Comedy Hour: Family Date

Joseph and I went on our first date in 2007. It was a real, unmistakable, sweep-her-off-her-feet date. Now, I thought he asked if I wanted to "hang out" (like with some friends) rather than "go out," so I, embarrassingly, was in jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie the whole time. But he'd had enough of being just friends with girls and beating around the bush, so when he showed up at my door, he was in a tie and carrying flowers. He opened doors for me and took me to dinner at a nice restaurant where we talked for a while before going for a walk in the moonlight. He even asked to hold my hand! After that we went to his apartment to watch "The Quiet Man" and he asked if he could put his arm around me. At the end of the night, he gave me a hug and thanked me for a nice evening. And that, gentlemen, is how a date is done.

It's now been eight years since our first date and every year on February 26 we go back to McGrath's, the restaurant where we had our first dinner together. Once we had to take a young Diana with us because we remembered that it was the 26th right before dinner time. But mostly it's been a night when just the two of us go out and remember our awesome first date and other happy memories together. This year, because Joseph has a cold, we weren't able to get a babysitter lined up. No worries, we thought, we'll just make it a family date!

SO,
Joseph was feeling a bit out of sorts because he had a cold and had been busy with work all day. I suggested he get in a short workout while I brought the kids to a park. Joseph felt refreshed after a swim and the kids got some energy out at a wet, sandy playground. I was prepared with an extra change of nicer clothes for all of us, so while Joseph was in the locker rooms at the gym, I changed all three kids out of their wet, sandy clothes in the back of the car.

We were quickly seated in a relatively deserted section of the restaurant. When we had one child, I might have been insulted, but now I prefer it that way. Matthew began shrieking obnoxiously loudly so we quickly sanitized all the surfaces we could reach and started laying out handfuls of Cheerios in front of him, which seemed to satisfy him. While he stuffed Cheerios in his little chipmunk cheeks, Joseph and I hurriedly scanned the menu while Liam tried scaling the dividers between booths and attempted to get the attention of the people on the other side of the restaurant by peeking over and yelling "HEY!!!" Choosing what you'd like to order when you have kids along is a ten minute long process of scanning the menu over and over again for appetizing keywords and/or pictures while being attacked on all sides by questions, forks, crayons, and demands for water and French fries. I estimate that at any given time during those ten minutes, only as much as 5% of your brain power is actually devoted to figuring out what you're going to eat. Usually right before the server comes to take your order or deliver food, someone has to go potty, and our night out was no exception. So by the time we'd been in there 30 minutes or so, Joseph and I had the chance to actually make eye contact and at least try to begin a conversation about two or three times. Yes, having kids along will change things.

Now, as a side story, Matthew had been having some, well, digestive issues and hadn't made a dirty diaper in a couple of days. So when I saw The Face, I knew we had an impending disaster of Biblical proportions on our hands. (Parents, you know The Face: suddenly staring pensively into the middle distance, becoming red and straining...) Of course this happened AS the food was being set on the table. So I left Joseph and the kids and took Matthew out through the nearly freezing drizzle to find the diaper bag and change him in the back of the car. It was as harrowing as I feared. Fortunately, I had enough wipes. UNfortunately, I had only brought one change of clothes for each child, and Matthew had just rendered his unusable. His other clothes were soaked and sandy. Liam had wet his pants at the park, so those were out of the question. Out there in the chilly darkness, I had to sort through to find the least objectionable clothes to put on my nearly-naked (but clean!) child. The best option was his sister's mildly sandy pants from the park and his brother's shirt.

So we returned, with Matthew dressed in girls' pants and a mismatched shirt that were both two sizes two big. We fed Matthew French fries and Cheerios and rice, but for some reason what he really wanted were Joseph's roasted vegetables. I'd forgotten to buckle him down after bringing him back from the car, so he tried standing up to grab them and swipe at the check while Joseph was trying to pay, prompting him to observe that it was "like having a demented old man sitting next to you," which made me nearly choke on my food.

