Monday, November 1, 2010

On the Receiving End

We were up in Arkansas a month or so back, for the wedding of one of my wife's cousins. I used a vacation day so we could drive up on Friday, and we made it in... well, a little later than we'd planned, but in plenty of time for the rehearsal dinner.

Now, I had agreed to watch the boys so that my wife could attend the rehearsal dinner. So, while she went off to eat some very fine food, I loaded both boys back into the car and went to McDonalds. (That's not to say that there weren't better places to eat; Little Rock is not short on good restaurants. It's just that most of them don't have dedicated play areas for active four-year-olds who desperately need to run and jump and climb after a day of sitting still in the car.)

So we pull into the parking lot and find a space. I get the baby out and put him in the Baby Bjorn carrier. With the baby safely attached to my chest, I get Firstborn out of his car seat and we go inside.

At the counter, I try to order some food. The girl behind the counter is young[1]; and I'm trying to give her my order, which isn't terribly complicated[2]. Only I can't get her to pay attention long enough to make sure the order is correct. Hell, I can barely get her to look at me long enough to put the order in at all. She is completely distracted by the baby, and will not quit staring at my chest.

So now I have some idea of how it feels. If only I'd been a little more alert... I missed a really brilliant opportunity to say, "Hey. My eyes are up here."


[1] To my eyes, anyway; I'd guess she was around sixteen or eighteen, but honestly I can hardly tell anymore.

[2] Seriously, I think I wanted a Chicken McNugget Happy Meal and a Quarter Pounder for myself. Not too bloody hard, you'd think.

3 comments:

  1. Haha this made me laugh! It's also something about men wearing their babies that does something to the ladies or so I've seen it said. Baby wearing never really worked for us. I never could get the thing to fit comfortably plus we had two so we stayed home a lot in the beginning.

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  2. Yeah, I imagine twins would make that a lot harder. Maybe you could wear one on the front, and one in a backpack carrier? ::chuckles at the image::

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  3. I'm not very tall and I wanted to be the heroic mom who could tote her two kids strapped to her at the same time but I just couldn't. Plus they wrecked my back being pregnant with them. So we stayed home until all their accouterments were gone. Then we began to take them out more. Even still those stinkin car seat carries are heavy after awhile. I couldn't carry them strapped to my body but you can bet I can multi-task like no other. haha!

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