Our Friday the 13th Valentine’s

Despite the fact that I’m usually rather nonchalant about Valentine’s Day, I just realised that we celebrate it every year, and definitely in the past 3 years! I guess I just like Valentine’s Day, cheesy and commercial as it may be. It’s just an opportunity (and an excuse) to celebrate, have a good time and enjoy each other’s company.

This year in particular I really wanted to go out and eat at a restaurant that I hadn’t tried before. In my past (non-baby) life, that was one of the things I enjoyed doing and I missed it — sitting down to a nice long dinner with the hubs and chatting and enjoying the food and company. Oh, and having some drinks. I have no love though for the overpriced Valentine’s dinner sets though, so we decided to celebrate on Friday (the 13th) instead.

And it was doubly nice that DD managed to get Friday off so we had a long weekend together. We packed Noah off with us to Ikea in the afternoon where we managed to grab some storage boxes for his toys, and other knick knacks. It’s impossible to come out of Ikea empty-handed and we were not aware of it but Friday was the start of their sale so we managed to score some discounts as well. Noah and I also managed to check out their nursing room and for such a huge kid-friendly store, I was quite disappointed that the nursing room was really small with just a bench, a changing table and a sink. I had to wait to get in, and even then had to share the space with another 2 mothers who came in and out while I was nursing. I really don’t mind sharing with other nursing mothers (I generally enjoy the small talk) but I really would have appreciated more space! And a couple of arm chairs would have been nice. I seriously felt like I was nursing in the broom closet.

In the evening with Noah all wiped out from the day, we put him to sleep and snuck out to Picotin for dinner.

Me advertising the bread. It was particularly yummy though, with walnuts and some kind of fruit (raisin? cranberry?). Was too busy wolfing it down to pay real close attention.

DD examining his bucket of beer

Escargots, which we shared in addition to our soups. These were a little too salty for my taste.

Seared tuna steak, done medium rare. Nothing quite compares in my memory to the Seared Ahi I had in Hawaii at Roy’s but this was really pretty good. And it brought back fond memories anyway!

The tagliatelle that accompanied DD’s tuna.

We had a lovely night talking and laughing over nothing in particular and actually made it to an hour and a half before we started feeling like we wanted to rush home to the little bub. So we skipped dessert and headed back. He had awoken (as we had suspected) and had been crying a bit but he had stopped by the time we got back and was all eager to be held and played with. So we did. It was a lovely evening, and the best part? We still had the weekend ahead of us!