So I was trying not to choke from laughing while eating and I was leaning across the table to wrestle Matthew back into his high chair while he grabbed at roasted vegetables and Joseph tried to hold the check out the way and calculate a tip. Liam had seized Joseph's phone and was holding it up to his ear yelling "Hello? Hello?!" while Diana was admonishing me because she had just been informed that we weren't getting dessert. It was a perfect little circus of hilarity. It looked like something out of a sitcom. While it was chaotic, neither Joseph or I really minded the madness. After all, when we went on our first date eight years ago, we liked each other very much. The way he tells it, he knew pretty soon after we started dating that he wanted to marry me, and I just wanted to be with him. What could be happier than two people who after eight years together have a happy marriage and three healthy, energetic kids? It was fun going back to where it began with the three people who are now part of our family. (Though we agreed that next year, we are definitely going to find a babysitter.)

But that's not all! While we were packing up, Diana noticed a fingernail that needed to be trimmed. Her middle one. So she kept flipping her middle finger up and sticking it in my face while chattering about how it needed to be trimmed when we got home. When she had finished with that, she pulled up her dress and flashed people absentmindedly, as little girls do. We got the circus under way, but in the entrance to the restaurant, Liam began doing an exaggerated cowboy waddle and complaining suddenly that his diaper was falling off. Our hands were full of leftovers, Matthew, and holding Diana's hand, so we told him to just hoist it up until we were at the car. Once at the car, we fixed Liam's diaper, got everyone strapped into their seats, and climbed in ourselves, at which point Matthew sneezed rice everywhere. Apparently he'd been holding it in his mouth the entire time for just such an occasion.

It's a happy, wild, messy little circus we have. But we wouldn't change a thing.
(But seriously, if anyone is free next February 26, please give us a call...)

Comedy Hour: The Relatives

I try not to write about things too soon after they occur. Time creates a nice distance that allows me to view events in a more emotionally detached way, which can be very useful. But this just needs to be shared because I think it's something that all parents have experienced.

We're in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. It's beautiful. It's idyllic. It's basically like wandering around through a slightly crowded tropical paradise.

Paradise is full of scenes like this

We've been able to meet up with friends like one of my past swim coaches and we're staying with Joseph's aunt and her family. Absolutely beautiful people. They couldn't be more wonderful and welcoming than if they were actually my blood relatives. I love staying with them. While we were here, we got the opportunity to see some of Joseph's uncles, whom he hadn't seen in decades. We first met them without the kids- Joseph's aunt watched them while we went out to dinner and had a lovely adult conversation. It was especially interesting because it turns out Joseph and his youngest uncle have very similar personalities, thought processes, and interests. They could basically be brothers. This uncle and his wife (may they never find this blog) were friendly, funny, charming people, and they invited us over to their house for an early dinner. 

All of us.

Fellow parents... you know.

These lovely people recently got married but don't have any kids yet. So despite their best efforts to make us feel welcome, their home wasn't really kid-friendly. I totally don't fault them for that. I've never kept a family of ferrets in my house, so my home isn't ferret-proof. You just can't know that you shouldn't leave water bottles or glass picture frames within three feet of the floor until your kids have pulled them down at least once. 

Unfortunately, we were starting this whole evening at a disadvantage. The kids took short, broken naps, or in the case of our eldest child, skipped naps altogether. A lack of consistent sleeping schedule coupled with strange surroundings have made our kids a little off-kilter this entire trip. On top of it all, I forgot my first rule of outings with kids, which is to lower all expectations until they can be lowered no more. It was because these were nice family members and I enjoyed being around them and wanted to make a good impression. My fault. So I got myself all wound up when our kids were acting like kids. 

What happened exactly, you ask? Well...

