A Night Away

One of my fears about having a second child is that I've never left Owen. I've left him a few times for 4 hours and ONCE for 8 hours. Never longer. Never overnight.

I didn't want the arrival of Baby Brother to be the first time I'd left Owen overnight so when we received an invitation to Jeremy's co-resident's wedding in Maryland, we asked Doda Kelly if she would be willing to take on an extra boy overnight. Kelly and Andy live in DC only 45 minutes from where the wedding was so Jeremy and I dropped Owen off for a sleepover and then headed to the wedding.

When we walked away I had to choke back the tears even though Jeremy said, "You can cry if you want to, it's okay."  --- but our boy? Just waved goodbye.  A few minutes later Andy texted us a picture of him rummaging through toys with Graham and Ben that said, "Already exploring!! No crying; doing fine ;)"

As we were getting ready, we got this message....

"Second cob of corn... he's an eating machine!"

The wedding was beautiful and it was outside at a secluded mansion. The ring bearer was about 2 and right after he walked down the aisle he lost it. He was screaming and wet-noodling all over the the ground while his mother embarrassingly escorted him somewhere less -- public. Jeremy and I looked at each other with that 'been there. done that." look and breathed a sign of relief when a text came in showing us what OUR boy was doing right at that moment....

"Ice cream and playground!!!"

We knew our little one was having MUCH more fun without us (and Doda Kelly let him have AN ENTIRE ICE CREAM SANDWICH while we usually give him half ;)  Aunts are supposed to spoil their god-sons and Owen was thrilled!)

I was actually very calm and thankful for the texts that read, "Bathtime... complete success! Owen doing fabulous"   and even though I started to get worried around bedtime I finally got a text that said he went to sleep (after asking Doda Kelly to read him a BA-ZILLION books) no problems.

Meanwhile...

Jeremy had LOTS to drink with his co-residents and danced the night away. I was having lots of contractions that night, so I didn't dance. And I was the designated driver and while I couldn't drink, his co-resident did hand over his cake and chocolate covered strawberries so that made up for him drinking my champagne and my shot of Colombian liqueur.

The way home at 12:45am was actually very comical as Jeremy tried to get me to drive the WRONG WAY down a one-way highway in the middle of nowhere and then repeated this the entire way back to our hotel, "Wow, I SHOULD NOT be driving." --- Um... YOU AREN'T DRIVING!!

I laughed when I woke up and saw this message,
"Owen slept through the night w/o waking up... actually he's still sleeping. God you guys are lucky... our kids have been up since 6:15..."

Owen apparently slept until 9am (per usual) even with the entire house awake around him. And we got an adorable picture of him eating his breakfast

When we arrived he didn't even look up from playing to acknowledge our existence. Kelly and Andy said he was perfect with no crying the entire time. I was so proud of our boy and so proud of myself for finally leaving him. Obviously the separation issues are now mine and NOT his, but I'm glad I did it.

Owen talked about his fun night the entire way home and even told me the next day that Doda Kelly didn't give him any dinner... only ice cream sandwiches!  Good thing I know better ;)