Old Friends and Maybe a New One

It's been a long time since I saw C. and T. In fact, it has been a little over three years since I went out to Seattle and visited them and M&A. A whole heck of a lot of things have changed since that time. C. and T., for example, moved to Houston. Oh yeah, and they have a CHILD. So three years can really change some things. They let me know that they were going to be flying out to Philly before driving out to the shore for a few days with their good friends at the beach, and I was glad to swipe a little chunk of their time. I had all sorts of ideas of places we could eat that would be kid-friendly, but many of those places are not truly kid-friendly, at least not on weekdays (ie: they don't open til 5 and the window for us was pretty much 1-3), so I had to rethink. In the end we decided to meet up at Franklin Square Park to have a meal c/o Square Burger. And that is just what we did. It was a warm day that seemed like rain but just stayed remarkably humid. I think we all ordered the same Square Burger. T. ordered a milkshake and I ordered my own thing of fries.

Well who is that? That is M. C. and T.'s little one. I love kids and hanging out with them, but I also know that kids sometimes need a little time to get to know you, and knowing our time was short I didn't try to overpressure M. into any quality time. I was happy to see her happy with her parents. Girl loves her some walking and some birds and really was quite a sweetie for having just come from a plane ride and then a car ride and then a meeting with a total stranger. This is not entirely surprising, considering the generally laid back nature of her parents. The burgers etc. were good. Maybe not totally magic or 'this is the one place you need to go back for another burger' type vibe, but honestly I had never actually gone to Franklin Square Park and I was glad to have the experience. Mainly because of seeing some longlost folks and their newest family member.

The other advantage to Franklin Square Park was the playground equipment and kid-friendly activities. Though I hadn't seen them in a while, seeing C. and T. as parents wasn't some crazy thing. My brain didn't need to adjust to it and I was impressed by their overall teamwork and attitude about parenthood. Not being one myself I know that I don't really have a position to say anything about it one way or the other, but they seemed to be rocking the whole thing.

Seriously, she was a pretty chill baby. Or toddler.

Then I went on the carousel with C. and M. while T. took my camera and my iPhone died. M. got a little hot I think at this point and then C. got in trouble for riding on the same horse as M. Seems that is totally FORBIDDEN. The dude running the carousel stopped the ride to let us know about this. In the end we ended up in this booth.

And then our time came to a close and I begged a ride off C. and T. I was so glad to see them after such a gap and loved meeting their little one (and spending a little quality time with her in the backseat talking mainly about bottles and her shoes...without actual words of course).