Birthday weekend

Happy Birthday to me!  I'm now 35 years old.  Yeesh.

A little while back, we planned on going out to dinner on Saturday night with friends.  Diana's parents were going to babysit, and we were going to have them do the whole Bedtime Routine with Allison.  To that end, we had them come over on Friday night and do a practice run (with us around), to see how it went.

So Friday night, after an afternoon of playing, Diana and I got Allison all ready for bed, and then in her bedroom started saying goodbye.  She got the idea that we were leaving, and wasn't really that down with that.  She walked us to the front door, and we said goodbye and pretended to leave, and heard her screaming and crying as Gramma Dawn carried her back to her room.  Ouch.  As soon as they were clear, we went back inside to the family room, and listened to the ensuing chaos on the baby monitor.

Dawn, for her part, was a trooper.  Allison was crying and calling for Mommy for along time, with Dawn provided a constant barrage of distractions that eventually took hold.  Soon they were chatting happily and playing in her room.  Better than crying, but not really making progress towards bedtime.  At some point, Allison decided that she needed a tissue, but a tissue from the Kleenex box in the room that Diana and I were standing in.  Dawn called down the hallway an "incoming" warning.  Diana and I literally hid in the curtains as Allison ran by a foot away from us, got a tissue, and ran back to her room.  We were in stitches.

Bedtime was rough, but she eventually calmed down and went to sleep.

Saturday, we repeated this whole process, but ended up leaving the house earlier, while she was still playing.  We said we were leaving, and she said "Bye Mommy!  Bye Daddy!" and had no problems walking us to the door and saying goodbye.  Dawn reported in through the night that she went to bed without any problems or tears.  The only issue was that at some point she stood up and took off her pants and diaper, and then lay back down and went to sleep again.  Given how full her diaper is in the morning, letting her sleep all night diaperless is NOT an option.  So when we got home, we did a ninja diaper re-application.  She woke up briefly, but was groggy and didn't stay awake.  Very cute.

Dinner was nice.  Unfortunately it conflicted with some previous plans with some folks, so it was a more intimate affair with Mike and Gwen and Little Buhr, but still a great time, followed up by some epic TF2 with Mike and our new "dueling medics" team play that had me in full smiles all alone in the dark in my office.

Sunday was my birthday proper.  We went to my parents house for breakfast and up to the park for some running around.  They got me the only thing I really wanted this holiday season, which was a PS3 Slim to replace the one that was stolen months ago.  We came home for lunch, and then I head over to Mike's for the Charger game.  At one point I looked around and noted that we had three 50+ inch TVs (each playing different games) and four laptops spread out in front of three guys.  It was a real Fantasy Football geek-fest.  Diana noted that Allison took her nap without a peep and slept for two and a half hours, which further let me relax and not feel guilty for being gone all afternoon.

Much of the evening was spent fiddling with the PS3 and getting it set up to stream ripped DVDs from my Windows Home Server.  The streaming works great, with only one tiny little perfectionist detail lacking.  Rather than seeing a generic "movie" icon next to each movie, there should be a way to show the box cover or movie poster for the movie.  A totally minor issue, but something I'd like to try to solve.

All in all, a decent weekend.  Coming up is Baditude's Annual Holiday Extravaganza, and New Year's plans are already being formulated.  And Diana is soon getting two whole weeks off for winter break!  Should be a fun couple weeks.