A Night on the Town, Sort of

Fair warning, this is a picture-less post, proceed with caution...

Dan's cousin, Jonathan, was in town for work from California and after a brief stop at home, we all headed to hip-happening Arlington Center for dinner.  We chose an italian place that we have often gotten take out from, but never eaten in at.  They expanded into a much bigger space last year and the few times we have picked up food since then, the place has seemed near vacant of customers---it was time for us to be more visible patrons!

Finley was excited to go out to dinner at a "rest-raunt" with everybody and was a perfectly lovely dinner companion.  We brought some pre-dinner snacks for him to devour while his pizza was in the oven, but he ended up waiting even more patiently than usual.  He was his extremely chatty self and Jonathan commented how much more talkative he had become just since we'd been out in California at Thanksgiving i.e. he did not stay silent for more than 30 seconds max at a time.   He was interested in all the goings on of the restaurant and anytime someone walked in, he seemed genuinely thrilled and then asked when more people would be coming.  He'd probably drum up a lot of business wearing a sandwich board out on the sidewalk!  He sat in a big boy chair and only almost fell out twice, not bad.  His pizza arrived but after the initial excitement of that wore off, he probably ate only one slice in its entirety (which is no where near his usual food intake level these days).  Instead, he spent the rest of the meal moving around in his seat with pizza in his hand or on his fork just singing away.  Raffi's "Baby Beluga," or "Googa" as Finley calls it, is surely one of his top five favorite tunes and he continued to sing the verses he knows and the chorus over and over while the rest of us ate.  It was adorable and totally hysterical.  He also pointed to the ceiling several times saying the whale was up there swimming around.  Okay, sure thing dude...but anyways, tonight was just an example of the little guy Finley is these days and how much we are enjoying this fleeting phase (everything's a phase I have been told, bummer).

Thanks, Cousin Jonathan, for the visit (and the Finley gifts that you brought despite my threats!!) and who knows what Finley will be doing the next time we see you!