My Mom Will Love This Post

This is a rare Sunday morning... a quiet house all to myself? Scott went off to play soccer, and Moana, shhhh, is still sleeping! I think this is a record sleep-in time for her... 8:30 so far and no stirring. We kept her up late last night (9:00) because we had a Christmas party to attend for Scott's work.

I know I'm her mom and all so of course I'm a little bias, but I'm telling you, Moana was so freakin' cute last night I almost couldn't stand it! I can't believe we didn't get any pictures. Anyway, the dinner party was at Roy's, upstairs in the private room... 60+ people including a few other kids. The thought crossed my mind that maybe we should get a babysitter and leave Moana at home because I just wasn't sure how she was going to fare at a fancy place like Roy's for hours and hours (these parties always run long, you know) but I'm so glad we took her. She had a blast and we enjoyed showing her off. :)

It was nice that the waiters brought out special food for the kids... cheese quesadillas as their appetizer, penne pasta for their main course, and an ice cream cookie for their dessert. Moana dabbled a little in each of those, but she's no dummy. Once she figured out that the adults were eating crab cakes, ribs, butterfish, and chocolate souffle, she decided that she'd rather participate in this dinner as an adult. She's got good taste, I'll give her that! It was just too funny to watch her spit out the pasta and throw it on the floor in exchange for the butterfish off my plate. By the end of the dinner Scott was on his hands and knees under her high chair picking up all the pieces of food she didn't want (and all 4 forks she dropped). Believe me, there was no butterfish down there.

At one point in the night they showed a little Jib-Jab video (Allison- the same one you did for your break-dancing family!) of the head honchos doing the worm and other silly dance moves... Scott's picture was on one of the elves and everyone was laughing and clapping... It was hilarious. But the funniest part was Moana's reaction. She was laughing and squealing and totally understood that she should clap when everyone else was clapping. Crack. Me. Up.

And you know how these dinners go... it's like an eternity between courses... and there was no way any one year old was just going to sit quietly in her high chair for all that time. I didn't expect her to. So after each course we would let her out of her high chair and Scott and I would take turns following her around the room. It only takes Moana about 10 minutes to warm up to a new situation and then her little social butterfly personality shines through and she's off trying to meet everyone in the vicinity. I swear, it was just too funny watching her walk up and down the aisles between tables and smiling up at all the adults. She worked that whole room. Everyone loved her and she got to sit on quite a few laps throughout the night.

In hindsight, this was really the perfect kind of dinner to take Moana to because the room was closed off so she couldn't just go bug random people, and everyone was drinking a little so the sprit of the place was quite jolly. I never felt for a second that Moana was being obnoxious- she was just being a very cute toddler.

We left a little early (before the white elephant gifts were done) and as we were walking out we passed the outside patio, which was completely empty save for the lone guitarist playing music for the imaginary dinner guests. (It had been raining earlier in the night so nobody chose to sit outside). Anyway, Moana decided (in her I'm all jacked up on sugar mode) that she wanted to listen to the guitarist for a bit. We let her. So there she stood, by herself in the middle of that empty patio, watching and listening to the guitarist... We were almost crying laughing when she started swaying her hips back and forth and dancing to the dinner music. And then the guitarist started cracking up as well.

Nights like that make me really glad that I get to be Moana's mom.