May 20, 2007 | Mama Smith

fridays after 7

Our new date night. Hallelujah. We have arrived.

With both our boys in bed by 6ish these days, an awesome babysitter lined up and our budget set for these four nights out a month, we have returned to the realm of glorious alone time together. We feel alive again.

And after a week of one boy down with a double ear-infection and the other down with a 5 day 100+ fever stint, we were in grave need of a night out.

We finally tried out Geechee Girl , a BYOB here in our neighborhood. Totally reminding me of my college year in Charleston. I feasted on low country shrimp n’ grits while Matthew devoured the pulled chicken and carmelized onions. We returned home a more rested and ready-to-love-our-sick-kids set of parents. A least for us, these date nights – of remember who we are as a couple and individuals – are a must.

Goofing off at Geechee Girl with Matthew’s new phone camera (yes! we have phones again!)...hence the awesome resolution and quality of these shots:

As for our sweet, sick boys, they’re on the road to recovery. The nasty pink stuff (aka: amoxicillin) is fiercely feuding against Levi’s infected ears. Seems like it’s winning so far. B’s fever is still up and down, with a new rash to accompany it. Not sure what’s going on with his poor body.

Although they continue to have fun together in spite of their bodies being less than 100%. I’ve been doing “underdogs” with B in the swing at the park. He’s taken to giving Levi “underdogs” (or so he thinks) in his swing at home. Levi’s not too thrilled about this and gets a terror-filled wide-eyed expression as B yells “UNdaDog!” sending Levi soaring as high as that little mechanical swing will go.

But L does love his brother, often giving him the best smiles out of the three of us in the family. B will lean over and say “Heeeey brother. Heeey why-why. Smile!”, and Levi will coo with delight, fulfilling B’s request with a goofy, bubble-blowing grin. B has recently taken to simply calling Levi “brother”, which is pretty dang cute.

Heading towards the 4 month mark, Levi is sleeping like a champ. He usually crashes by 6pm, then I wake him up again to eat around 10 or 11pm. Otherwise, he’s up just once more at 4am to eat, then snoozes until 7 or 8pm. If only he’d been here to help B do the same thing two years ago, maybe we wouldn’t have been up every 2 hours for 10 MONTHS with Brighton.

He has developed this freaky habit of clasping his hands in a sinister sort of way with his eyebrows raised, as you can see from the above shot. I often look up to find him staring at me like this and I can’t help but wonder what he’s plotting in his little mind.

Lastly, a much requested shot of Matthew’s new love-of-his-life…

Okay, to be fair, we’re all digging the new wheels, not just Matthew. I love not having my face crammed against the front windshield to give Levi’s carseat enough room in the seat behind me. Levi likes the tinted glass that keeps the sun from blinding him as his parents would always fail to see until he was practically scorched. And Brighton likes not having his head banged every time we scoot him into his carseat and being up high, driving around in a “BIG truck”, as he calls it. Although he does find the most interesting positions to sit in still…

It’s time to finish our torrented season finale of Lost, so this is all for now. Hope the weekend treated you all well. We enjoy margs with our neighbors, grilling out with our church buddies, and a surprise visit from my NYC brother. So I’d say it was a pretty sweet, filling weekend.