Part II: Saturday

Saturday

8:30 a.m.: The phone rings. It is my husband. The van is ready to be picked up. QT is still sleeping and one of the Ladies has at some point crept into my bedroom and taken one of the iPads.

8:45 a.m.: Pancakes for everyone. I prep the kids that we are going to have to leave soon to go get the van. I tell them I am not sure exactly how we are going to get there. The Lady suggests the Trolley. (Our city has a free Trolley that loops around and connects the area where we saw Frozen on Friday night with the downtown, near where the van is.) I have been talking about taking this Trolley for weeks. We have a plan.

9:10 a.m.: I Google the Trolley. I find out the closest stop to our house and see that they have a mobile app where you can follow the Trolley in real time. I throw on some yoga pants, promise donuts and start barking out commands to the kids, "get dressed, brush your hair, put on shoes we will be walking. . ." The Lady insists on wearing a nightgown with shorts. The Little Lady puts on a peasant skirt with a pair of leggings underneath, a t-shirt and a headband that she keeps at the very front of her head. They both wear flip-flops, nobody brushes their hair, however they do brush teeth.

9:21 a.m.: I check the app, the Trolley will be at the stop in 23 minutes. We can totally make it.

9:25 a.m.: We are in the garage, I grab the umbrella stroller because QT has a tendency to run. The Little Lady insists on riding her scooter. She grabs her helmet and we are off. We make it about a half a block before the Little Lady gives up on the scooter. I am visibly annoyed. I throw the Barbie scooter over the handles of the stroller and loop the helmet around them too. The Little Lady tries to keep up but is insisting that we are leaving her too far behind, the Lady and her long legs are about 10 feet in front of me.

We finally round the corner towards the Dunkies. I have already explained to them that we will be stopping on the way back because we have to catch the Trolley, although I am in serious need of some caffeine.

QT jumps out of the stroller, throws a mini basketball that he was carrying into the road. I stop everyone at the corner, get the ball and check the time. It is 9:50, we are not making it. Dunkies is in sight and I tell the kids that we will go there first. QT starts to squirm, he starts itching his whole body. He is covered in ants.

I am now standing on a street corner with three kids, a stroller covered in ants because it had been lying on the floor in the garage and there was some leftover granola bar in the seat from the kids' trip to the zoo earlier in the week. QT rode for a full 10-15 minutes sitting in that ant-infested stroller. I start picking ants off his feet, the back of his neck. I give him a full body check. I am grossed out. It is hot, I need coffee. We limp into the Dunkies parking lot. I pull the stroller up along side of the building and send the Ladies in for napkins.

(The problem with being a regular at places is that you just can't anonymously wipe scores of ants off a stroller on the side of a building in private. No, the owner of the establishment has to come over and offer to watch the stroller for you so that you can go inside, and you have to tell him that "something spilled" on it and you are just going to leave it outside, but thanks so much!)

10:05 a.m.: Stroller de-antified. Everyone is sitting down enjoying a donut and I have some coffee.

10:15 a.m.: I check the mobile app. We have 13 minutes to cross four streets. We head out.

We cross one street, we cross the next. We cross the third street. The Trolley stop is on the next block. All we have to do is cross over and make a left. We arrive at the corner. The Trolley arrives at the light directly across from us. I make some gesticulations with my hands trying to get the conductors attention. Did I mention this is the longest light in Stamford? We wait for the walk sign in the crossroad. The Trolley turns, we book it across the street. I yell for the Ladies to run ahead, the Trolley stops, the Lady is running in her flip flops and nightgown, her long unbrushed hair flapping in the wind. The Little Lady is close behind her, her ankle-length skirt billowing in the breeze. I am following behind with QT in the (hopefully) ant-free stroller, the Barbie scooter on top with the Dora the Explorer helmet banging against my fingers, the Trolley doors open then close and he drives away without us. I make a half-assed attempt at following him on foot. We will never catch up.

We take refuge on a bench at a bus stop.

10:28 a.m.: I call my mom.

