Taking life at my speed

We had Jeremy's holiday party at Hub 51 Thursday evening - great party, wonderfully warm people and yummy food and drink (I admit - I looked longingly as the girls sipped their sparkling wine while I held my tonic water with a slice of lime and watched trays of sushi pass me by). To get to the party, we had to go through the bustling bar area full of extremely stylish, single thirty- and forty-somethings - my current life is so, so, so far away from this world, I thought as I made my way through.

Tonight was definitely more my speed - we took Jack to see the ZooLights at Lincoln Park Zoo. My three-year-old is totally, utterly and completely in love with the holidays. He gets a magical glow when he sees Santa Claus, and we're definitely true believers. He loved the twinkling Christmas lights and pointed them out to Jeremy and me excitedly. We took a whirl on the carousel - why not? Jeremy asked me if I wanted to ride one of the animals, and I said absolutely not. If you're six and half months pregnant, and want to throw your leg up and over one of those carousel animals, be my guest. I opted to stand beside Jack to help him hold on.

As the carousel began to turn, and Jack's smile got even bigger, I couldn't help but take a snapshot of this moment in my head. We twirled as the lights twinkled through the zoo on this crisp December night. My gloved hands covered Jack's mittened ones, and he laughed and laughed.

We have a lot of change coming in the new year. I have no doubt that our little girl is going to add more richness and love to our lives. But for now, I worry a bit that I'm not going to have enough emotional resources for both. We'll get there, I'm sure. And the one thing I've learned with parenting - you don't know until you know (include that in the book of wise Jennifer adages...).

We finished off our night with dinner at RJ Grunts - the perfect place for kids but make sure you have a reservation before you go (even though it's extremely casual, it fills up ridiculously fast). It's loud, chaotic and features good, cheap eats, including a nice salad bar. We were riding the "hey-it's-the-holidays" high, so we said sure to dessert - a half chocolate chip cookie (which was quite sizable), three scoops of ice cream and chocolate sauce for $3.50. With three spoons of course.