Sentence(s) Sunday.

I know I'm due for a 'one sentence Sunday' post, but I've been starving you all so much lately that I thought I might get a little crazy and type a few more sentences here.

This week was a big one for us.  Not that the past 8 weeks haven't been big ones for us.  Okay, you got me - not that the past TWO YEARS haven't been big ones for us.  (Happy now?) But the past week or so saw the following milestones: we settled Trip into a bedtime routine, went to Melbourne for three days, and saw The Kings of Leon, which involved leaving Trip at his Jammie Jen's house for his first babysitting adventure.  I'll start at the beginning and work my way back.

Looking Back.

We originally purchased the KoL tickets to go to their concert in March....but then the drummer broke his arm and they had to postpone the concert for eight months.  We were a little bummed, because the original venue was the Adelaide Oval.

But because of the delay we had to see them at the Entertainment Center, which is your standard indoor arena where you have to stay in your seats the whole time.  It was a much larger venue than we would have liked, but the music was good, and there were some great people-watching to do, between the girls in their ridiculous fashion statements (I swear one girl looked like a mermaid) and the old men who were obviously feeling the music (complete with one fist pumping the air, the other grasped tightly over the heart).  It did get me more than a little excited for seeing Group Love in January at The Gov.  It's a much (much) smaller venue, just a bar really, and I'm sure that Group Love will talk and interact with the crowd more.  Call me crazy, but when I pay to see a band live, I'm interested in much more than just their music.  I love it when the band interacts with the crowd, which is where KoL fell short in my opinion.  

In other news, on that same night Trip did a fantastic job with his first babysitter!  We were worried because he's been crying a lot the past few days and we thought he'd keep Jammie up until we got home with his screaming.  But we walked in just past midnight to a quiet house....which is not even one of the options I considered possible!  Turns out he just had his bath and went right to sleep, than woke up at nine, had some milk from the bottle, then went right back to sleep quietly.  Way to go kid!  Now Jammie will agree to do it again!  Yeah!

Looking forward.

Our trip to Melbourne was definitely a success!  It was our last chance to have a vacation for who knows how long.  So we wandered Melbourne's cool streets, drank lots of good coffee and good beer, and found some great places to grab some grub.  I also took a coffee course so I can teach all of our employees how to make good coffees too.  I knew how to make coffee before, but didn't understand the mechanics of it, which was the only thing stopping me from making great coffees.  So you'll have to stop by the Bakery when we open to see how I do!

Trip had to make an appearance at the US Embassy so he could claim his US citizenship (lucky little bugger gets both automatically!)  I definitely recommend visiting an Embassy when a thunderstorm is forecasted - because everyone wanted to get home before the storm hit, they were all super helpful and processed us through at warp speed.  Which meant we had time to get a delicious beer at the Belgian Beer Cafe (Leffe Blonde...you complete me!)

Oh Hey what's that?

Now, let's talk about routines!  Apparently a 'bedtime routine' is something we should have been following from the word go (oopsies).  So we decided to give it a try.  The evenings were often when Trip was at his crankiest...and turns out it was just because he was tired!  The first night we tried a routine - 6pm feed, followed by 6:30 bath and 7pm tucked in bed with a cd my friend Mimi's husband, Kevin, made for their wedding playing - and he was out like a light!  Which left Toff and I to sit in a *quiet* house and eat a nice dinner *together*.  Oh how silly we felt!  Enduring 7 weeks of a screaming infant, taking turns with different "hey I got him to be quiet for 3 minutes" techniques.  When all along the kid was just tired!  Oh schweppes.  But, as I told Mimi when I thanked her for giving us the cd (which features 12 tracks of Kevin playing ALL the instruments in lovely melodic pieces) - you live, you learn...and then you tell your friends so hopefully one day they don't make the same silly mistakes themselves!