Beaterville

This morning, we met up with some lovely ladies for breakfast at a neighborhood haunt. It's called Beaterville and is decorated with some appropriately old, beat-up cars. While we enjoyed catching up with one of the Js, the other one was running Mateo around outside. They got to see a dog getting a bath at one store across the street, got a sticker at the knitting shop next door, and then spent a long time exploring the ancient car artifacts outside the restaurant. I think he had a far more eventful breakfast than we did!


Both kids really did well at the restaurant, though. M especially, since he had a late night last night at Grammy's birthday. Happy birthday, Mom! And, the baby, too, as she had been under the weather the day before and made a rather sudden recovery yesterday afternoon. She was still feeling a bit on the quiet side, but all better and acting much more like her normal self.


After naptime, we packed up and headed to Washington Park for a free summer concert. We got to see Devin Phillips and his modern jazz quartet, which was cool. He came here from New Orleans after Katrina and ended up staying. We also got to hear local celebrity Storm Large, whose personality turned out to be just as large as her name! Mateo was enthralled with the intstruments and such. He stayed rooted to the spot during the warm-ups, as his little buddies swirled around him. I think that was his favorite part!


Natalia loved the music, too, and especially liked clapping when the songs ended. She bopped around our blanket and made friends with people sitting around us.


Despite being advertised as family friendly, the venue forbade kids to be in front of the stage and the front section was designated as a "quiet listening area". I'm sorry, but isn't the front supposed to be where people get to dance? They gave a little talk before about how they were glad to welcome children so that they could learn how to be "good audience members." I thought it was a better opportunity for them to learn how to appreciate music!

Anyway, the weirdest thing happened at the end. After some more listening and Mateo getting his arm painted by the face painting people, we decided to pack up and head out. We walked up a million stairs and eventually got to the car. M, who had been behaving pretty well, was a mess all the way home and we couldn't figure out why. When we got home, he randomly laid down on the floor in the front room and Sacha saw that he had a big welt over his eye. It looked like someone had punched him! I guess we'll find out tomorrow if he's going to have a black eye or not, but either way, it had to have hurt.

We thought maybe one of his friends had accidentally hit him, but he kept insisting that it had happened as we were leaving. Later, he said that a frisbee had hit him the face as we were walking out. I was with him the whole way back to the car, as were Sacha and Talia, and none of us saw anything unusual. And he never cried or anything. So, who knows. I was going through photos for this post and came upon this one, which I took to show the cool firetruck (upside down) on his arm, from when we were leaving. Both eyes look fine in this photo, so it must have happened between this and the ten minutes it took to get back to the car. I guess it will remain a mystery. It can be rough being two and a half sometimes!