A Late Night Out

As previously stated, Chase is a schedule kind of guy. He likes predictability. He also likes to sleep in his own bed. This makes it difficult to stray very far off course with his bedtime. Normally it gets pretty ugly if you keep him up even 10 minutes past his bedtime and you can just forget about him sleeping in a stroller or your arms. Not that this is a bad thing -- it's fabulous having a child who loves his 12 hours of uninterrputed sleep in his own bed -- but it does make a social life with kids in tow past 7:30 difficult difficult. So when we were invited over for dinner by our friends Doug and Leslie, I didn't have terribly great expectations (apart from knowing that the food would be excellent -- it was -- and that the company of great friends would be a lot of fun. People with adult children do not remember what it's like to have young kids who crave schedules, so I started to panic when dinner wasn't on the table until well past 7:00 (typical melt-down time). Much to my surprise, Chase was having so much fun, he forgot to notice how late it was. He climbed stairs, walked around holding the hand of anyone who would acknowledge him, cruised around on the furniture, stared for long periods of time at the ceiling fans, and just generally had a big time. It was one of the nicest, most enjoyable nights I can remember. I guess he can sense that good food, a few drinks and the company of good people are the perfect reason to throw all rules out the window.