We’ve been long overdue for a date night, so this weekend T and I left Danielle to fend off the vicious baby-beast for a few hours while we enjoyed an evening to ourselves. It started with dinner at one of the six billion steakhouses in the greater Bangor area, where the hostess, mistaking us for sports fans, seated us on wobbly bar stools inches from a giant flat-screen TV that was blaring something about football. How… romantic? I had an internal debate with myself–do I want to be one of “those” people and ask to move, or should I suck it up and deal with it?  I decided on the former, because as I told Tim, if I wanted to eat steak in a rickety chair next to a giant TV, I could do it at home–and for much less! But once we were settled in a booth, the crab-stuffed filet and the pomegranate margarita more than made up for it.

Dinner was followed by the late showing of Alice in Wonderland, during which I could barely keep my eyes open. I literally nodded off four times. It could have been the result of being up past my bedtime, but honestly, I don’t think so. The 3-D made me dizzy (odd, I don’t usually have that problem), the characters were flat, the pace was rushed and the story felt sloppy. Our movie choices recently have been hit or miss, leaning more toward the “miss” side of things. Oh well. If nothing else, it got us out of the house for a few hours!

In unrelated news, it’s been a while since I’ve posted gratuitous baby photos, so here you go. Insert lamentation about how fast she’s growing, how I wish she’d stay little for longer, how I can’t believe she’s almost 15 months old, yadda yadda yadda. I’m too entranced with her sweet face and those adorable pudgy cheeks to be coherent about it.

My germs, let me show you them.

Let me just say, I truly underestimated the sheer amount of sickness that having a child in daycare brings to the family. Before Ellie came, I used to joke about my immune system of steel. Oh, I was so cocky.

Now every time El brings home a bug, it’s almost guaranteed I’ll get it, too. Cold, stomach flu, pinkeye–you name it, we’ve had it! And while Ellie is miserable for only a couple days (if that), whatever I catch seems to linger. (Meanwhile, Tim, who’s normally the infection-prone one, has hardly had any problems. Go figure.)

I’m beginning to wonder if the daycare is just a front for a government-run germ-manufacturing facility whose real purpose is to develop new agents for biological warfare… and we’re their unsuspecting test subjects. Paranoid? Me?

I’m just kidding, of course. Fighting The Sick in a daycare is a losing battle that not even a truckload of disinfectant could win. Babies are little germ factories.

All this complaining because Ellie is down with cold number I’ve-lost-track, and I’m watching for the next cold symptoms in myself–because you know that’s how it will go down. I have to keep reminding myself that no family can exist in a bubble, and at least she’ll be well-prepared for the germ bath that is grade school.

As for me… well… there’s always Nyquil.