Now, be on your best behavior.

K and I had our first date away from Babers tonight. I had been thinking about this night for a couple weeks now, but I figured if I brought it up, K would say, "Are you completely mad?" But "mad" like a British person says it. Thus, I waited for her to bring it up, which she did this weekend.

Still, I mentally prepared for K to cry through the entire date. For K to talk about nothing except the daughter we are spending time away from. So I wanted to cover my bases. I wanted to bring my wife out for a night she wouldn't forget. I wanted her to have no choice but to focus on the outlandish splendor of the experience.

We went to Pizza Ranch.

Babers spent a couple hours with our friends, B and D. We trust them because 1) They have 4 children (three of which are triplets), 2) their children are turning out to be wonderful, and 3) B and D are awesome. It was really comforting to drop off Babers and not feel that we had to explain how to babysit. We didn't say, "Now D, if the baby cries, make sure to rock her while humming "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens." or "B, when she starts to fuss and smells like pee, you should change her diaper." We just said, "Here she is. We'll be back when we've gained 2 pounds of pizza."

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...
K and I enjoyed an hour and a half of looking at each other, eating very unhealthy food at an alarming pace, and talking in adult voices about whatever the heck we wanted. It was actually really fun. K didn't shed one tear, and she didn't say more than a few sentences about Babers (which is super hard if you know how utterly adorable she is).

Even though my wife and I had a totally romantic evening of eating and hearing about other people's vasectomies (yes, plural) and strolling by a karate lesson next door, we were still very excited to end the date and take home our baby girl.

When we got back to B and D's, our girl was looking about as calm as an 85-year-old man in a jacuzzi.

That helped us feel okay about maybe doing this again sometime.