Mom's Nite Out...from Dad's Perspective...

Hello everyone - from the title of this blog entry, you've undoubtedly guessed by now that this is Mike speaking - or typing, rather. As you may have noticed from many other blog entries, now that we're parents, we tend to hang out with other parents as well...in fact, now that I think about it, those are the ONLY type of people we hang out with anymore. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever say this a few years ago, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Parenting certainly gives me a new perspective on life, that non-parents just don't have...not to sound snobby, but it's just a fact. Well, our friends here have any number of kids, from one, all the way to four each. All the ladies decided they needed a "Ladies' Night Out" - and I can honestly say, I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. I know Cicely deserves more than one, but for now, I was just eager to prove myself as a fully qualified dad, who could feed, bathe, and put my child to bed all on my own.

Here's Mommy and baby before she went out...Grace looks like she can sense something will be different about tonight...


After Cicely left, I decided to take her for a stroller/walk after dinner. Instead of our usual route around base housing, I decided to spice things up a little.

Here's Grace at the train station, surely wondering what we're doing there so late, and where are we going without Mom?

I decided we'd go bar hopping! Now now, all you good Christians don't get your panties in an uproar; I've stopped drinking, so this was just a 'nostalgic' tour for us.

Here's Grace at one of my two favorite bars here - Vahana's. It's a Beach/Tiki themed place that is open air in the summer.

Here she is at my other favorite bar here in Japan - Match Point. Notice she's not too excited in either of these pictures. That's a good thing - my Grandfather always says there are two types of women: bar girls and church girls. It looks like she's definitely not in to bars!

After we got back home, I gave her a bath, and attempted to put her to bed. This picture shows how she cried after I put her down. Note how well she can stand already! Also, this picture is a bit misleading, as it was completely dark in her room when I took the shot - I had just adjusted the camera's shutter speed so you can actually see her. It only took about 20 minutes of crying before she cried herself to sleep. My strategy worked!


*For all of our readers information, Cicely doesn't know I took Grace bar hopping tonight....in fact, she'll be reading here on the blog for the first time, much like all of you - how's THAT for reality TV! TLC, time to dump John & Kate, and start filming the Augustines!!!!