Construction, friendship, and 3 year old discussions

For the past five months or so, Jonathan and I have been passing a construction site when we take Xander to and from school.  They're building a McDonald's with an indoor play structure, and Xander has been amazed at watching the progress of the building from literally a dirt pile teeming with excavators to a "new Old McDonald's," as he calls it.  Its grand opening was yesterday, so of course we went for dinner.

I love my husband because if it was just me, I would have ordered food, watched Xander play, and gone home.  But not Jonathan.  He struck up a conversation with a stranger in a suit who turned out to be the owner, who then sat and joined us for 20 minutes, even giving Xander free ice cream.  This guy is the ultimate American success story: he started off at 16 years old working the cash register at his local Golden Arches, and now fifty years later is a vice-president and owns 10 franchises, including every single McDonald's in Cincinnati.  Apparently his father-in-law, to his dying day, made fun of him and asked him if he was still flipping burgers for a living.

After the owner left to talk to some other suits, Jonathan approached another couple in the play area with kids around the same age as ours.  We ended up chatting for over an hour!  The people are awesome, and we exchanged cell phone info at the end.  My favorite part was when their daughter asked Xander to come play on the big slide with her, and he said, "No, I'm going with Mommy.  [motions me over to introduce me to her] This is my parent, Mommy!"

Xander was full of deep thoughts on the way home, but was so excited he was easily derailed by whatever he saw out the window.  To wit: "Mommy, I have to tell you something!  Some babies have teeth and some don't.  [pause]  Lookit, a cement mixer!"

What else what else... oh yes, do you recall at one point I had written on this blog that when I was a kid, I was tired of long-winded explanations?  I had asked my mom to tell me something, but just "please don't explain it!" [I remember the exact quote because it was often repeated in stories later on in life.]  Well, it's definitely coming back to me now:  At dinner tonight I was talking normally with Xander about his day.  Or so I thought.  I asked him about the most interesting part of his day (gymnastics in the muscle room, the gross motor area), which gymnastics he liked best (somersaults), what art he did (painting), and who he played with (Lior, who has a big monster at home but chose not bring him to school).  I was just about to ask about  Lior's monster when Xander looks up at me from his chair, quesedilla slice in hand, sighed, and said exasperatedly like a teenager, "Mommy, no more questions.  I'm eating."  Jonathan about bust a gut laughing.

Oh yes, and last funny tidbit of the evening: I'm doing research on congregations to prepare for my upcoming interviews.  I'm also trying to arrange funding so that I can attend this awesome conference in Philadelphia in May, on the history of the Jewish book.  My mind is apparently all one track, however, because I just noticed that instead of bookmarking the conference page "Lehmann workshop," I labeled it "Lehmann worship."

And now off to our New Year's party at Tim's.  The plan is to be home by nine, put the kids to bed, then watch a movie!