10:31 a.m.: QT has to go to the bathroom. Luckily the mall is not far, in fact we are pretty much at the exact spot one of my early blog posts took place and I know the Barnes and Noble bathroom pretty well at this point. We soldier on. Both Ladies are complaining about their feet hurting from the flip flops. We make it to B&N. On a positive, there is one of the benches from the Art Around Town exhibit right outside of the mall. It is painted with birds though, so obviously it isn't my favorite. We sit on that for a few minutes because the Trolley isn't coming back for another 15 minutes and then make our way to the Trolley stop.

11:00 a.m.: The Trolley arrives. The doors open, we stumble in. It it cool and clean and wonderful. Everyone takes their own seat.

We start off in the opposite direction of where the car is. After about 13 minutes aboard the Trolley, we finally get to our stop downtown. We unload. QT insists on riding the scooter, the Little Lady would like to be in the stroller, the Lady runs into one of her classmates on the street. We only have to cross two more streets. I can see the awning of VW up ahead. I convince QT to give up on the scooter.

11:22 a.m.: I park the stroller outside the entrance, I send the kids in through the front door and point them to the waiting area. They each take a seat in a large, black leather chair. I give some guy my name, he tells me everything is ready and he will bring the van around. At that point, I like to imagine what it looked like from the inside of VW as the four of us arrived, as we crossed over the parking lot and into that front door, a little sweaty, an empty stroller with a scooter on top, three kids dragging their flip-flopped feet. I wonder did they have any idea of what it took for us to get there?

I will say they had some pretty good customer service though. The kids all got some water and another guy came by with a candy bowl. Of course they can have double bubble gum and gummy worms, it just took us two hours to get here. The guy who went to get the van came back and said that there was a car blocking it and it would just be another minute. Take your time guy, wherever we are going next, we are driving there and it can't possibly take as long as this excursion did.

Then, there she was in all her glory, Minnie-Ru.

11:37 a.m.: The kids scrambled in the van, I threw the scooter and the stroller in the trunk, took the last sip from the dregs of my coffee, blasted the ac, got in and drove home.

In retrospect, I realize that I probably could have just put QT and the Little Lady in the double stroller and power-walked the 1.2 miles to the dealership with the Lady in sneakers, perhaps switching out with her sister or brother for a spell, but the double stroller was in the top of the garage and on Saturday, it just wasn't our journey to take.

On Books and Brats

I have terrible children.

They also may become those irritating tweens who swoon over boy-bands and follow Justin Bieber-like androgynous man-children with an intensity and fervor that is on one hand enviable (who doesn't need a little passion in their lives?), while at the same time, very, very sad.

All I wanted to do was bring the Ladies to Barnes and Noble and buy them some Shel Silverstein books.

All they wanted to do was run around the store at full-speed and perform "Call Me Maybe" on the stage that is set up in the children's section for story time.

I just wanted to introduce them to some poetry, read to them from actual children's literature rather than condensed novelizations of Disney movies or television shows.

I told them we were going for poetry. I told them they could pick out one additional book on their own.

They wanted 2-3 books each with titles such as--I kid you not--Barbie Loves Weddings, Barbie and the Fashion Fairytale, and Cherry Jam (A Strawberry Shortcake book).

Bringing the Ladies to a store releases some sort of inner antelope in them. It is like they are running for their lives on some African grassland, but in reality they are galloping down the aisles of the bookstore like they have just been released from a cage.

I don't know if it is just the excitement of being out of the house or if they are just trying to prove to the world that my parenting abilities are crap.

No one listens. Well, my kids don't listen. I am pretty sure everyone else in the store heard them singing "Call Me Maybe" and me in a half whisper/half scream trying to tell them to tone it down.

When I was finally able to corral those long-legged antelope-children and move towards the register with a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends, a Pinkalicious compilation book, Cherry Jam, and the novelization of Barbie and the Mermaid,  a movie we have seen 8 jamillion times, I was ready to go.

