Six-Year Wedding Anniversary

Saturday was our six-year wedding anniversary!

I learned that Calla lilies are the official flower of six-year wedding anniversaries.

Chris gave me two beautiful iron fleur-de-lis bookends. He got major points for the gift being bookish (I am nothing if not an inveterate bookworm) and for being symbolic, since iron is the traditional gift material of sixth wedding anniversaries and the fleur-de-lis is a lily.

Chris teases me because I gave him a waffle iron, which is neither symbolic nor romantic. Plus I've given him a waffle iron once before--which turned out to be a flop. But, in my defense, it is a thoughtful gift because Chris dislikes Belgian waffles and prefers a traditional waffle. The last traditional waffle iron I gave him was cheaply made and made insipid, floppy waffles. On Sunday morning, we tried out our new waffle iron and it is fabulous! It makes six waffles simultaneously, in about two minutes flat, and they come out crispy and delicious!

Mock me all you want, honey, those waffles were tasty.

On Saturday night, we hired our beloved sitter for the two older kids and tried to go on a date.

We tried.

Read on for the comedy of errors, if you'd like!

Honestly, this anniversary celebration was eerily similar to how we celebrated our first wedding anniversary, a jaunt you can take down memory lane here.

Why did we take a 10-month-old to dinner with us anyway, you ask? Good question. It's because we don't pay high-enough wages for a babysitter to hold a screaming baby for two or three hours. As long as Margaret is with her mama, she's cheerful.

No, no, let me correct that: as long as she is well-rested and with her mama, she is cheerful. And she was not well rested last night!

She had taken a morning cat nap in the car. Come afternoon, I tried to get her to nap repeatedly and she simply wouldn't do it! I nursed her, I lay down with her, I rocked her, I let her cry for a while, I wore her on my back. I tried about once per hour to get her to fall asleep and as she played cheerfully instead of falling asleep, I had more of a sinking feeling that I was in for bad news.

In the early evening (okay, so most people would call it late afternoon, but, you know, we normally eat at 5:30, so it feels like evening to us!) . . . in the early evening, I put on my fun, fancy new outfit and those sensible high heels I've worn three times in two years and I dressed Margaret in a sweet dress, and off we went with Chris.

We arrived at the restaurant, the one I look forward to all year. We go once a year, I never want to celebrate our anniversary elsewhere--it is so good! All day long I'd been salivating about their wedge salad, whatever entree I chose, and their crème brûlée for dessert.

Each year we have made a reservation and never needed it because we were the only patrons there at, you know, 5:30 in the "evening." So this year we did not make a reservation and showed up to a very crowded restaurant. When told there would be a 70-minute wait, we learned that this was Restaurant Week here in Charlotte, which is when many of the upscale restaurants offer a prix fixe menu of three courses for $30.

We called the valet service back, loaded the by-now-screaming baby into the car, and called over to another restaurant we had heard good things about: they had availability, so we scooted that way.

An entire 40 minutes (of a crying baby) later, we arrived. As soon as we walked in, I had an uneasy feeling. Actually, let's call it what it was: a rising panic. This was an intimate Italian restaurant. Intimate, meaning the entire restaurant was one room of about 400 square feet, lit dimly with candles, the sound of tinkling silver and wine glasses. It was almost entirely full (due to Restaurant Week), but there was one table left open right in the middle of the room by the front door.

The waiter said, "So, it will be you two . . . and the toddler?"

We sat down and I expressed my worry for the first of about a dozen times that would happen in the all of five minutes I lasted in the restaurant. The baby was anxious and jumpy and starting to squawk. She wanted things to play with, but I couldn't let her play with the silverware, wine glasses, or white linen table cloth. Chris handed her his cell phone, which she promptly threw to the stone floor.

I am not a suspicious person, so I swear to you that I (who was facing in to the restaurant, unlike my husband who was facing the door) witnessed several different patrons turn around in their seats and glare at me because of the increasingly loud baby.

And then she threw a tantrum. Did you know 10-month-olds can throw tantrums? Oh, yes, they can, with the arching back and the screaming in rage!

I grabbed the baby and my purse and ran out of the restaurant. It was cold outside, but across the courtyard were the Hearst Towers, a posh building with restaurants and theatre on the ground floor and offices in the floors above. There I stayed in that lobby with a screaming baby for the next 40 minutes or so.

Have I mentioned that the interior of the building is entirely marble? Do you know how much marble magnifies the volume of a screaming baby? Even hanging out in the lobby pacing with her, I could see the lines of ladies and gentlemen in their most sparkly, fancy, going-out wardrobes standing in line for the restaurants in the building and they turned and stared at me, wondering what on earth I was doing dressed up with a baby at night. So, I began walking the halls of this marble prison of sorts, so at least I bothered different patrons at different times and they couldn't cast so many glares at me as I wandered the labyrinth of marble hallways. I would have gone to the van to muffle the screams, but Chris had the keys!

After several consultations with Chris (still in the restaurant) via cell phone, he ordered our dinner to go. Chris even ran out to find me with some bread so I wouldn't be so hungry while I waited. A nice father with his family in the restaurant approached Chris to tell him, 'I've been there, buddy.'

We drove home and the baby finally cried herself to sleep in her car seat.

We ended up eating our dinner on our same-old Corelle plates on a kitchen table covered in crumbs from the kids, the centerpiece being two lambs made from clothespins by the children to celebrate St. Agnes' feast day. The baby slept in the van in the dark garage, the door open to the kitchen so we could listen for her.

Refreshed by sleep and with the eyes of humor, today my only regret is that I did not get to eat my crème brûlée, for which I yearn and pine all year long! Crème brûlée apparently does not make good take-out food and is one of those things a person must eat right out of the oven, at the restaurant itself.

I apologized to Chris many times for things like, you know, being a mother, having a baby, and having a baby who doesn't yet tolerate staying home without me. He very kindly and sincerely said, "This is the rich stuff which life is made of. How boring would it be if everything just worked out okay?"