you’d think that after waiting a year and a half between visits and 13 hrs of driving round trip i would have taken more time to document our stay in dc. alas, i was living in the moment. read that – i was too busy running after our child in busy venues and trying to keep her from jumping off martyna and heidi’s spiral staircase to really wield a camera. here’s what i got:

  darla and frauntie martyna reunion. thanks for housing us!

darla’s indifference to black cat

where i first espied frodo

fried homemade donuts at birch and barley

come into the light children. all are welcome.

i will now list my other failures of the weekend besides capturing any pictures of the cool stuff we did for four days:

-taking a toddler to vfest. epic fail. although not really my fault. i tried but it was really not the environment for a child. i pride myself in not being too squeamish about including darla in life experiences but after 1 1/2 hours decided to go with my mom instinct and get the heck outta hipster hell. after buying darla a really cute t-shirt of course.

-staying up past ten. i had good intentions every night of getting darla down to bed and then having some adult conversations, maybe cut loose a little bit but never was able to actuate these plans. oh well. luckily i have good friends that understand. luckily i have good friends that will move the party that they threw for our arrival to the nearby bar so we could crash in peace. i heard it was a good party though.

-keeping a dry eye. i was a soppy mess the whole weekend. but not in a touching, let’s cry together b/c we miss each other way. more in a parked-car-on-the-side-of-the-road-mom-crying-while-toddler-sleeps-in-backseat creepy kinda way. that actually happened. in front of our old building. and it was one of those ugly cries. ugh.

now for my more important accomplishments of the weekend.

– dancing on the sidewalk to an r&b church service

– 13 hrs in a car with a toddler

– being able to navigate myself around the city as if i never left

– lots and lots and lots of walking. my calves are screaming at me but in a good way

– 2 showers in one weekend. sadly that is not all that common for me

– co-sleeping with darla all weekend long. cuddlefest

-reuniting darla with drum circle. in some senses this was a failure b/c she didn’t give a lick about the drumming and only wanted to run away from me and jump in fountains. i didn’t get to spend much time enjoying the event with friends but still i hope it was enough of an experience to stick in darla’s memory. drum circle was one of my favorite weekly activities when she was small.

– food. oh my gosh glorious food. between thaitanic take-out, the corner crepery, mr. yogato and brunch at birch and barley i was stuffed beyond belief. 14th st has blossomed into one long row of beckoning restaurants and it makes me long to brunch at every one of them! if we still lived in the district i am quite sure birch and barley would be one of our go-to haunts

– and most importantly, seeing lovely, familiar faces. reconnecting with people that i miss so much. each day brought new reunions. frauntie kate, my phish buddies amy & jess. ak & susanna. heidi. dewey. and frauntie martyna! i even stopped into the hill rag on my way out of town and got to reunite with my old co-workers. i hope that some day we will be so lucky as to have built as wonderful of a circle of friends in columbus as the one still embracing us in dc. it’s hard to walk away from all that love.

well that was the weekend in a nutshell. triumphs and failures. yep, sounds like parenting.