Date Night

24/7 of together-
ness for the past 26 days straight is a lot of together-
ness. Not for Bill and I, we enjoy being together as much as humanly possible. But for two brothers 4 years apart in age and lightyears away from each other in personality, it is a bit much at the moment. Yesterday it came to a crescendo as they would not stop poking at each other, both physically and verbally. Instead of going to my first response of total annoyance and irritation and policing, I just looked at them and asked them if they needed a break from one another for a few hours. William looked sheepishly at Romney and said "Romney, NO OFFENSE, but I am kind of sick of you." Romney looked William solidly in the eye and replied "It's OK, I am sick of you too." And right there on the spot Bill and I promised them a "date night" alone. William would go see Harry Potter with Bill and Romney could choose something for the two of us to do alone during the movie. The promise of some alone time was all it took to squelch any more bickering for the day. After our blissful berry picking experience we took a family walk through Tryon State Park (we do it again tomorrow, too.) and then dropped William and Bill at the movie. Romney wanted to go shopping at a toy store and a book store as his date. We found a wonderful toy store full of all kinds of Japanese goodness. Each and every one of Romney's favorite Japanese characters were available for purchase in some form or another and he was in heaven for a solid 30 minutes just looking around chatting up the shop owner. After Japanese toy window shopping we went to a satellite location of Powell's books on a YOTSUBA hunt. Romney and William giggle out loud when they read this Manga series and we found a volume Romney had not yet read used and bought it up. After that we headed to Best Buy to play Wii demo games and musical instruments. Romney's favorite to try out is undoubtably the drums. He didn't know his mom could play some basic beats and had fun with me teaching him some basic counts to work out.

When Bill and William finished the movie, Romney had to take William back to the toy store he had found. There he melted his Daddy's heart when he showed him the Yoshi pillow pet he adored. "But it's like $75!" Romney cried. It was closer to $23, but as far as Romney was concerned (since he is virtually broke after buying every stuffie in town) it may as well have been $75. Bill surprised him and bought it for him. Romney's face lit up when he realized what was happening. When a child loves his stuffies like real animals, and cuddles anything with plush like it is a life preserver and he is on a sinking boat, and has a face as sweet as Romney's, it is virtually impossible to deny him such pleasure. I mean, could you say no to this?