The Ladies, however, were running the length of the checkout line, trying on reading glasses and informing me that even though we all went to the bathroom before we left that once again, I would have to brave the not-so-clean Barnes and Noble bathroom.

Before we could even make it to the bathroom though, we would have to get on the escalator. The Lady is afraid of escalators. I can't even begin to describe the escalator incidents/screaming/crying I have experienced in my life. I am thinking of penning a children's book about our adventures. Barbie and the Escalator Incident has a nice ring to it.

And finally, after drinking from the water fountain, touching entirely too many things in a public bathroom, singing top-40 hits, running like the wind and picking out dumbed-down versions of already dumb movies and TV shows that make me cringe and fear my daughters' tween/teen years will be filled with me having to attend pop concerts at sold-out venues while trying to suppress the urge to stab myself in the ear with a pair of scissors, we ventured out of the Barnes and Noble to find the last horse on our "Horsin' Around" adventure.

Oh Night Mare, in your pink nightgown and curlers in your hair, why didn't they make it clear that you were inside the mall and not outside of it like it looks on the map? We have been looking for you for weeks.

After we hugged you and the Little Lady said "I love you. You are so pink." We took the elevator down to the street, piled in the car, passed out our terrible books and went home.

When we got home the Ladies crawled into bed with me and snuggled as we read a little Shel Silverstein, a little Barbie and a little Cherry Jam.

Why Yes, That is my Pink Elephant in Front of the Sausage Factory

There are good days and then there was Monday.

It is a surreal feeling, when you pull your car up along the sidewalk feeling a sense of euphoria for having found a 29" x 29" soft pink elephant napping blanket in front of a sausage factory.

It is an odd mixture of "is this really my life?" meshed perfectly with "there is a god, my children will be happy, I should start playing the Power ball, and do we need any sausage?"

You might be asking, how did you get there Bean? How did you get to the point where you were doing a recovery mission for a missing pachyderm? What sequence of events had you scanning the sidewalks of Stamford for the Little Lady's big nonnie?

Well let's just say it involved the bookstore, a bottle of water and breakdowns (a large one by the Lady and small one by me).

Let's just start by saying that I had an 8am dentist appointment. That right there doesn't bode well for the rest of the day.

I decided to get the Ladies out and about early. We took out the stroller and headed out towards the bookstore. I promised the Lady that we would see two more art sculptures of cats and dogs that we had missed.

The walk was uneventful. The Little Lady passed out. The Lady and I discussed the option of book buying.

We saw the animals. A sparkly cat and an IPhone inspired dog. We headed into Barnes and Noble.

Things started off well. There were plenty of Princess inspired books and toys for the Lady to peruse. There was also a stage on which she could do some of her amazing dance moves. Perhaps we danced too long?

We made a pit stop in the B&N bathroom. FYI. .. their toilets flush aggressively loud and I blame them for waking up the Little Lady. We then headed back to the kids section to pick out a book.

I tried to persuade the Lady to pick out something non-Princess related. This did not work. We found a book about Ariel, I picked out a new Sandra Boynton for the Little Lady and we took the elevator upstairs to find a book for me.

Why did I think that I would actually be able to look around and pick out a book for myself? What type of fantasy world am I living in? Anyway, I decided to buy the final book in the Stieg Larsson, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I mean, I read the first two, but I didn't really want to commit to buying a hardcover, after some hemming and hawing, I decided to get it. However, the Lady decided that she had had enough and was ready to leave. She chose the moment right before we were heading to the check out counter to walk out of the bookstore into the mall.

This forced me to put the books down, leave the Little Lady sitting in the stroller and make a mad dash to grab my firstborn. She was not pleased. Neither was I.

I did the responsible parent thing and strapped her, screaming, into the stroller and walked out sans books. The crying continued down the elevator to the street level. It continued past the giant horses outside P.F. Chang's, it continued as we crossed over two streets and made our way home. And what was it that she was screaming? "I WANT MY ARIEL BOOK!"

