We had a fantastic weekend.

There is, first of all, a relatively new ability for Penny to remember sequences of information and actually apply them to her situation.

Friday night, she asked if she could visit Jess, and I said, "Well, not now, but tomorrow after your nap, we'll go see Jess."

All morning, Saturday, she'd turn to Matt or I and announce, "Afta da nap, go see Jess!"

And then after her nap, when Matt went upstairs to get her, the first words out of her mouth were, "Go see Jess?"

So we did. The girls were very excited to see each other.

After they'd played for an hour or so, we packed them up and headed out to dinner. K.T. wanted to try Carrabba's, since we'd all heard it was good, and Kevin is very picky about his Italian food, so they don't have it much.

We had the waitress put in the orders for the kids' meals at the same time as our drink orders, so they didn't have to wait too long. Penny does not like pasta in general, but loves long skinny noodles of any sort (spaghetti, lo mein, etc.), so we ordered her a bowl of spaghetti.

Jess got ravioli. Without sauce. (Jess likes pasta, but K.T. does not generally give her sauce on it, as they don't have a dining room and Jess eats over a carpet. Which is only good sense, as far as I'm concerned. If Penny's highchair wasn't planted firmly on a nice, easy-to-clean vinyl floor, I wouldn't give her even half the food she currently gets.)

Carrabba's lost a few points with K.T. for their lack of options for salad dressing. They lost a few points with me for having too many spicy foods and sauces on the menu. They lost a couple of points with Matt when his side dish arrived undercooked (though when he complained, they promptly took it away and brought it back correctly done).

The atmosphere was a little off. As K.T. observed, the lights were dim like a date restaurant, but the booths and tables were big like a family restaurant, and the music was too loud to allow cozy conversation. We decided they were going for the divorce date crowd.

But the entrees themselves earned very high marks. We were all practically melting in our seats.

And Penny was wonderfully well-behaved. It helped that she really loves noodles and spent most of the meal gleefully schlucking them down. (She also shared a few with Matt, Lady and the Tramp style, which was unspeakably adorable.)

I think it also helped that we put her at the opposite end of the table from Jess, so the desire to get down and play wasn't quite as pronounced.

So all in all, I think we'll be heading back.

After dinner, we went back to their place for some cake (we were celebrating Kevin and K.T.'s combined birthdays, after all), and then we headed home.

Sunday morning, we took Penny shopping for new shoes, because she's been complaining a little bit about her shoes hurting. We weren't looking forward to it: Penny is NOT a fan of change, and always vehemently refuses alternate shoes.

But we lucked out, and found the exact same shoe that Penny's been wearing for the last year, in her new size. She resisted it a little bit, but caved more or less gracefully after we hid the old shoes.

We told Penny while she was eating lunch that we were going to the Brandts' for dinner. "Afta da nap, go see Braz!" she announced. And repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

Unfortunately, the Brandts weren't quite ready for us immediately after Penny's nap, so we distracted her with the promise of a movie.

"Blue lion!" she demanded. "PLEASE! Blue lion!"

It took me a while to figure out that the blue lion was the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin, which we'd just introduced her to this weekend. It's still not her favorite -- she gets bored about an hour in -- but it's something to add to the mix, at least.

But by the time she was bored with it, it was late enough that we could leave and stop at the Cube on our way.

"Go to da Cube, den go see Braz!" Penny chanted, over and over, only pausing occasionally to tell us that we were also going to "See da baby? Baby so cute!"

We got to the Brandts' and Penny was very excited to see everyone, and Emma was very excited to see us, and there was much running-around of little girls and squealing and giggling and fun. And once again, Penny was (reasonably) well-behaved and good and cute. Maybe she's finally starting to edge out of the Two-ness.

(Though I'll be glad when she's finally ready to potty-train. We had an Incident that left us borrowing some outgrown clothes from Emma.)

After we'd eaten, Kris and I kicked Matt and Braz out of the house, along with Penny and Emma (I think our exact words were, "Get. Out. Now.") and we enjoyed half an hour of relative calm and quiet (only one toddler making noise and messes!) and talking about the book we're reading for book club next week, and such. And it sounded like the boys and the girls had fun, too -- they found a patch of grass and played catch and let the girls run around and work off excess energy.

So Penny didn't get to bed until late, both nights, but she was in fine form, and we had fun talking with our friends and playing with the kids, and it was a really really nice weekend all around.

--Liz