Farewell to the bottle

Well it's been a quiet day here at Casa Del BSers. Yesterday was a small party at Sasha's Dad and Step-mom's to celebrate the holidays. So we piled the kids and their necessities into the car and drove for nearly two hours into Chicagoland for a good holiday evening.

The day and night was filled with good food, homemade smoked salmon with a wasabi dressing as one of the appetizers. The rich flavors of the salmon was tempered by the dressing which had just the lightest kick courtesy of the wasabi. This was then joined by tons of pizza from Lou Malinotti's. While I am not a fan of their pan style, the thin, corn meal crust makes every bite a joy.

Alya and Marcus were not fans of the pizza as much, but they were enjoying the family quite a lot. Since there are no pets there, Alya didn't have to over come any doggie anxiety and Marcus enjoyed roaming around holding his Uncle Scott's hands.

Unfortunately, too much fun comes with a price. Neither child was really willing to fall asleep.

See, we were planning on staying the evening and driving back on Sunday. However, both kids are party animals. The sounds of people having fun downstairs kept them from wanting to sleep. Alya just kept talking up a storm, while Marcus just kept fussing shortly after being put into the pack & play. Part of this also stems from a recent change in the bed time routine.

Just last week we had Marcus and Alya "kick the bottle". No more bottle drinking for either of them. Alya was certainly getting on the old side - although she only drank from them first thing in the morning and as part of bedtime. Marcus wasn't drinking from the bottle at school, but he did have it as the primary milk delivery system at home.

So taking that standard part of sleep time did not facilitate sleeping away from home Saturday evening.

Naturally, they both crashed out immediately upon being loaded into the car and driving away. Those little turkeys. [smile]

How does this all lead to the quiet day? Well, Alya took a four hour nap today, while Marcus had a 2 hour and a 3 hour nap. Quiet times for the adults. Every so often that's a good thing.

***

On a musical note, we have been listening to Peter Gabriel's album So this evening. I believe it to be one of my favorite albums of all time. Certainly it is his best complete work.

I have all of his releases since So, and a few of the prior albums and none of them have the timeless quality across all the tracks like I hear in this one.

You've got the evergreen "In Your Eyes" which works so nicely as a romantic piece. "Red Rain" kicks the album off with a strong beat and some vocals that carry such strong emotion that I just want to belt it out with Mr. Gabriel.

"Don't Give Up" blends Gabriel's rough vocal style with the beautiful lilt of Kate Bush. "Big Time" is just silly and feels like a musical powerhouse.

Good stuff. Give it a listen if you haven't in a while.

Be seeing you,

Jon