We pulled up to their house and all got out of the car to say hello. They have an Australian Shepherd who is very smart, very energetic, and was barking at us very loudly. That made Diana and Matthew a little nervous and nearly sent Liam over the edge. He had an experience when he was younger that left him afraid of aggressive or intense dogs, even if they're just being intensely friendly. So the kids were nervous right off the bat. I don't blame the dog for that at all. I know that good dogs, like good kids, sometimes don't act socially acceptable. Whatever. However, Diana is actually allergic to dogs. So though the dog and the kids eventually reached a state of detente, Diana very shortly became horribly itchy and uncomfortable because she petted the dog and because there was dog hair in the house. Her face began to break out in hives and she began to cry. We mostly put out that fire by wiping her down with a wet rag. 

Matthew, who has spent a lot of time riding around in his car seat during this trip, started yelling from his perch on an ottoman because he absolutely did not want to be left in his seat any longer, so I had to hold him the whole time. He was almost entirely pleasant, but makes for a very wiggly happy handful at this point.

Liam was doing what Liam does- thoughtlessly touching everything he shouldn't. He took the tops off of water bottles, pulled on the cords of shades, pushed pillows off the couch, stepped on his sister's foot (more yelling), pounded on the glass shower door in the bathroom- just stuff a little boy will do in a place that isn't really set up for little boys yet. 

After much whining from kids (and some genuine fear because the dog followed them everywhere) while I juggled Matthew and tried to half-participate in conversation with the other adults, dinner was ready. They put together a really lovely dinner with local dishes. It was healthy and tasted delicious. But of course, Diana needed to have mac and cheese (and though she had insisted upon it, literally the first thing she uttered on tasting it was, "This doesn't taste good.") Liam had a hamburger, though only part of it because he was so energetic and distracted that he kept hopping down and using the couches for tumbling practice instead of eating dinner. And Matthew mostly sat on my lap and made eating difficult by trying (and sometimes succeeding) at grabbing handfuls of my dinner. I had given up adult conversation by this point. I was getting wound up and mostly death-whispering to the kids to sit still and/or stop bothering each other and/or stop whining. Joseph was absorbed in conversation with his uncle, and I'm glad they got the chance to talk. But this situation would have been impossible to deal with even if we'd both devoted all our attention to it. We were trying to make kids act like adults and I was setting us all up for failure with impossibly high standards. 

For dessert, Joseph's aunt had made a lilikoi (passionfruit) chiffon pie from fruit grown in their yard. (I told you this was a tropical paradise!) However, because our kids don't react well to sugar, I suggested to a very interested Diana that we would share some pie. That didn't sit well with her, so she slipped into the kitchen where Joseph's aunt was dishing out pie and asked for (and got) her own piece. Of course his aunt couldn't have known that Diana wasn't supposed to get her own piece of pie. I only discovered it when Diana marched into the living room where we were all sitting munching on a generous slice of chiffon pie. That was straight up naughty, but we couldn't really discipline right then because we would risk making his relatives feel bad. So I told Diana she could eat half of the pie and we would take the other half home (where she would never ever see it again, but I didn't tell anyone that part). It was only when I began eating my slice of pie (minus a handful that Matthew claimed) that I had a shocking realization.

Chiffon pie is light and silky only because it's made with eggs. Beaten, lightly cooked eggs.

There are only a few things in the world that Diana is allergic to enough to throw up if she ingests them: Peanuts, tree nuts, and eggs. 

Yes.

