Now that I have slept on it, I feel much better about yesterday. I can laugh about it, even. But yesterday, I was feeling very angry at myself for overdoing it. We just get so bored being cooped up in the house all the time! But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.
There is a really fun group of moms that my good friend Christy introduced me to. Christy has since moved to Boston so that her husband can get his MBA (nooooooooo), but I seem to still be attached to her mom friends’ email list for play dates. Not sure if this was intentional or not, but they are so much fun and so kind, I always show up when they plan another play date. So far, they haven’t seemed to mind me crashing their play dates and we get to get out of the house and do something fun with people we enjoy, so win-win!
The latest play date was meeting up at one of the mom’s houses and taking a stroll to Candler Park. That sounded like fun and we had been stuck in the house with the stomach plague for almost a month, so I jumped at the opportunity. I arrived at her gorgeous house and she suggested that we walk to the original Flying Biscuit for lunch after the kids play at the park. That sounded lovely, so I was all in. I asked how far the park was, so I could figure out what stroller/Ergo combination I should use. About 30 minutes was the answer. Oh.
Probably should have backed out at that point seeing as I haven’t really done any strenuous exercise since before Ruth was born, and these ladies looked pretty athletic, and I would be schlepping around three times the weight (all of the other mothers very wisely only brought one child). But I figured I could suck it up and go for it. I could use some strenuous exercise, right? So I hauled out the double stroller, strapped Wren on in the Ergo, and off we went.
Puffing behind the rest of the group.
The walk was beautiful. I have never been to Candler Park, and boy have we been missing out. The paths are great, and the scenery can’t be beat. We arrived at the park and I let the girls loose to play. All of the babes had a good time.
Ruth had an epic meltdown, so we decided it was time to eat lunch. One of the moms very kindly wrestled placed my screaming child into the stroller for me because I was having a difficult time doing it with Wren on my hip. Thank you, Laurel! We hoofed it over to the Flying Biscuit. I was hoping that I was masking it well, but by this point I was strongly considering collapsing onto the pavement. We left some of our armada of strollers out front and brought two strollers in. When we entered, all of the restaurant patrons gaped at us as we asked the waitress for every high chair they had. That course of action seemed unwise after we saw how small the tables were. So we decided to put Ruth and Rose in high chairs and the rest in laps or strollers.
No sooner had we sat down, then Wren started vomiting all over my lap. All of the moms immediately dove into their diaper bags for wipes and trash bags as I cupped my hands in front of her mouth and caught the rest of the vomit in my hands. Ah yes! The stomach virus hadn’t finished with me yet. Just when I thought myself safe, it reared its ugly head. I peeled off her vomit clothes, dumped all of the vomit and baby clothes in a trash bag, and took her outside to finish vomiting, if need be. At this point, I wondered if I would be a huge wimp and an imposition on top of that if I asked Scott to come rescue me. The thought of the 30 minute hike back to my van with two toddlers and a sick baby shook my courage. But then again, I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and everything seems better after eating. So I put a clean onesie on Wren, wiped off my pants and went back inside.
The rest of the meal was mercifully uneventful, until the end when another one of the babies in our group started vomiting all over the place. I’m sure all of the poor restaurant patrons and employees were not sorry to see us go. We all tipped as generously as we could.
I laid Wren down in the stroller with Rose and hoisted Ruth on in the back carry. My shoulders burned and one of the considerate moms took pity on me (I must have looked about as bad as I felt) and switched strollers with me on the last big hill we had to climb. The moms helped me load the babies and strollers back into my car, and I said goodbye to them, eternally grateful for all of their help. By this time, it was 4:00 and past their nap times. They had snoozed a little on the hike back to the car, but I was hoping they would snooze a bit more on the way home. Little did I know our adventure wasn’t over yet. Unbeknownst to me, there was construction blocking one lane right outside my neighborhood. This caused a traffic backup of epic proportions. We were stuck in the car for an hour and a half. Wren was clearly feeling pretty crummy, and she wailed for the entire hour and a half. By the end of the trip I was close to tears myself. Nothing is worse for a mother than having to listen to her baby wail for hours on end and not being able to do anything to help.
Even after all of that, I am still glad we went. I love spending time with mom friends, and the girls need some outings in their lives. My muscles are not thanking me today, though. Perhaps I should exercise more often.
You are so brave for taking three babies out! I’m sure you do that quite often. I would have been beside myself had I been in your shoes!
Lol, I do not do it all that often. I’m kind of a chicken about it. I have to be feeling particularly crazy that day;)
… wait… you use the term “schlepping”?!? *looooool* Do you know that’s a german word? It’s “schleppen” and has exactly the same meaning.
I didn’t realize it at first, cause it was so familiar I just read over it. Then later it dawned that there was that one word that didn’t quite fit…
Blame it on all of our Jewish immigrants;) I think they are the ones who introduced it to the U.S. In fact, I had thought it was a Yiddish term! Is Yiddish related to German? (Clearly I need to brush up on my linguistics)
I had to check wikipedia and other sources on that, since due to unfortunate historc events, jewish culture is almost extinct in Germany 🙁
I clearly need to brush up my linguistics, too. I found this really interesting (and on my part entertaining) article in the wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Yiddish_origin
I never knew that there were SO MANY yiddish words in german (or vice versa, who knows).
Okay, well you should never call a german girl “zaftig”, that will only earn confused looks. 😀
Thanks for the link! I find linguistics fascinating. And the US has had its share unfortunate historic events as well.
Oh my goodness!!!!!! This is why Catholics have wine, right? 🙂 Your poor body and poor Wren. Hope everyone is resting up and finally on the mend!
I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we are FINALLY out of the woods now.
What good news!!!
Oh how I loved this post! It reminds me that I’m not the only one that gets myself into pickles like this! I’m glad you can laugh about it now!
One for the record books!
I never did get into a mothers group when my daughter came. Some friends sometimes catch up with our little ones but in some ways I wish I had. Mostly because hubby works arvo shift, we ended up just doing family day stuff instead. Sounds like you’ve had quite the adventures lol
It is so tough to have mommy friends when you have multiple children. I wish I were better about it. We mostly do family things too.
Oh my. What an adventure!!! I’m really grateful that nothing like that ever happened to us. No vomiting in public places (yet).
But the wailing in cars – I definitely had my fair share of that. My eldest was screaming bloody murder every time we put him in that Maxi Cosi seat – he fell asleep as soon as the car started rolling and woke up screaming at every [ceonsored] stop (like red lights, stop signs, traffic jams…). All of that screaming suddenly stopped when he was old enough for a car seat where he could look forwards. Gah.
And my youngest screamed bloody murder every time we had to drive when it was dark outside. The screaming started when we put him in the car and stopped when we took him out.
Oh no! You know you’re right!!! They are never as cranky in the car seats once they start facing forward! I never realized that. It makes sense. And we have the same problem with stops. Got to keep the car moving! Having “Baby Beluga” blasting in the car helps too.