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Thursday, April 24, 2014

I'll (probably) laugh when I'm done crying.

Does anyone else have days where there is something that you absolutely must do, even if you don't do anything else that day?  It may be, "I HAVE to wash, dry and fold all of our laundry today even if I am still in my pajamas and the rest of the house is a wreck at the end of the day, because tonight after the kids go to bed I have to pack to go out of town."  Or it could be, "I HAVE to take a shower today and dry my hair because I am going out in public tonight with my handsome husband and I need to not look a hot mess."  Or maybe it's, "I really HAVE to finish writing thank you notes and address these 100 birth announcements before my child is 6 months old."

For me, today, it was, "I have to go to the mall and find a cocktail dress."  

Let me back up.  I was asked on Tuesday to attend a gala on Friday evening.  The attire is "black tie optional."  As an aside, I want to blow up buildings when events are "black tie optional," because I never know what to wear.  Either it's black tie or it isn't, and that would make everyone's lives so much simpler, yes?  Anyway, so I was told about the event on Tuesday afternoon.  There is one other woman sitting at our table, and I wanted to coordinate with her to see what she is planning to wear so that I wouldn't be over- or under-dressed.  I talked to her Wednesday morning, and we decided on cocktail dresses (our men are wearing tuxes, so I need a cocktail dress that is on the dressier side).  I'm sure that any of you who have seen my closet are rolling your eyes here, but I promise you that I don't have anything in it that I would consider to be dressy enough that will fit my enormous milk machines.  Typically for events like this, I Rent the Runway because I have a horrible habit of spending a fortune on a dress and only wearing it once.  I have had a ton of success with RTR and love it, but I rented a few weeks ago for a wedding and because my post-whalephant-baby-#2 body is oddly-shaped, nothing fit right and it put me into a panic on the day of the wedding, and I wanted to avoid re-living that experience at all costs.  With RTR ruled out, the only alternative was for me to go out today to buy something since the event is tomorrow night.

Craft has been sleeping MUCH better both at night and during the day since we started a very light and modified version of sleep training on Monday.  More on that later, but he had a great night's sleep last night and was in a fantastic mood this morning.


I decided that when he was ready for a nap, I'd strap him in the car seat and head to the mall and hope that he stayed asleep so I could shop (plus I knew there would be less people at the mall at 10:30 am than later in the day so in the event that something went wrong hopefully we would disturb less customers).  I kept him up a little to make sure he was extra sleepy, and at the first yawn I strapped him into the car seat and we were on our way.  He fell asleep basically as soon as I backed out of the garage.  So far so good.  

We arrived at the mall and found a great parking spot, so I was feeling good about my odds.  Craft woke up when I moved his car seat from the car to the stroller, but he was in a good mood and smiling and his eyes were still heavy so I was hopeful that he'd smile at me for a few minutes and then go back to sleep.  He clearly had other plans.  I walked into the store and grabbed a few dresses, literally the first ones I saw that I thought would work, and hurried off to the fitting rooms praying I would like one of them and could try them all on before he got grumpy (he has a severe hatred of the car seat unless he's really tired and we're in the car, moving).  We went into the dressing room, and I tried my first dress on.  I actually LOVED it, but deemed it to be not dressy enough.  I took it off, put it back on the hanger, and was reaching for the next dress when the screaming started.

No problem, I thought, I'll just rock him back to sleep and then sneak him back into the car seat - if I cover it with a blanket it will be nice and dark and he'll never know the difference.  So I'm pacing around the dressing room in my underwear with a blanket over my shoulder to cover C/make him think it was dark, shh-ing him.  The sales associate knocks to ask if I'm okay, probably because I bet we've been in the fitting room 20 minutes at this point and I've only tried on one dress.  I assure her we're fine, and attempt to sneak C back into the stroller.  His eyes pop open, I throw the blanket over the car seat quickly to make it dark, turn on the white noise on his portable sound machine, and start pushing the stroller back and forth.  This apparently really pissed him off because the screams intensified. 

At this point I had a decision to make: let him scream for a few minutes and hurriedly try on other dresses, or just cut my losses and leave.  He was fine and quite happy as long as I was holding him, but the minute I tried to put him down all hell broke loose, and try as I may I could not figure out how to try on dresses while holding him - he's heavy!  I really felt like it wasn't fair to Craft or to my fellow shoppers to let him scream, so I opted for cutting my losses and heading out.  I was flustered, C was crying, I was apologetic to the sales associate but she was SO RUDE to me (which was surprising since she looked like she was a grandmother herself) - and even more rude when I didn't want to just buy 10 dresses and bring them home to try on and return what I didn't want.  Seriously?  I practically ran out of the store, strapped a screaming C back into his car seat (I waited until I got outside to strap him back in because I knew the screaming would be much louder - you're welcome, fellow shoppers) and put him in the car and as soon as we started backing out of the parking space, he fell asleep.  And then I cried.  All the way home.

It's hard to be frustrated with C because it really isn't his fault - I'm sure I wouldn't like being strapped into a car seat, either, and being held is much nicer, I'm sure.  Plus, he was in the best mood ever when we got home - super smiley and cooing and laughing at me.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about finding a dress for tomorrow, but I'm hoping I can beg Dan to put both kids to bed tonight and let me go back to the mall.  Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I just never left the house.  Anyone else?

Craft is sleeping soundly now, and I'm considering a big glass of wine and a bubble bath.  I'm well aware that it's only 1:45pm, but as this space is a no-judgment-zone, I know that no one will think twice about it, am I right?  :-)

Sarah

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