Right on cue, Diana began to cry and complain because her stomach hurt which rapidly became "my throat is stinging" and her cheeks began to swell up. I experienced her reaction to undercooked eggs in the past, so I didn't really fear an anaphylactic reaction, but I knew she needed antihistamines fast. Thankfully, there was some Benadryl in the house so we gave her that and made our exit. She was wailing because she was in genuine distress. I had to put Matthew down in his chair to carry him to the car, which caused him to scream to high heaven. They live on a hill, so I had Liam follow me down the steps, but of course he managed to trip on his ever-present blanket and tumble past the side of me. I don't even know how many times he hit his head on the concrete steps. He wasn't bleeding, but he was definitely hurting. Joseph's aunt and uncle were so nice. They came out to wish us goodbye through the screaming symphony of our whole little circus. I was wound up as tight as could be and fuming at the way things had played out. The kids fell asleep on the car ride home, but each woke up to yell in turn as we carried them into the house. Diana was the last to come in, and though Joseph sprinted admirably, she still threw up on both of them. And the sink. And the other sink. On the plus side, he now finally believes me when I tell him Diana is allergic to eggs. It only really takes one time being vomited upon to make you a believer. 

And now, we all rest. I'm going to bed. I'm sure by tomorrow this will all seem laughable.

Do you have a cry-larious story about visiting relatives with kids?

Comedy Hour: Well-Child Checkup

Welcome to comedy hour here at No Ordinary Family! In this segment I will relate to you a hilarious story about the time I took three young children to the doctor's office solo. If you're a parent of three or more kids, this will sound mighty familiar to you. If you're not a mom, make sure you're sitting down. If you're pregnant (especially with your second or third child), definitely be sitting down (take is easy, girlfriend!) and don't worry, you'll learn to appreciate this kind of humor.

Last week was my son's two year well-child checkup. I hate the doctor, but I love my kids, so I take them to be tortured to make sure they're healthy. Unfortunately, I ended up having to take all three kids by myself. What I know of doing anything (especially if it's "an outing") with three kids so far is to lower your expectations about as far as they can go. So in my mind, the visit would have gone well if we,
a) Made it to the doctor's office, and,
b) Saw the doctor, and,
c) All made it home alive.
I used to have ideas about "cleanliness" and "good behavior" and "being on time," but experience and a lack of sleep have taken those from me, along with my dignity and short-term memory. (Although one thing I can remember is my son sitting on my lap last week poking my still-soggy post-baby tummy and saying "beep!" over and over again. I laughed with him and cried on the inside. No dignity. Anyway...)

In the car, I mentally prepped my kids for the general order of events and what the doctor would do, trying to glaze over the fact that my son would be stabbed with a needle multiple times. This has worked well in the past, but this time it caused my daughter to start crying. Was her tender heart sorry for her little brother? No. She was "sad because I'm not getting a shot so I don't get to pick a treat. Waaauuuuhhh!" We hadn't even made it out of the car.

But- would you believe it? We made it to the doctor's office on time! Early, even! I used the old Jedi mind-trick of setting my phone alarm too early. The waiting room was filled with silent adults. My kids headed to the corner with the toys, where there happened to be no other children, and proceeded to be adorable. Strangers smiled in our direction. Score.

I took Matthew out of his car seat and he smiled at me from my lap and all the strangers smiled at our adorable family. But then I smelled a smell. A smelly smell. A smelly smell that smelled... smelly. It was the diaper of my own smiling baby. Taking him to the bathroom would be a gamble, because I had no idea if our name was going to be called in two minutes or twenty. As it happened, at that moment, Diana announced she needed to go potty anyway. So I pried an unwilling Liam away from the germ-infested toys to go to the germ-infested bathroom. (I forgot to mention that our family doctor's office shares a waiting room with the Urgent Care center.) Our MO in public restrooms is for the kids to stand in a corner NOT TOUCHING ANYTHING until we exit the stall. But since I was alone, with two hands occupied with Diana and then changing Matthew, they sensed my weakness and would not stay put, so we were exposed to an unknown number of germs and diseases.

We left the bathroom and the kids bolted over to the germ-infested toys where a little girl was playing with some foam letters and proceeded to jointly rip them from her. I didn't see it, but I heard her protest. They know we don't grab. I don't know why they had taken leave of their senses and had chosen to forget that fact in a waiting room full of silent adults who had nothing better to do than watch the noisy children. So I called them over to me and used my best "You'd better shape up or you're in big trouble" death-whisper. It seemed to work, because they played relatively peacefully for the rest of the HOUR that we spent waiting for the doctor. However, in that time, Matthew began to cry more insistently. I began to get set up to feed him when, of course, the nurse came out and called Liam's name.

