Owen Parties With a Rock Star

Saturday night we took Owen to a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center near Buffalo. We've been excited for this concert since we bought the tickets back in February as a Valentine's Day present to ourselves. But as the days drew closer, we got nervous about bringing a not-yet 3 month old to a rock concert. Were we insane? Who does that? We asked our friend Dina, an audiologist, for her advice about Owen's still-developing hearing, and she said as long as we were on the lawn and brought some ear plugs, we should be fine.

And we were. Owen was a champ through the whole experience. Dave wore the sling into the venue, with Owen's little head peeking out, and as we walked through the crowd of 22,000 people, you could hear a collective sigh and the word, "Babbbbbyyyyyyyy..." following in our wake. Owen was the center of attention (sorry, Tom!). We also discovered that Owen loves feeling grass with his feet; he giggled and rubbed those little toes in the grass, and our neighbors stared and cooed and probably thought, "I can't believe those people brought a baby to a concert." They're just jealous that we're cooler parents than they are.

Things we suddenly care about at concerts: Darien Lake had a "family" lawn section, which was an area located front and center, roped off, where no alcohol or smoking was permitted. That rocked. Especially since they didn't relegate us to some corner in the back. However, during the sound check after the opening act, we realized that it was going to get a lot louder very soon, and our neurosis convinced us to fight through the crowd to the very back of the venue, where we could sit on the top of a hill and watch the concert from above. Owen kept his ear plugs in, but they weren't necessary anymore. We felt a little better.

And then the massive thunderstorm rolled in, lightening jumping from cloud to cloud. Owen conveniently decided to sleep through most of this, but the lightening was making us nervous. Then the concert lost power not once, but twice (right in the middle of "Last Dance with Mary Jane," which Petty & co. kept playing when the power booted back on as if someone had simply pressed PAUSE on the CD). After the second time, (probably 1.5 hours in to the concert) the torrential rain came, and Owen decided that eating would be a good thing to do right then. So there I sat on the grass, Owen feeding under my sweatshirt, a towel draped around us, and soaking, soaking rain falling. It was time to skeedaddle. So off we ran to the car, through massive mud puddles. But we couldn't find the car and walked around in the dark for ten minutes, totally soaked through. Owen must have sensed that now was not a time to scream that my nipple had been torn away from him, because he stayed completely silent the whole time.

We located the car by pushing the unlock button and seeing the brake lights flash, changed Owen into dry clothes, and drove back to Syracuse soaking wet. Because even though we have an amazingly well-stocked diaper bag, it does not have an adult change of clothes or shoes or underwear inside.