At one point I had to stop the stroller and hold her. She was physically trying to launch herself out of the stroller onto the sidewalk, even though she was strapped in.

I tried to calm her down. I bribed her with fruit snacks. She seemed to be okay. She stopped crying. We passed Dunkies. I had to go in. I mean, I needed a small fix after that tantrum. I got a coffee and they threw in their complimentary munchkins. We were almost home.

As we rounded the corner onto our street, the Lady asked for a donut. I said no because she just ate fruit snacks. I told her she had to be a good listener, blah, blah, blah and that the reason we left the bookstore was because she wasn't listening. . . this wasn't a good idea. It just reminded her of Ariel and the screaming started again.

As we were walking up the driveway the Lady took herself out of her side of the stroller (no, I didn't strap her back in after I took her out) and climbed on top of the Little Lady. I now had two screaming kids. This yelling by the Lady did not stop. She sat on the path outside our door and screamed.

It was hot. I was tired. The Little Lady needed a bottle. I decided that if the Lady was going to sit there and scream, I should at least supervise her. I started to pour some Poland Spring into the bottle.

Apparently, the Lady was thirsty.

"I WANT THE WATER! I WANT THE LITTLE LADIES WATER!"

This went on for a minute or two and then things got physical. The Lady tried to pry the bottle out of my hands. She needed the water that was in the baby bottle, the leftover water in the water bottle was not sufficient. We scuffled. She started to growl. I finally was able to release her death grip on the baby's bottle and as I tried to shovel in the formula mix, the Lady found the rest of the water bottle and poured it over my head.

There are good days and then there was Monday.

I tried to keep it together. I finished making the bottle and sat on the stairs leading upstairs to our place, while the Lady stayed on the bottom of the stairs, still kicking and screaming about the water bottle.

I was finally able to coax her upstairs, throw some lunch at her and convince her that we needed to hit the streets in an attempt to find Effie the missing elephant.

I loaded the Ladies into the car. I was hoping we hadn't dropped it in the bookstore, because the Lady was only wearing princess undies. We pulled out of our driveway and started to retrace our route. I was hoping that no one was behind me, because I was driving like 7 miles per hour, trying to look behind parked cars for anything with a hint of pink.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, there she was. She was crumpled in a heap, just laying on the sidewalk, and that my friends is how I found the Little Lady's pink elephant in front of the sausage factory.

Freaking Froggy!

I have been trying to figure out a way to spend some time with the Lady by herself. This always poses a challenge because I have to leave the little Lady behind without the boob. Even though I have been trying to pump on a consistent basis things have been a little hectic and I am finding myself only pumping enough to leave for my work days and not much more to store. So any opportunity to get out without her can be a little stressful for me. However, my husband told me he would be home early enough for us to get out and I had some milk in the fridge ready to go.

Anyway, the Barnes and Noble by our house has a 6:00 pm story time on Friday nights and last Friday, Froggy was supposed to be there. Now, from what I can gather, Froggy is a giant frog who reads to the kids and then takes a couple of photos. I figured that this was a great idea. The Lady and I would get out for an hour or so, take a couple pictures with the frog and maybe spend a few minutes playing with the trains in the store. I maybe would even get to look around the bookstore and pick out something for myself.

We invited the Wild Man and his mom to come along. Now if any of you have ever experienced Friday night traffic on 95 in lower Fairfield County, CT, you know that actually getting anywhere can take forever. The Wild Man left his house at 5 after 5 and didn't get to B&N until after 6. My husband left his office at 25 after 5 and didn't get home until 5 to 6, so I was waiting, anxiously, with the Lady to go.

We showed up a little after 6 and the children's book section lady was mid-story. I did, however, not see any giant frogs. She finished one story and then another, still no frog and still no Wild Man.

Finally, the question was posed--where is Froggy? Froggy, apparently was not coming, but they were in the process of "working on it." I am not sure what that means exactly, but unless some guy was in the back putting on a giant frog head, it looked like there would be no Friday night frog.