Liam is a very outgoing boy, and very happy, and loves people. But as if he could sense our malicious purpose, he suddenly shrank from the nurse. He followed me into the back, but his cooperative good nature was overcome by fear and a murky memory of the horrors he had experienced at the doctor's office before, and he fell to pieces. I had to hold him with me on the scale, which meant the nurses had to get my weight first. (Newsflash: it's not my pre-baby weight.) Matthew was fussing, but I couldn't feed him because for the rest of the exam, I had to hold Liam on my lap or wrestle him bodily on the exam table. At least I wasn't pregnant for that part. He might not have been able to hear Liam's heart well, but the doctor confidently said he had "very healthy lungs." He had to shout his list of standard questions ("Can he stack blocks by himself?" "Does he have a vocabulary of more than 20 words?" Etc.) over the sound of Matthew yelling and Liam sobbing, but I think all the answers were satisfactory. Meanwhile Diana was taking off her shoes and dropping them on the floor under chairs, asking to read the magazines and trying to explore the drawers under the exam table. Still, I kept my cool. What else could I do, really? We were basically a loud three-ring circus. At some point it all just becomes hilarious.

What's that, you say? There's room for more chaos? You're right! As the doctor was finishing the exam and going to fetch the nurse to administer Liam's vaccinations, Diana announced she had to go potty. Again. And of course there was no way Liam was going to wait with Matthew in the exam room while I took her. So off we took our whole flipping circus of four to another germ-infested bathroom. Liam kept dropping his blanket on the floor and then picking it up and putting it in his mouth, but I couldn't do anything about that because I was holding Diana on the potty. Matthew provided the soundtrack for the whole event. As luck would have it, it was a FALSE ALARM, which I love. However, I took the opportunity to put up Diana's hair since it had been falling into her face. This caused her to loudly yell, "Ouch, Mommy! Stop! Stop it! You're hurting me! Stop!" Which is, of course, an awesome thing to have coming from a child with you in a closed bathroom- if you want to be investigated by Child Protective Services. She also remembered my promise that Liam could pick out a treat after he got shots and began wailing because she wasn't going to get shots. Of course. Out we went, back to the exam room, poor ignored Matthew still yelling. Liam was very happy to see the cool Band-Aids the nurses showed him, but when he saw the needles the jig was up. (Happily, when Diana saw the needles, her eyes got big and she stopped whining and declared that she didn't want a shot or subsequent treat.) More twisting, screaming, and wrestling, despite gentle assurances from me trying to remind him of all the good things to come after the shots.

I dislike doctors in general, but I love, love, love nurses. They prove to me every time we go to the doctor's office (which is fairly often now that we have three kids) that there are good people who care about others out there, even in a medical setting. When the deed was done, the very sweet nurses offered Liam his choice of stickers, and he stopped crying right away. Meanwhile, Matthew is still crying, Diana is asking me goodness-knows-what, and I'm just sitting there like,

We packed our circus up and walked out past the waiting room full of silent adults who had certainly heard what sounded like two children being murdered in the back room. Out at the car, I let the kids climb around in their seats while I finally fed my longsuffering Matthew. He sat up and smiled at me, and out of sheer joy and gratitude, spit up probably almost everything I'd fed him all over himself, my shoulder, arm, jeans, and the passenger seat. I cleaned him up, ordered the kids into their car seats, and as I was putting him into his car seat, I noticed that the strange feeling from my shoe meant, yep, I'd stepped in gum. And tracked it into the car.

We got there, we saw the doctor, we all got out alive. It went well.

Fin.

(P.S. I've learned my lesson and am actively looking for people to watch my older two during Matthew's four month checkup this week.)