Thanks to L

We owe a thank you to Lux and Melissa, who were kind enough to come to our house last night and put James and Owen to bed while J and I went out for no other purpose then to have a nice evening out. In fact, James didn't even believe us. As he was whacking randomly on his drum pad at the top of the stairs last night and shouting new improvised words to the tune of "Veggie Tales" he sang about how he "hoped Mommy and Daddy would have fun at their concert." I shouted back to him that we weren't actually going to a concert, but he didn't pay any attention, mostly because he was singing about baseball at that point. But still, the point did not escape me that he has no other conception in his young life to this point of why an adult would leave the house in the evening dressed reasonably nicely other than to attend (and probably perform in) a concert.

I'm not sure that the evening went great for them. Owen went down fine, apparently, but James has a bit of a cold, and he woke up crying inconsolably about an hour after he went down to sleep. When we arrived home we found him passed out on Uncle Lux's lap, George and Steven clutched in hand. Lux said that he'd lulled him to sleep by talking about Hayden, the thought of which apparently makes everyone tired.

We had a great time, though. As we ate our cheesecake and sipped our martinis, I thought about what it would have been like to bring the boys along on our date.

For one thing, we wouldn't have been able to drive eastward on Empire without James asking whether we were going to visit Alexa, and then expressing his indignation at our rudeness if it turned out that wasn't in the plans. ("We will need to visit her tomorrow. We will eat lunch there")

We went to Old Navy and to Kohl's looking for spring jackets. (We didn't get any.) Owen would have needed to be held in his carseat, which would have been a massive pain to lug around either store. James would have insisted that he walk from the car to the entrance, but then he would have been terrified by the mannequins at the entrance of Old Navy and begged to be held. Once held by whichever parent was not holding Owen, he would have periodically requested "can we go home?" until he became so heavy that it was necessary to set him down, and then he would have started crying loudly in the middle of the store. There would have been no trying on clothes in dressing rooms.

In Kohl's James might have done a little better, but this would have been about the end of Owen's patience with the carseat. I would have attempted to put James into one of the small Kohl's shopping carts, but he would have insisted on a real shopping cart. "I need a real cart. I want a steering wheel cart. We should go to Wegman's and get a cookie."

There would have been no hunting through clearance racks or trying clothes on in Kohl's either. We would have left early with both boys crying. From there, we'd have been back in the car, and if we attempted to stop at the bank to make an ATM deposit (as we did) we wouldn't have been able to escape without the traditional liturgy of:
"Hey Daddy, do you know where we are?"
"I do know where we are. We're at the bank."
"Do you remember the bounce house that's by here?"
"I do. I don't think we're going to the bounce house tonight though."
"Maybe...maybe we could go to the bounce house yesterday?"
"That won't work for a number of reasons."
"Maybe George would want to go to the bounce house in the morning. George, you want to go to the bounce house in the morning?"
(He nods George's head and makes an uh-huh monkey noise.)
"George says we DO go to the bounce house in the morning!"

There would have been no chance of martinis and cheesecake at a fancy restaurant either. We would have been well past both boys' bedtime, Owen would have been unwilling to sit in his carseat, and if we'd taken him out he would have tried to bounce up and down on the lap of whoever was holding him until he caught the attention of a passerby or fellow diner. James would have gradually flopped around the table until he was lying under it alternately asking to watch a George or if he could order a peanut butter and jelly.

So clearly, it worked out best for everyone to have Lux and Melissa come to our place and stay with the boys while we went out and bought a shirt and fancy drinks.

"Ingratitude appears to me to be a dire evil; a dire evil indeed, yea, the direst of evils. For when one has received some benefit, his failing to attempt to make any return by at least the verbal expression of thanks, where aught else is beyond his power, marks him out either as an utterly irrational person, or as one devoid of the sense of obligations conferred, or as a man without any memory. And, again, though one is possessed naturally and at once by the sense and the knowledge of benefits received, yet, unless he also carries the memory of these obligations to future days, and offers some evidence of gratitude to the author of the boon, such a person is a dull, and ungrateful, and impious fellow; and he commits an offence which can be excused neither in the case of the great nor in that of the small."---Gregory Thaumaturgus

So, to Lux and Melissa, thank you..

Also, does anyone have a resource they'd recommend about the practice of patronage in the Roman empire? I think that this whole sections of Gregory Thaumaturgus (a panegyric to Origen) would read more interestingly if you could place it within the category of a patron-client relationship?