We started by going to Pei-Wei, which is not on Nancee's favorites list, but it is on mine. Since I had a coupon and no Nancee with me, dinner was a no-brainer. After dinner, (which consisted primarily of fortune cookies for Sadie,) we went up to the north side of town to the Winterhaven Festival of Lights. This decision was last-minute, since Erica actually slept on the drive to Pei-Wei (after vehemently fighting a nap a few hours before). This nap was the only way she could survive Winterhaven, and even then her survival turned out to be questionable at best. She made it about half a block.
Luckily, what were the best two houses were in that half a block. Guess who's favorite this one was:
Erica could name every Disney Princess couple there. The picture's not great, but it's also not too bad considering I was holding a squirming 1-year-old at the time.
Then we came to this house. I love the programmed lights choreographed to music, but this one took it to the next level with a lit fountain too. Click here to see a video of it.
It's too hard to tell in the dark, but Sadie is dancing her head off. She wormed her way to the front of the crowd, cheering and clapping at the end of each song. Way fun. We had been at the festival of lights for all of 10 minutes, and Erica was already whining to go back. We did stop at the princess house again, at which point Erica proclaimed it to be better than the fountain house. I planned on taking a ton of pictures, but the picture you don't see is me with my arms full carrying both girls out of Winterhaven. Not enough arms for pictures.
Despite my efforts to get all her pee out in the restaurant, and despite the fact that I had been carrying her for a while, Erica said "all this walking is making my pee come. I have to RIGHT NOW!" I quickly walked to a Quik Mart. Think of whatever pops into your mind when you hear the words "gas station bathroom", then hit the 3rd world country bathroom button a couple times, and you have the bathroom that the 3 of us found ourselves in. It was more like a chemical storage cellar with a toilet. The linoleum was missing in most places, there were cans of oil and de-greaser on a precarious shelf which Sadie started to inch towards, and the room had about 3 square feet of floor space. Erica saw the bright side: "Wow! It smells good in here! and look! It has ducks! I like this bathroom!" I guess some of the heavy cleaners on the old shelf and the 40-year-old, peeling duck wallpaper had more value than meets the eye.
Then the conversation on the drive home:
Erica: "Daddy, can you talk to me about boys and girls? Please?"
Me: "Sure. What do you want to know?"
Erica: "What if you put the wrong stuff on a baby when it came out of your belly and you didn't know if it was a boy or a girl?"
Me (interpreting this as a question of controlling gender at birth): "Well, you were a girl spirit before you were born so you got a girl body, and I was a boy spirit before I was born so I got a boy body."
Erica: "How does the baby get in the mommy's tummy?"
Me (figuring I'm perfectly within my right to dodge this question for another few years): "Well, when a mom and dad are married and they are ready to have a baby, the baby grows in the mom's belly."
Erica "But how does it get in the mom's belly? Can you talk to me about it daddy? Please?" (That's a direct quote. It's like she KNEW I was hiding something.)
Me: "... ... (then repeated previous answer.)"
At that point I was saved by McDonalds: "Look! A play place!" Conversation diverted.
Then we talked at length about how she was scared to have a baby, and she's scared it will hurt. All things I want her to be deathly afraid of until she's 25. Then she cried a bit about how she missed being 3 years old. We talked about time, and how you can't speed it up or slow it down. Erica asked if time is a special machine. It's interesting seeing how her mind works. I also thought it was cool when we looked at some really tall trees with lights in them and she said "I wonder how they got the lights in those trees." She's a thinker.
Well, at least I thought it was a blog-worthy night. Thanks for reading, if YOU'VE survived this post with no nap.
