A night out

Ah, a night out with a one-year old. After a relaxing Friday at work consisting of back charging engineering, watching a Slinged TiVo'd World Series Game 2, eating Fideos Marinera, arguing the merits of providing turbine enclosure warnings in proper Castellano and trying to snow ball the Galician government into granting us social medicine cards; I asked Ewa if she and Bianca wanted to head out to our favorite - you know, classy place - for tapas.

It opens at 8; early for the Spanish, but borderline fussy time for Bibi. This place is next to our pediatrician's office, which makes it approximately 135seconds on foot from our front door. We staked out our preferred table near the window to minimize second hand smoke exposure and tried to contain the tiger. We were the fifth and sixth people in the place and it holds, at maximum occupancy, 20 people. We enjoyed our opening tapa of conejo - rabbit - though to be fair Bianca ate most of Ewa's. The Ribeiro del Duero was dry and savory.

Balancing eating your own messy - on account of the peeling - meal out at a quaint restaurant while entertaining your tired, yet jazzed child is one of the feats of parenting we've mastered through necessity not choice. We tried to distract Bianca with a children's cheese dessert thing, bread and books; to little or no avail. We then resolved ourselves to trade off the assignment of constant B duty - Ewa drew the short stick because of the dish being served; I shucked our langostinos. There were one or two grandmas, abuelas, assisting us in blocking Bianca's desired departure out onto the sidwalk. Then another family came in with a baby with some cheese corn type snacks that Bianca just had to have. They were civil enough to let Bianca indulge herself bringing us 10 minutes of quiet with which to finish our shrimp before our second course came. Bianca, being her typical engaging self, had met everyone in the bar as they entered and was wowing the grandmas with her coquettish smiles.

When we leave this town no one will ever remember who Ewa and I are/were, but they will remember Bianca; for better or worse. Of course, since her ears aren't pierced, her shoes are the leading indicator of her gender if she's not wearing pink or purple; a couple of people had to look twice. She did make it out onto the sidewalk, trying her step-downs and step-ups. She woofed at some doggies and looked/banged on the glass paned entrance doors. The staff, having seen Bianca periodically as she's grown, never flinched.

Despite no accouterments, you'll never see a booster chair or changing table in the bathrooms here, the thing that I continue to love about Spain and this area in particular is the openness and communal sense of the people here; epitomized at dinner. Other parents won't fret if your child borrows their trike at the park, they'll help pick up other children who tumble on the jungle gym and won't worry if you pick up their child, they don't mind kids wandering around restaurants, they don't freak out if their children approach strangers and say hello, and older women will pick up babies they don't know and say hello while saluting unknown parents.

We finished our meal, downed our wine, dragged Bianca home, bathed her, put her down; then, decompressed. Like all forays out with Bianca, especially in the evening, we leave the place tired, rushed and somewhat nostalgic for when we could have two bottles of wine at dinner without concern about handling a slippery, squirming child in the bath afterward; yet overwhelmingly, we are proud of our daughter and the emotions and response she elicits in others, perfect strangers, secretly hoping we can nurture her intelligence and charisma and give her the life she deserves.