Waiting

The 3rd trimester sucks.
It seems to be all about just waiting for the baby to show up.
Anyhow...
We had a good New Years.  We went to Chicago and saw the Addams Family Musical, which premiered in Chicago before going to Broadway.  Going to Chicago for live theater, or the opera, or the Cubs or Blackhawks, is something that we do once in a while, and then on the way home always talk about how there's really no reason that we can't do more of this sort of thing.
This trip was no exception.
We do realize that the kid will probably need to be, what?  two or so before he can be expected to sit through a whole opera.
We'll start small, Pagliachi or the Elixir of Love, something like that.  Wagner will have to wait until he's at least seven.
Besides, if you've been to the Lyric, then you know that the adults in the audience often act like two year olds (this is really only the case in the good seats, where the people are there because going to the Lyric is what you do, in the cheaper nosebleed seats everyone behaves.  Those are the real opera fans).

This past summer, back when Kate was pregnant but didn't know it, we met a great couple and their two kids at a party in Vermont that we sort of crashed.  That's another story, but these guys had been together as long as Kate and I before having kids (not married until recently, but even in progressive Vermont they're only recently that enlightened).  They have two adopted kids who were four or five, and eight or nine.  Great kids, well behaved, interactive, able to go do their own thing.  The parents, James and Craig, were able to parent and be grown ups simultaneously.
Mind you, we have other friends that can do that very well also.  What was interesting about James and Craig is their approach to parenting, which included intentional "grown-up time" for one or both of them pretty regularly.
We talked about it for several hours, Kate and I had stopped by this birthday party to be polite with the intention of having a beer (remember, she didn't know she was pregnant yet), and then going out to dinner.  Then this enormous thunderstorm moved in and we ended up there until 2 am.  So we had a lot of time to talk to James and Craig.  They have found, based on what we saw (admittedly brief and anecdotal evidence) the elusive balance of parenting and doing their own thing that resulted in kids that were interactive and well behaved and also not needy or insecure.  These kids were also a bit older, the youngest at least a couple of years past the terrible twos, and I know that's a factor as well.
In any case, James and Craig are definitely on our list of parental role models, exemplifying the notion that once in a while we can leave the kid with Grandma and Grandpa in Milwaukee and go to Chicago for a play or hockey game or whatever.
The play was good by the way.  Some bugs to be worked out, but that's what they were explicitly doing in Chicago.  The only disappointment was that Bebe Neuwirth was off, and there was an understudy playing Morticia.  It was very true to Charles Addams' cartoons, which I love, as my sense of humor runs pretty much precisely down that road.  Now if someone will get around to making a musical out of Edward Gorey's work.
Brad and Bev, you should absolutely try to see this if you have an opportunity.
We discussed names after the play.  Kate has ruled out both Addams (which I thought had a chance) and Gomez (which I threw in to make Addams more appealing) as first names.
Maybe Fester?