Date Night!

Eli and I had a date tonight. Schedules have taken over and we've been so busy recently that dates have not been happening as often as they should. Since we have reinforcements right now (Grandma Cathie), I took Eli on a date I'd been planning for a while: bowling. I didn't tell him where we were going ahead of time, just in case it didn't happen due to parties or leagues or whatever. Lucky for us, we walked in and got a lane right away! Eli was sooooo excited. He was excited about Mommy's bowling shoes (they didn't have any small enough for him), he was excited about picking out a bowling ball ("I want the boooo one!!"), he got excited about me entering his name onto the screen, he got excited about watching other people bowl....there wasn't anything he didn't get excited about! The smallest ball I could find was a 9-lb ball, but since I knew he'd just be rolling it, I figured it was no big deal. Eli showed me that he could not only carry it himself, but he threw it (aka dropped it) instead of rolling it half of the time! I requested the bumpers be put up, which allowed him to score above 50 in each of our three games. I threw a few balls, but only at Eli's request. ("I wanna see it go fast!") He was fascinated by the ball retriever/returner. "It go under da ground, Mommy?" And I only had to tell him once about not sticking his hand in it. We had a woman playing next to us, so we discussed bowlers etiquette, and Eli was quite good at respecting her space and waiting (patiently) for her to take her turn. If she was bowling, Eli would come and wait back at the ball returner with me, which is a good thing considering it took a full two minutes for his ball to make it's way down the lane. The g00d news is, I never once had to throw an additional ball down to 'prompt' a stuck ball.

After an hour of bowling, the two of us headed to Eli's favorite joint: The Flying Biscuit. Eli had eggs, chicken sausage, potatoes, and (of course) a wheat biscuit. I also gave him almost half of my garden burger. He was a little moody before our food arrived, but I'm pretty sure it was hunger talking: I was starving too. During dinner we talked about our plans for Sunday: pumpkin carving after dinner. Eli tells me we are going to carve a happy pumpkin. Or a scary pumpkin. Or a sad pumpkin. Depending on when you ask him, the answer varies slightly.