Now, the only reason I took my 2 year old out at 6pm on a Friday night was because of the promise of a giant frog. I wasn't even sure if she would like him. I could see her being afraid and then talking about how scared she was of the frog for 3 weeks, but it afforded us the opportunity to get out together and experience something away from the baby. Froggy--how could you disappoint us?

So, now it was 6:30, my sister and I had two 2-year old's as well as the Wild Man's little sister. The big kids needed to eat and books were not keeping their attention. We tried the trains for a bit and then headed up to the food court/play area.

I was shocked by how many kids were at the play area at 7 pm. We let the big guys run around for a while and then finally packed it up. It wasn't quite the experience I wanted with the Lady. I was hoping she and I could share something exciting and new and that she would be happy to talk about for a while.

Instead, I fed her scalding hot chicken fingers and fries, exposed her to a bazillion germs at the indoor play area, got home well past the time I wanted to, which pushed bedtime back again, and once again skipped her bath. All of this for a giant frog that never showed up. UGH.

BTW. . . when I got home the little Lady had gone through a bottle and a half of boob juice in the 2 and a half hours that we were gone. Is this ever going to get any easier?

The Windy Walk

The weather is getting colder but today was sunny and bright and I decided to make the effort to get to story time at Barnes and Noble. The wind was totally whipping and I figured that if I threw the rain cover over the stroller that it would cut down on some of the chill for the Lady.

The rain cover I have fits my regular stroller, we walk with the jogger because there are bumpy sidewalks and it is fully assembled and waiting for us in the garage. I figured I would just wing it and make do with what we had. The minute I put that thing over the stroller the Lady lost it. She was scared and started crying those big tears that just roll down her face and stop in the middle of her cheeks and stay there for like ten minutes after she has stopped crying. I made some faces at her through the baby bubble, wrapped her tight in a blanket and we took off.

The bubble baby and I made it to Barnes and Noble and this week the place was packed. There had to be at least twenty kids. The Lady stayed in the stroller at first, to avoid knocking down smaller children while pretending she was a pachyderm. The girl reading this week was much better than the woman last week, although I was highly distracted by her boob salad. I mean this woman works in the kids section and to say it was sloppy would be an understatement. Anyway, she read a wide variety of Halloween books and when it was done the Lady and I stayed around and read some books and guess what? A mom talked to me.

I was super surprised. Granted she was European so maybe she has better mom manners then some of the other ladies I saw today. She introduced me to her son (but like in other situations we never introduced ourselves to each other) and even though she was very nice I think she kind of insulted me when I told her how old the Lady was. Like most people she said something like "oh wow, she is so big" then I said something like my husband is tall blah, blah, blah. Then she asked if she was my first because according to her, most first born kids are usually much smaller then those down the line. I mean what do you say to that? I have to disagree. She is my first born but look at her, it is so obvious she is a giant baby and all the rest of them will be, according to you, even more ginourmous. Why genetics? Why? Or you could just smile and nod, which is what I usually do.

I will admit that the Lady is tall. There was a little girl who was saying sentences who was about the same size the Lady was at eight months. But I am not going to worry about it, she is who she is.

So we finally leave B&N. I even made a concerted effort to stop and say goodbye to the European momma before we left. On the way home the wind picked up and whipped off my rain cover. It blew into the busy road we were walking along and I watched helplessly as three cars ran it over. I wasn't sure what to do. I tried to chase it into the street but I didn't want to leave the Lady (who had already pulled off her hat), or get hit by a car. A woman walking by feigned interest but really had nothing for me. The Lady just sat in her stroller getting wind whipped while I darted cautiously into oncoming traffic.

Luckily, the cover made its way close to the sidewalk but it was still about 15 yards away. Thankfully, a very nice man ran across traffic, picked it up, handed it back to me and told me to have a nice day. I reattached as well as I could, keeping one piece in my hand and headed home. The Lady seemed non-plussed and eventually passed out protected from the wind. Oh, the things you have to go through just to get out of the house.