Empty Nest

So what do you give a person who watches your son for four days a week at no charge for Christmas?  Well if you are Jenn and I you give them two weeks vacation (unpaid of course) and then as a bonus you allow them to work from home for a week with the strict instructions that when Nolin returns he better be back on a good sleep schedule, or we would have to start looking for someone else to watch him (unpaid of course) for four days a week.  If you ask me it really was very thoughtful and generous of us.

So here we are almost two weeks after Christmas…Jenn returned from Pennsylvania on Sunday and Nolin returns with Teresa on Saturday.  We really aren’t bad parents looking to pawn responsibility off on someone else, it just happened to work out this way due to scheduling conflicts (I feel like that’s the part when someone shouts out, that’s what they all say).

It’s been difficult since I have not seen Nolin since the day after Christmas, luckily Don sends us a few pictures and videos from his cell phone each day to try to tide us over until Saturday.  We have filled our nights by watching cinema classics like Nolin eats a pan lid, Nolin eats Lincoln logs and Nolin eats pretty much everything else.

So while Nolin spends his time up North putting everything in his mouth, Jenn & I are stuck here.  Two empty nesters trying to figure out what to do with our time.  It is kind of difficult since we really have not had a weekend (much less a week) without children in almost 18 months.  To be fair Axelle was pretty independent and did go to NY and Chicago without us, but either way it has been a long time and I was afraid we may be a little off our game.

So seriously what should we do?

After thinking about it long and hard we decided that going to see a British Jihad satire about a group of fumbling, squabbling and inept terrorists who accidentally kill Osama Bin Laden at a terrorist training camp and then decide to wage Jihad during the London marathon dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a man riding an ostrich among other things sounded like fun.  Needless to say they do more harm to themselves than anyone else.

That’s right it was independent film night at the Enzian Theater.  Last night’s jihadist feature comedy was the critically acclaimed Four Lions.  It was different, but worth checking out.  Going to the Enzian was one of our favorite things to do when we moved here, but we really haven’t found the time to go lately.  So if we were going to be without Nolin, this seemed like a good thing to do.  Not so good was the fact that the movie started at 9 pm on a school night for me.

Tomorrow night is date night part deux (shout out Axelle).  We are going to hit up Park Avenue another one of our favorite things to do when we used to just fly by the seat of our pants and do what ever we wanted.  While I am excited to go out and relax with Jenn tomorrow night, I honestly can’t wait for Nolin’s return on Saturday.  Our house has seemed oddly quite and strange without him here.

I am also happy to report, that it appears Teresa will be able to keep her job as she has indicated that Nolin seems to have gotten back on a solid eleven to twelve-hour sleep schedule.