How the Winslows almost saw Picasso...

Me: I will totes birth your babies.
Kyanne: Right. Like I'm gonna have kids after this!
--From a Friday-night text exchange, 9:28 p.m.

Matt and I had planned to see the Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum yesterday. Kyanne very graciously offered to stay with the kids when we were pondering this idea last weekend; we almost decided, last Saturday, to take the kids and go while we were in Seattle for my tattoo consult, but then we realized: Oh. Right. That would be insane. Paying forty-six dollars for tickets to an exhibit at an art museum, braving the crowds to see it, and believing that, somehow, our children would cooperate is a sure way to guarantee that we'd have maybe ten minutes to get our money's worth before the kids were done. I mean, we know this, but sometimes we are so stupidly optimistic. It's part of our charm.

So anyway, Kyanne offered to stay at our house on Friday night so I could just head up and meet Matt after work, and we could go by ourselves. Matt planned to walk over to the museum early yesterday and buy tickets for that evening; because it's such a hot exhibit, the only way to actually get tickets is to buy them on-site for the day you want to visit. Unfortunately, the line was apparently obscene, so Matt had to bail in order to go to work. (According to someone on the SAM blog, the wait yesterday morning was something like two-and-a-half hours.) When he went back after work to try again, all the tickets had been sold out through midnight.

"I guess we were just meant to see this in Paris," Matt said. (Which we actually did, back in 2000 when we were there for our May Seminar in college. We just really wanted to see it again, and Matt has actually never even been through the SAM.) We felt momentarily dejected until we realized that hey! We're in Seattle by ourselves! Surely, we could take advantage of the time. I checked my phone. No frantic messages from Kyanne -- only one that said, "Currently engaged in dinner negotiations & feeding your son peas the way you feed a goat at a petting zoo."

We landed at the Elysian Brewing Company, where we sat at a small corner table (we don't get those anymore!) and ate a pretty fantastic dinner. And it just so happens that the Elysian Brewing Company is conveniently located near the Elliott Bay Book Company, to which I have a gift card, which was conveniently tucked into my bag. And then we decided to get some dessert at Café Presse, where I ordered the only thing I've ever gotten there: chocolat chaud, the thickest, most fabulous hot chocolate in the world. It comes in this little cup with a huge saucer of whipping cream on the side, and it's so rich I can't ever finish it. We almost skipped dessert because Isaac was apparently really irritated by the fact that Kyanne couldn't spontaneously lactate and was having a hard time settling. (By contrast, we fully expected Suzannah to come creeping out of her room as soon as we entered the house, but she was in her bed at nine o'clock.) However, they worked it out, and by 9:16 Isaac was "snoring like a pug." ("Go have dessert!" Kyanne said, which prompted a handful of love proclamations that were not wholly inspired by the wine I enjoyed with my black bean burger.)

We didn't see Picasso, but we had a really great night.

We were home before eleven, which felt more like one-thirty to me. When did I become elderly? Suzannah came sneaking into our bed at about 5:30 this morning, and after a few minutes I graciously offered to go sleep in her bed with her. I was doing this quite often for awhile; when she stays in bed with us, she's so busy "being cozy" that none of us really sleep, but when the two of us snuggle into her bed, she usually drops off pretty quickly. And I love snuggling with her, so I don't actually have a problem with this. But this morning she declined my offer, so I ended up slipping into her bed by myself, figuring that if she refused to move, there was a better chance of everyone sleeping if things weren't so crowded. Of course, as soon as she noticed I was gone, she followed me -- and Matt ended up in the big bed by himself. Figures. (And then! Just as I was about to drift peacefully to sleep in Suzannah's bed, she kicked me out. She really did.)

Isaac slept until eight-thirty this morning. Suzannah woke up sometime before that, but instead of crawling back into our bed, she decided to entertain herself in the family room. ("I was sleeping out there," she explained. I'm pretty sure that's a lie.)

By nine o'clock, Matt had fired up the waffle iron and made coffee. By nine-thirty, Suzannah had made another beaded necklace from the kit her auntie Morgan gave her for Christmas, and Matt is now wearing that. By ten o'clock, both of our kids had consumed more waffles than me. It's wet and gray but not cold outside, and I'm having a hard time thinking of a reason to wear anything but pajamas today. I hope this is an indication of how the rest of our weekend will go, because right now, life feels pretty sweet.