Taking Time for Just Us Two, Part 1 by Heather Bowles

Good afternoon, ladies! I hope your weekend is going as swimmingly as mine! I can hardly believe it, but we’ve only just over 5 weeks to go in this pregnancy, as expected by due date, anyway. My husband and I finally broke down and dropped our daughter at a daycare today. It has been over a year and a half since we’ve seen a movie in a theater, and I’ve been itching fiercely for some one-on-one time with my favorite fellow Geek In Crime, so we took in a matinee showing of Ironman 3 this afternoon.

I typically like the Marvel movie franchise, although I’ve read very few of the original comic books. Mostly, to me, it’s about pretty people, science fiction (or to my way of thinking, science we haven’t made happen yet) and lots of explosions. If it has killer robots drilling through the earth’s core to steal a massive block of some incredibly rare, unintelligible sounding metal (qwertygeraniasterium, maybe? Don’t listen to me, I’m just making stuff up…) and the theft will stop the earth turning on it’s axis, great! We all know the hero stops the super villain in the last 5 minutes of the film, saves Madame President and of course gets a kiss from her. And everything is fine until the sequel.

I spent most of this film distracted, though. I kept checking my phone just to make sure the daycare hadn’t called. I sat there thinking… was 4 diapers enough? Daddy said he only packed 4. I hope she eats her snack. What if she misses me too much to eat? Is she getting along with the other kids? They better get along with her. I’ll stomp a mudhole in any little punk who messes with my girl! …etc. etc.

As luck would have it, the daycare did call… during the final credits. Her diaper rash was severe due to a hard jag of teething this week. She has 5 teeth now, and her speech is improving sooooo much! Apparently, the rash opened up and bled a little as she was getting a wipe down. The poor girl who called me must have thought it was her fault, because she was talking a mile a minute, and the soundtrack playing over the credits was so loud that I had to excuse myself from the theater just to understand her.

We went straight back to the daycare after the flick was over. Apparently, her daddy had been just as concerned for her as I was. He just hid it better. We watched her playing through the front window for a few minutes before going in to pay and pick her up, and you know? She seemed pretty happy and content, and even though one boy appeared to be having a hard time of things when we got there, the sitters seemed calm and cool about it.

I think we’ll try again in a couple weeks, assuming Harmony doesn’t come early. There’s a new Wolverine movie out that we’ve been waiting to see. Who knows, we might even relax while we watch it!

Tags: date night, daycare, Ironman 3, movies, separation anxiety