Monday, October 24, 2011

What I learned this weekend


  • If you’re thinking about flying with a two-year-old and a four-month-old, DON’T DO IT.  Or at least bring a nanny.  Everything went pretty well for us. There was very little crying on the plane and no disasters.  Honestly, things couldn’t have gone much better.  But it was so unbelievably exhausting I fear I may never recover.  I don’t know how I would have survived it if things had gone wrong.
  • When you squish a baby tightly into a Moby wrap, there’s really no place for poop to go except out of the diaper.  Consider not wearing a white shirt.
  • You can have an amazing time with 50 people you’ve never met.
  • If you insist on taking a breastfeeding baby on a plane trip, throw any hopes of modesty out the window.  Over the course of the trip I flashed a (female) TSA agent, a young (male) professional traveling alone, a not-at-all-subtle man who stared intently as my child ate*, and everyone seated near me on the plane.  Multiple times. 
  • Speaking of nursing, you want to know how I knew the Blathering ladies where “my people” (a phrase used often this past weekend)? There was a semi-designated pumping area at the Blathering house and a small shelf full of breastmilk in the fridge.
  • The outside dining area at the flagship Whole Foods is cutthroat.  On Sunday I walked out of the store carrying a bunch of food, with a baby strapped to me, and trying to herd a two-year-old.  As I was almost to a table, a woman on a bike flew past me and practically threw herself on the table to claim it before I could.  There were no other open tables.  I stood there for a few minutes.  Some people got up to leave.  When I was almost to that table, the same woman ran in front of me and grabbed the only chair, so she could have FOUR at her table.
  • Don’t feed the birds means:  for the love of God, don’t feed the birds.  Enough people evidently ignore the signs the pigeons consider any food in the patio area fair game.  I was sitting on the edge of the rock wall (because I had NO CHAIR), eating a piece of sushi, and a pigeon came flying at me and TOOK A BITE OF MY FOOD.  While it was on the way to my mouth.  The damn bird almost hit me in the face.  I screamed, threw the rest of the piece, and two other birds immediately converged and devoured it.  I ate the rest of the sushi hunched over the table trying to hide it from the pigeons and flinching every time I saw one.**
  • You can have it all – at least for the weekend.  I had a fun family weekend.  I had a girls’ weekend.  I had some down time.  I even read a whole book.  Going into the weekend I was panicking, thinking there was no way bringing my family to the Blathering would work.  But it did.  And I loved it.  My only regret is I didn’t get to hear more mother-in-law stories from TJ.

* Interestingly, the staring man wasn’t leering in an “omg, BOOBZ” kind of way, he seemed perplexed as to what I was doing.  It’s like I was feeding the baby via my elbow or something – he looked like he had no idea what was going on.
** I now totally get why Phoebe Buffay threw the bowl full of lottery tickets when the scary pigeon flew at her.  I think this was the SAME PIGEON.  He’s probably bitter he didn’t grab that $10,000 ticket.

7 comments:

  1. It was so lovely meeting you! Your family is adorable :) You were brave bringing the whole crew but I'm glad it worked out well for you and you were able to have some fun and get some relaxing in, you needed it!

    And OMG THOSE PIGEONS. YIKES!!

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  2. A bird seriously ate your food from your hand?! I would have thrown it too!

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  3. Pigeon story - terribly frightening. Two babies on a plane - also frightening. But you did it!

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  4. It is very cool that you were able to combine the friend weekend and the family weekend.

    It was so fun to hang out with you!

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  5. I spent the whole trip home wondering WHY I brought Elizabeth with me. And it was the same thing, nothing really went wrong, but SO MUCH WORK.

    I'm glad you came! It was awesome getting to meet you.

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  6. Your Phoebe reference totally has me hearing "caw. Don't blame the pretty lady. caw." in my head! HA!

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  7. The woman in the outside eatting area is evil. Any mom with 2 small children deserves a chair.

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