore the dress I was wearing the very first time I met Eric* which is loose with a tie around the waist to give it shape. It was as flattering a dress as a two months postpartum woman could hope for. I dressed it up with three inch black patent leather heels that I need to relearn how to walk in. Eric wore nice slacks and a sharp dress shirt. We looked elegant.

We left Emerson with Sarah, her sister Liz and Rob. Three adults to two babies seemed like fair odds for Emerson's first evening without at least one of his parents.

The symphony menu that night included Wagner, Berg, and a Beethoven violin concerto. Before it started we made a bet as to how much the soprano for the Berg would weigh: I took under 170 lbs**, Eric took over. Eric won unambiguously.

"What do you think?" Eric whispered to me after the first movement of the Berg piece, a modern, somewhat atonal work.

"I think they should be just about tuned up." I responded. It was not my favorite.

During intermission, I snagged a table and Eric got us celebratory drinks. He ordered two glasses of port, stumping the rookie bartender who, after looking everywhere for glasses and then everywhere again for the port, poured two very generous glasses of port. The veteran bartender's eyes got very large when he noticed, but he let it slide.

It felt nice to be out with adults, looking elegant and making adult conversation. As the lights dimmed for the second half, Eric asked me what the violinist's name was.

"It's Anus," he heard me respond, triggering a merciless bout of church giggles. Checking the program and seeing James Ehnes listed as the soloist only seemed to make it worse.

When we got to Sarah's place to pick up Emerson, Sarah was a little sheepish.

"The only place we could get him to sleep was in his carseat," she explained as she opened the door to the guest room where the carseat was placed on the bed.

We were not surprised: we often end up doing the same thing.

*And which has also been central to a Viking Halloween costume
**Apparently I was feeling generous