Motherhood: Just Like Your Normal Life, Only Ten Times More Complicated

Tonight I had my Book Club from 5:30p to 7:30p. As mentioned earlier, I forgot to get a sitter and was a host so I couldn’t exactly stay home. Besides, Free State Brewery is a favorite of mine…

Now, a year ago this is how things would have gone:

1. I would have probably worked until 5:15p-ish, then headed downtown to find parking and walk over to the brewery.

However, now I have a child to include in my plans. So things went a little like this:

1. Left work a little early to drive over the bridge and through a detour/construction, to pick up baby from daycare.


2. Talk to daycare provider probably much too long about the state of my son’s dirty diapers, then wrestle the car-hating child into his car seat. While he howls in protest.


3. Drive back through detour and construction and over bridge, then waaaaaaaay over to our house on the south side of town. Through “Lawrence rush hour”, A.K.A. this town is too big for its own britches, therefore way too many drivers are forced to share a small side street as if it were a main thoroughfare, resulting in it taking 15 minutes to drive a mile and a half. Insert: the sounds of an angry, spiteful child yelping from the back seat the entire time.


4. Wrestle child back out of the car seat, and attempt to carry the squirming child into the house, while also carrying (1) diaper bag, (2) purse, (3) daycare bag, (4) office lunch bag, and (5) breast pump.


5. Get caught by super nice next-door neighbors, so spend the next 10 minutes anxiously glancing at watch and trying to cajole a pouty baby to FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY JUST SQUEEZE OUT A TEENY SMILE ALREADY for the nice little old people. Instead he buries his face into my chest and moans “ah-buuuuuuuuu” the entire time.


6. With trembling arms from the weight of baby and all the bags, finally make it into the house. Baby is squealing “aaaaaaaah-buuuuuuuuuu!” at a pitch that could break glass, so drop all bags and scramble baby and self out of coat to get him something to drink.
   
   
7. Baby zonks out after approximately 5 minutes of drinking. Great. Because we probably should have left to go back downtown about 5 minutes ago, as parking is hard to find on a KU game night.


8. Wrestle child back into car seat. Baby is now SUPREME HULK ANGRY after being awoken from sleep. Proof that sometimes God does look down upon me happily: I find Rockstar Parking right in front of the brewery. Sweeeeeet. Only: we're about 25 minutes too early for the room reservation...


9. Wrestle baby out of car. Spend 5 minutes fiddling with Bjorn to get it right and get baby in it properly. Bundle blanket over baby (it was FREEZING! Cold. And I forgot my own hat, great). Grab enormous diaper bag and start hitting the stores.
   
   
10. Get so involved in looking at the clearanced scarves in The Gap that I have to sprint to Free State to be there for our reservation time.

Aaaaand: fin. Actually the rest was a piece of cake: Peter was a dream all night, smiling and cooing at the ladies, sitting nicely on my lap the entire time.

I do earn Mommy of the Year points for what happened at the end: we were all getting ready to leave. I plopped Peter in the high chair and was chatting happily while getting our things together and pulling on my coat. After a few minutes I hear the quietest little squawks, and look down to locate where the weird noise is coming from . . . Oh boy.

I thought I had the high chair divider between his legs? But no, I put both legs into one leg opening. So he had somehow squirmed all the way through, with only his head keeping him from sliding to the floor. It was a sight to see actually, and after letting out a few motherly "PETER!!!" shouts, I was able to pull him back through the top. Crisis averted.

Yeah. Dramatic re-creation of the moment can be seen below (I am too lazy to cut out an entire baby body, TOO MANY ANGLES PEOPLE, so I drew the body with the handy paintbrush feature):