Oliver was very understanding about leaving the latte shop and having to go home without his biscotti because I forgot my wallet with all my money. However, as soon as Marianne arrived he said "now mommy has her wallet, we can go to the latte shop and get some biscotti." At this point, we were already late on having dinner.
I will digress here and mention that Joe is the one who keeps the schedule around here, e.g., dinner, bath and bed have a set time. I am so grateful that he is so structured, and I know it is good for Oliver. I, on the other hand...well, let's just say schedules tend to fall apart when I am running the show at home. With Joe gone, we were on Mommy time, so we grabbed a little supper and then packed up and headed over to the latte shop around 7:30.
Our usual latte shop is Politics and Prose, which is about a mile away. Politics and Prose is a independent bookstore and coffee shop with a lot of local history. We love it. We also discovered something new while we were there last week. Every Friday night starting at 8:00 until whenever, they have an open mic. It is a small room in a basement, so there is actually no mic. But, there is a bar stool in the back of the room and the place fills up with local musicians and artists.
So there we were with our latte and biscotti, and Oliver sees all these guitars, violins and banjos sitting on the tables. He was very curious and so was I. There were no other kids there, but we decided to stay. We were chatting it up with some local college kids when the first performers went up. Oliver was so happy and into it that it never occurred to me to make sure we had a quick exit in this very crammed room. The two women playing the yukalaylees did a great job, but it was a very sad little song. About a minute in, Oliver suddenly yelled out that it was sad and he wanted them to stop. Oh no! It was not a graceful exit. We left our coats and I instinctively put my hand on his mouth, which only shocked and upset him more. We bolted for the door.
Once outside, I explained (what I should have explained before they started) that we could not talk during the songs and that we would have to leave if he interrupted the songs. He promised not to talk during the songs anymore and asked to go back inside. I waited for the girls to finish, grabbed our coats and found a new spot to stand near the back door.
For the next hour, Oliver quietly listened, laughed and danced. Most of the musicians were playing guitar and singing. There were a couple violinists, one of which was playing at the Kennedy Center that weekend. A banjo and the yukalaylees. A couple of cappello singers and one poet. He loved it. We stayed until 9:30, when he was starting to snuggle into my arms. We skipped bath that night. But, I think we might have to make this an occasional Mommy-Oliver date night, especially when Daddy is working late on a Friday.
This is the only picture I have from that night (we sent this to Daddy to confess we were up past bedtime).
One of the things he said about the performances and talked about all week after was how, "it is not like the radio, we can actually see them singing live!" Now when listening to the radio, he will sometimes announce, this song is a recording, it is not live like the songs at the latte shop where we could see them actually singing. And when we are out, e.g., at a restaurant, he wants to find the speaker to confirm that it is a recording and not live.
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