First Night Out

For Mom and Dad that is. Baby stayed in. It was a night of firsts for us actually.
James' company Christmas party was on Friday night, so we had James' goddaughter Morgan look after Rowan. She'll be 15 this week (Morgan, not Rowan), and way more responsible than any of us were at that age, but you still worry. Will the baby sleep for her? Will she make strange? What if she won't take the bottle? What if she cries endlessly for poor Morgan? All these fears were of course, unfounded.
Rowan slept most of the night, took the bottle no problem and even went to sleep in the cradle at bedtime. What a great kid! Morgan did great too. She only had to call us once and that was to ask where the kettle was. What a great older kid! Mom didn't fare quite as well.
I was fine at the beginning of the evening, the excitement of being out with a bunch of adults who can say more than "Ahh! Oh!", having some really tasty wine (if you've never been to Souleo, we highly recommend spending an hour or so looking through their large selection of wines), and having a lovely dinner. It was around 10pm when we were curling (yes, I curled. I even kind of enjoyed it), that I started to get antsy. How's Rowan doing? Does she miss me? Should I call? I want to call, no I won't call. They're fine. But I want to call! I didn't call. Everything was fine, but wow, did I miss her! I see her all day, everyday, and I still missed the little pooping drooling machine. I mean, what if I missed a smile, a new sound, her grabbing a toy all by herself? Of course it's good for me to get out, but you wonder what you might be missing while you're away. She was asleep when we left, the cab was early so I didn't get to say a proper goodbye, and then when we got home, she was asleep. Which was good, but part of me wanted to wake her up to tell her I missed her and see if she missed me. Since I hadn't nursed her in hours, I was uncomfortable and had to pump (by hand as my borrowed electric pump was on the fritz), adding to my frustration. Needless to say, I didn't get to sleep for over an hour after we got home. Which led to our next first: Daddy taking a 4am feeding. [DAD EDIT: Nope, not the first time.]
I was smart and since I was still awake when James came to bed, I asked him to take the 4am feeding (if there was one) since we still had some thawed breast milk in the fridge. For my sake, I'm glad I did. I then got to sleep until 9am, which made up for a bit of the sleep I missed earlier in the night. For James though, I felt terrible. Rowan wasn't content with just one bottle, she wanted two. So my lovely man, at 4:30 in the morning, was thawing out extra breast milk and was up for about 2 hours feeding Rowan. I'm so lucky!
I was so happy to see her when she woke me up at 9am, I scooped her up and we played for a bit before nursing, just so I could see her smile.
We'll be doing it again next weekend since we're going out to a movie and dinner with some friends, but this time she'll be hanging with Gramma Lynne and Grampa Doug. It'll be dress up and picture time again!