Mom and Dad's First Date?

Making up our minds to go to California and Hawaii with baby for a family vacation was nothing compared to deciding to attend a social event and leave her for an evening, an entire evening, with someone other than ourselves. We didn’t get out the butcher paper and draw a line down the middle the way we did to make the vacation decision, but we probably would have simplified things if we had. Nonetheless, after a lot of looking at this one Friday night in January from every conceivable angle, it slowly became clear to us that baby might survive to live another day, if not actually benefit from the experience.

In the event, we enjoyed our time away from baby and returned to my wife’s parents to find baby laughing with her same-age cousin – successfully hiding the scars caused by our leaving her for the evening, in other words. In fact, the whole endeavor was such a success that we’re liable to repeat it. Say, in about six months.