For only the second time in her life, The Pumpkin is spending the night away from her parents.  Or more to the point: for only the second time in her life, we are spending the night away from her.  Take a wild guess who’s got more anxiety, us or her.  Heh.

In January, The Pumpkin and her BFF were privileged to be flower girls in the wedding of their other best friend’s mother (our dear friend), down in Riverside, mere miles from where la dra.’s parents live.  We spent Friday and Saturday night at my in-laws’.  Monday was Presidents’ Day, and, of course, preschool was closed.  We had been planning to drop The Pumpkin off at her BFF’s for the day, but as we got ready to leave my in-laws’ house, they made a suggestion:  why not let The Pumpkin spend the night with them, and they’d drive her back up the next afternoon?  Uh…okay?  Because, of course, at that point, our little independent three-year-old had never spent the night with anyone but us.  The Pumpkin happily assented to the idea, merrily waving at us from her grandparents’ porch.  And, of course, it went fine.  I mean, what did we think was gonna happen?  We even got to go do dinner and a movie (sushi and “27 Dresses”).  I don’t think we interrupted our romantic evening more than, what, two or three times—okay, five max—missing our girl and wondering if she was okay.

And now, we find ourselves facing our first spring break, with no grandparents in town and friends of whom we don’t want to take too much advantage.  So, here’s the plan.  This weekend, we were down in Riverside for The Pumpkin’s cousin Moose’s first birthday party.  So we figured that we could leave her with her Nana and Tata (la dra.’s parents) for Sunday and Monday night, and then Tata could drop her off in Pasadena on Tuesday evening, where la dra. will be finishing up a work meeting.  Wednesday she’ll spend with BFF and BFF’s ever-so-generous mommy (and baby brother, of course).  My parents, meanwhile, will drive up Wednesday evening and spend the night, and then on Thursday, they’ll take The Pumpkin back down to LA for Thursday and Friday night, and then, finally, we’ll drive down Saturday morning to see our babygirl and spend Easter weekend at my folks’.  Yeah, that’s a total of two nights with us, in our house, ‘til we meet up Saturday at my parents’.  (And chances are she’ll be asleep by the time she gets home on Tuesday.)

Oy.  When I was growing up, my mom was retired and my dad was a teacher on the same school schedule as me, so when I was on vacation, we were all on vacation.  This is a whole new ballgame for me.  And for us—I mean, we’ve never  even used a babysitter.  I know, I know, blah blah blah blah datenight yada yada importance of spending time together away from the baby blah blah independence blahbitty blah.  It’s not that we don’t believe in that stuff, or don’t think it’s importance.  We’re just, well, a little attached.  So, of course, this is good for us, for all three of us.

We were a little nervous earlier in the weekend when we started broaching the subject of The Pumpkin staying with her Nana and Tata and us leaving on Sunday afternoon.  Her response:  that she didn’t want to stay, that either we all stayed (including, of course, Moose and Moose’s big brother Kuya) or we all left, together.  Uh oh.  But today, when we started telling her the plan again, she warmed up to it bit by bit.  By the time we were ready to go, The Pumpkin was telling her Nana what color she wanted her nails painted [oy]—the same color as Nana’s—and, when we seemed to be taking too long gathering up our things, telling us that she thought it was time to wave bye-bye already.  Heh.  Like last time, she stood on the porch with her grandparents as we pulled away, laughing and waving.  When we called to let them know we got home okay, she’d just woken up from a two hour nap and they were getting ready to go buy nail polish and get dinner at, yes, McDonald’s.  Ain’t staying with the grandparents’ great?

And us?  We’re fine.  No, really.  We even went out for ice cream sundaes.  (Shhh—don’t tell The Pumpkin!)