Oh the Drama!

I don't attempt to do much these days and I sure don't get out of the house very often. When I do, it is quite an event. A couple of weeks ago it was easy to go out since I knew Keziah would sleep soundly in her car seat the entire time. Now there are no guarantees.

Yesterday I planned a shopping trip to Superstore. When Micah was done napping and Keziah had eaten and seemed ready for a sleep I packed up the kids to head out. The trip started out fine and things went smoothly in the store but as I was paying at the check-out, Keziah started waking up and fussing. She wanted nothing to do with her soother and wasn't calming down. I quickly packed up my groceries and made the LONG walk down the Superstore ramp (by which point she was screaming!) got the groceries in the car, buckled Micah in his carseat, put Keziah's carseat in, took my cart back (I considered just leaving it, but I didn't want to lose my looney;). I come back to the car - yep, still screaming. As I'm driving out of the parking lot, I've got one hand on the wheel and one hand trying to stuff the soother in Keziah's mouth. At this point Micah starts whining for the candy that I had promised him when we were still in the store. Then, as I'm exiting the lot I see my friend E waving at me. I abandon the attempts at soothing Keziah to give her a quick wave (gotta make it look like I've got this all under control!) and then make the LONG drive home with a baby screaming in my ear. And just my luck, she fell asleep just as we were turning onto our street.

Well, today's adventure was going for a walk. This was my first solo attempt since Keziah's birth and I wasn't sure how it would go since we don't have a double stroller. So, I put the stroller seat all the way back and lay Keziah down and left enough room for Micah to sit up at the front. I was surprised he didn't seem to mind. It took me awhile to get Keziah calmed down enough to lay her down, but once we started walking she fell asleep. I had dressed a little too warmly for the walk and needed to cool off so I decided to stop at the park - bad idea. It had rained and then frozen overnight so all the playground equipment was slushy and dirty. I tried to wipe off sections for Micah, but it didn't get "clean enough" for him and he was really upset about having to use his mittens to touch all the dirt (even though I assured him they could be washed!)

Meanwhile Keziah woke up in the stroller since she noticed we are no longer moving. So, I left Micah crying at the top of the slide (since he's too paranoid to go down with a little bit of dirt on it) and tried to console Keziah. At this point I'm thinking - these are my own offspring and I can't even control them! I was very thankful nobody else was around. I decided to abandon the park idea and head home. So, I stuffed both crying kids back into the stroller and began the trek for home. Micah started into his whine, "want nukie too sleep big boy bed all night!" and I knew I needed to think of something since we had a good 15 minutes yet before we were home. So we started playing a colour game, "Can you find a blue car? How about a red truck?"

Thankfully it worked. And the moving stroller seemed to lull Keziah back into her sleep. After a few minutes all was calm again.

Now I am at home and both kids are napping. Sweet relief. I'm sure I will venture out again but at least next time I'll know what I'm in for!