Remember When?

I woke up this morning nervous about the day.  Today, my friends, was to be Lilly and my (Is that correct grammar?  I couldn't decide what sounded right.  Whatever.) third ever meal in public (our first was lunch with Jen back when Lilly was still sleeping a lot during the day - easy as pie - and the second was a few weeks ago at Hadley's baptism).  We were supposed to meet Stephanie & Hadley, Andrea and Nicole for lunch at Firebird's in North Hills.  There were a variety of reasons why I was nervous, but I will give you just a few:

• Lunch was supposed to be at 11:30.  Lilly normally goes back to bed until around 11:00, which was my target "leave the house" time.  If she didn't wake up until 11:00, I'd have to feed her right then, and we'd never be on time.  If she was still asleep, she might wake up when I transferred her to the carseat, which she has just in the past two weeks decided that she hates, and of course if she woke up during the transfer she'd want to eat.  If she slept through all of that and woke up in the car, we'd have to go into the restaurant with her screaming to be fed.
• Lilly has been very happy for several days in a row.  I love it when she's happy.  However, call me superstitious, but I felt like it was pushing my luck to expect her to be happy on a day when we were to be in a public place.
• I love me some Firebird's, but really have you ever been to North Hills?  It is for the ritzy folk, and lunches in there are packed with business people - we take clients and recruits to eat there often.  I did NOT want to be responsible for ruining anyone's lunch if Lilly decided not to cooperate.  I was wondering if we should have chosen a more kid-friendly place like...Applebee's.  I asked Stephanie if she ever thought the day would come when we wanted to go to Applebee's over Firebird's.  Ha!

Stephanie and I were texting this morning about the outing, and she was nervous about sweet Hadley as well.  I also know that babies can sense your moods, so I was hoping my anxiety wouldn't affect Lilly bean.  I started getting ready for our outing around 8:00, pumping and trying to get the diaper bag packed.  Lilly woke up around 9:30, and luckily for me, my anxiety apparently didn't have any affect on her mood...or perhaps she just loves being naked:

Since Lilly woke up and ate at 9:30, and she eats around every 3 hours, I calculated that she'd probably want to eat again right in the middle of lunch.  Good thing I had some bottles ready to go and in the diaper bag.  I decided to go ahead and get her ready for the day while she was happy and awake so that if she was asleep (fingers crossed!) I wouldn't have to wake her to get her out of her jammies, and then I sat her in her bouncy seat while I tried to get myself together.  She did indeed fall asleep (angels singing!), which as mentioned above, could be good or bad...only time would tell.  I managed to throw myself together and we were going to meet my goal of leaving the house at 11:00, except when I was putting on my jewelry I dropped a diamond earring down the sink.  Great.  I know we have a trap, so I wasn't too worried, and I texted Dan and he didn't seem mad.  He told me what to do, but I'm too weak and wasn't able to unscrew the part that needed to be unscrewed.  I called my Dad and he assured me that as long as I didn't run water in that sink, it would still be there when Dan got home (fast forward 6 hours and it was, thank the Lord). 

All of this took a while, so we did not walk out the door until 11:20.  Lilly had slept through the entire ordeal, and I was praying that she would sleep through the transfer from bouncy seat to carseat (and while we're at it, sleep right through lunch as well).  Wishful thinking, because of course she woke up for the transfer and fussed a little, but it was pretty half-hearted, so I knew there was still hope.  She fell back asleep by the time we got to the car.  Score!  Except I didn't remember until after I cranked the car that my gas light had been on for a WHILE, and I wasn't sure whether I could make it to North Hills.  Sigh.  I texted Andrea to tell her we'd be late.

I got lucky with the rest of the trip.  We were late, and I was worried about parking (the car seat is a lot lighter without a chunky baby in it!), but luckily a spot opened up literally at the front door of the restaurant and I snagged it.  Lilly slept through most of lunch, at least long enough for me to eat.  Hadley did great, also!  Steph gave her a B- for the outing, but I thought she was a perfect angel.  She was awake for lunch and was looking around, taking it all in, and giving us some sweet smiles and laughs as well.  Around 12:30, Lilly started moving around and I knew I had about 30 seconds to get her out and feed her or she'd get mad and let the whole restaurant know it.  I took her out and she fussed some, but luckily the restaurant was really loud, so I don't think we disturbed anyone's lunch.

It was not until I got the bottle out to feed Lilly that I remembered that in my haste to get out the door, I had forgotten to heat the bottle.  CRAP.  Lilly HATES cold bottles.  Even if she is starving, she won't eat much of them, because for some reason they really upset her stomach.  I decided to try it anyway, and we got through about 2 ounces before I sensed that something was seriously wrong.  We had already paid, so I hauled our tails out of there as fast as I could.  Thank the LORD I had the sense to leave when I did, because we made it to the car where I changed her diaper and planned to finish feeding her before the ride home, and she had a meltdown.  Not just any meltdown.  This was a meltdown of epic proportions.  She could NOT be consoled.  There were real tears, and it broke my heart.  I knew she was starving and could hear her little tummy making noises, but she was NOT having that cold bottle.  In the end, I decided to put her in the car seat (still crying) and get home as fast as I could to heat the bottle and finish feeding her.  I HATED doing this because I knew her crying was my fault, but I really didn't have another choice.  Luckily, she cried for about five minutes and then fell asleep until we got home.

Overall, I'd say the trip was a successful one, although I don't think I'll forget to heat a bottle again.  Sure enough, the 2 oz of cold milk did upset her stomach, as she had 4 blowouts (but not the clothes-dirtying kind, thankfully) in a 2-hour time frame, and has been gassy and pooping pretty much since we left the restaurant.  This is her "I'm pooping on you" face, in case you were curious:

After she took care of that business, she took a three hour nap and was then happy as can be:

I say all of this to say: remember when meeting friends for lunch was easy?  When I had typically already had time to shower so all it took was getting myself out the door?  When it didn't take me literally four hours to get me and my tiny human ready to go out for an hour and a half?  I wouldn't trade it for the world, though.  After all, how lucky am I to get to hang out with this sweet face all day?

Happy Wednesday!  Did you remember to vote?  :-)

Sarah