One of my favorite things to do is to go on dates. Dates with Brian, dates with my girlfriends, dates with my kids. Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed in crowds of friends and family because it takes a bit of mental effort for me to keep my chatting small and light, and I forget that crowds are not the time and place to have deep, personal conversations.
But dates are different.
On dates you can talk real or light. And that feels much more comfortable to me.
It's a love language thing, really... I feel love easiest in the language of quality time - and dates are one of the best grounds to grow some quality time.
Anyhoo, so when Timothy asked me with those gorgeous eyes if we could take Buddy the Bear on a date, how could I refuse? And what better date than to the candy store.
Timothy is going to a preschool this year named Tiny Tots, which I really do think is one of the cutest names for a preschool (especially when said through the small voice of the preschooler himself). They read stories and color and play on the playground and do all sorts of other preschoolish things, and one of the best of those things is Buddy the Bear (or Honey the Bear if you happen to want the girl version). Buddy comes home with one child for the weekend and the kids the parents take him all over town for three whole days, snapping pictures and recording all of Buddy's adventures.
We took Buddy to a swim meet where he sat quietly and well-behaved behind the bleachers for the entire thing (I tried to point out his remarkable example to my own children but they didn't fall for it) and then he joined us afterwards at Sonic to watch everyone else eat and get in some good cuddles before heading home.
We had lunch dates, too, and each time I made lunch for Timothy I made sure to
I was concerned that Timothy would be a bit heartbroken when it was time to send Buddy back to school, but he was surprisingly neutral about it. So turns out my concern was for nothing (which seems to be the case more often than not).
More date ideas fell into the works when I stumbled upon the Smith Center website (Vegas's performing arts center) and found that Go, Dog, Go was going to be gracing the stage. My nostalgic heart strings pulled as I remembered little toddler Miles asking for that book again and again and again. He had the whole thing memorized! And so staring at that ad naturally made me feel that I just had to take him. And I figured Timothy might as well join us because, really, his age falls much more in line with the target audience anyway.
So i bought the tickets and we spent the next few weeks reading the book over and over again so the play would make sense (because, you know, the plot line is so intense with those Dr. Seuss books). When the day arrived, the three of us got dressed up (read: out of our lunch stained shirts) and showed up to find our box seats (fancy fancy).
I thought the show might be a little too young for Miles, maybe, but he giggled and enjoyed the whole thing. And Timothy was equally delighted. The two of them sometimes have a hard time getting along these days, so I was pleased to be able to forcibly cram some fun brother time in to (hopefully) remind them that they have a lot in common and that, really, it would be okay for them to get along. You know, if they wanted to.
After the show, Timothy was conflicted about meeting the famous dog characters when they all came into the lobby to mingle. Miles was not conflicted and stood far away with his hand in his pocket looking and acting entirely too old.
In the end, Timothy decided he did want to meet one. Just one. 'The blue one' (who had been his favorite), so we pushed our way through the crowds of other kids to take our turn and snap our picture. And you can see in his face that he hadn't completely made up his mind to be comfortable about it.
But then he wanted to meet the green one, too, so I guess there was a little element of excitement in there somewhere.
I'm lucky girl to get to be the first date of so many handsome boys.
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