Big Huge Empty House

During our little tea party last week, my mom suggested I leave Aidan at their house for the night. I was completely taken aback by the request. Flabbergasted, if you will. This wasn't something that had even dawned on me to do! I don't really know why. It's not because I didn't want to or anything, I guess I just get into that rut of he always needs to be with me and if he's not with me than he's with his dad, otherwise we'll only be gone for a couple of hours. So I called my husband at work and he sat silent on the phone while he began to wrap his mind around this idea too. This was a big step! It sounds so silly. But we couldn't think of a reason "why not." Grandma and Grandpa and Auntie Anna would get him all to theirselves and they'd be in their glory. I'd get a night off. Uh, ok. Let's do it. He had all his stuff with him and a place to sleep and all we had to do was figure out how to put the car seat in their car, which I never do, so I wasn't sure how. And of course, that was a production because everything in my family is a production. We thought, hey let's go to the firestation, they check them, what a great idea. I was scared to death just driving there cause I was sure the carseat was in wrong and I was holding onto it for dear life. Not that that would help. We pulled up, and one of their big garage doors was open with a workout bench in it so we knew they had to be home. It was just trying to figure out who was going to knock, cause we were all embarrassed, none of us had done this before. So we sat their for eternity bickering loudly about who should go, which turned into a unanimous vote for my dad but before he could go, my mom honked. Great. This isn't embarrassing at all. We're like the Keystone Cops, I swear. My dad got out and knocked on the door and then firemen started coming out from all over the place. From the back, from the side, even the Fire Chief came out. Who was honking! So two of them helped us put the carseat in right and Aidan was sleeping the whole time and a whole bunch of them were just milling around, watching. I think I knew one of them from high school. They got the carseat in, we thanked the nice men, and we went happily on our way to Pit Boss, the best BBQ joint in the world. We've been going there since I was about 10. On my way home without the carseat, I realized there was no one to listen to me belting out my favorite songs. And when I got home, I almost turned on the monitor thinking he was in the other room. Our smallish house never seemed so big. We went out. We drank beer and shot darts without looking at the clock. I kicked ass. We came home and ordered pizza and ate my sister's heart-shaped brownies that were no longer heart-shaped. The house was so quiet. We kept talking about Aidan. We felt naked. It's so funny how such a tiny being can fill up an entire house. I guess the moral of the story is, we survived. We may even do it again.