Gods and Monsters...and Balloons

On Easter Sunday, Wendy, Kiernan, and I met our friends Darren, Daniel, and Renee, for dinner at an Italian restaurant. Darren is to the left of Kiernan in the picture above, and Daniel is to the right of him. As I have mentioned before, Darren, Daniel, and Renee are Kiernan's godparents. In addition to being our close friends, they are our family.

The Italian restaurant in question was the Macaroni Grill. One of the useful things about this restaurant is that its tables are covered with butcher paper. Crayons are provided with impunity, and your waiter even writes his name on the paper covering your table. So, a toddler that is just learning the joys of the drawing feels right at home. Darren, an accomplished artist in his own right--I'll post a picture of the mural that is Kiernan's bedroom at some point--was only too happy to take up the seat next to Kiernan's high chair and collaborate with him on some drawings. Daniel, not wanting me to feel left out, sat next to me and tried to teach me how to draw a Smurf. It was great Smurf, I have to say that. But I can only draw three things: spaceships, unicorns, and pigeons. That's it. And two of those things have been mistaken for a monkey dancing with a coconut. Kudos to Daniel for trying, though.

Renee sat directly across from Kiernan, and as soon as he saw her, he immediately yelled out her name, "Nee-Nee!" He then shook his head vociferously from side to side, growling as he did so. Renee gave the table a sheepish look, then muttered something to Kiernan about this not being an activity that was meant to be performed in public. He did not acknowledge this, so she responded to his head shake and growl in kind.

This head-shake-and-growl thing that Renee and Kiernan do is called "The Monster"...or something. I'm not sure what it's called. I do know that the word "monster" often prefaces it being done. I also know that Renee started doing it with Kiernan during one of her babysitting stints with him. I also know that he loves doing it with her. It is specific to her, specific to the two of them. I also, furthermore, know that Renee never intended this head-shake-and-growl-Monster thing to be something that she did in public. Unfortunately for her, like the rest of us, she cannot resist him.

Dinner went well. Although things got a bit dicey at dessert. The other time we took Kiernan to Macaroni Grill, he got strawberries and cream as his dessert with his kids' meal. He was nuts about that. Sadly, this time, no berries were available. So the waiter brought him ice cream. He was uninterested at first. This was unnerving. Unacceptable. Addiction to ice cream is a Murawski hallmark. But Wendy, bless her heart, persevered, and he eventually got the hang of eating ice cream. He was not crazy about it, but he did seem to like it.

Any doubt that he would continue to be interested in ice cream would be abolished during his grandparents' visit a couple weeks later...but that's a different post.

After dinner, Darren and Daniel asked us to go with them to their van so that they could present Kiernan with his Easter gift. Renee had dropped off a basket for Kiernan before Easter, and the Easter Bunny had hidden his other basket that morning, so he was pretty excited to get another gift this late in the game. We all went to their van and they unveiled the gift...balloons.

I cannot overstate how huge a gift this was. Kiernan goes absolutely nuts over balloons. Nuts. I can barely get through the grocery store without a meltdown because of this. Those of you without kids, next time you're in a grocery store, take a moment to inventory the balloons. They are everywhere. Especially in produce. It's almost impossible to get out of produce these days without an international incident. Suffice to say, we never leave a grocery store without Kiernan getting a free balloon from the staff. He's that good.

But those free grocery store balloons are crap. Even the ones from Trader Joe's. They are the latex balloons that lose their helium in a day. The balloons Kiernan's godfathers gave him were mylar balloons. Mylar balloons rock. Easter was April 16. The last of the Easter balloons finally descended to the floor today, May 11th. In the interim, those balloons provided an unbelievable amount of fun.

It should be noted that the chocolate the Easter Bunny dropped off for Kiernan's parents did not last as long as the balloons. And no matter how much of a fuss I make, the cashier at the grocery store never gives me a bit of chocolate for free.

Man, toddlers don't know how good they have it.