Evan in the City

We went up to the city last night to have dinner with a friend of mine from college and her husband and son while they were in town for a conference. Most people we've told about this seem to think we where being fairly ambitious given that Evan is barely a month old, but we figured he's pretty portable and so is his feeding system, so why not give it a shot?

Overall everything went pretty well and we had a very nice evening. Evan was awake and alert almost the entire evening from the time we got on BART in Fremont until we got back on the train to come home in San Francisco, almost 5 hours in total. Unfortunately, sometime in the middle of dinner he got overloaded (there were a lot of new things to take in for such a little guy!), and we had our first extended meltdown experience. It could have been worse - it's not like he was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time - but it wasn't exactly pleasant either. Steph and I had to take turns walking him around the restaurant looking at lights (he loves lights), particularly by the bathrooms in back. Fortunately they had a very nice postcard rack back there, and the postcards had lots of text.

There was an upside to all of this, though... Evan was so tired from the evening that he slept through the night for the first time! He passed out when we got to the BART station in the city a little after 11, and he stayed asleep until around 7 o'clock the next morning. Steph actually woke up in a minor panic at 6:30 because she hadn't been woken up in the middle of the night, but a quick check confirmed that he was indeed still breathing (I heard him startle on the baby monitor when she opened the door to his room). The fact that we just left him in his car seat on the floor of his room when we got home (rule #1 of parenthood: don't disturb a sleeping baby) may have helped, too -- babies seem to love car seats. I don't know if the two hours of crying were worth it or not, but it sure was nice for Steph to get a full night's sleep.

I brought the camera, but never took it out of my pocket (it was dark anyway), so unfortunately there are no pictures. Evan and I did get our picture taken by a guy from the bar next door (the restaurant and bar shared bathrooms) on his iPhone while we were walking around (due to the aforementioned fussiness), but I didn't think to have him email it to me at the time. I have an ethical problem with spending money on a cell phone (especially $500!), especially if it's made by Apple (you wouldn't say I'm biased, would you?), but it did look pretty damn cool.