Trip of Doom : Take 2

{DISCLAIMER : if you have not yet produced your own offspring, you may never want to after reading this post. . . but believe me when I say that kids are the best! They really, truly are. They just also happen to require fourteen arms at any given time.

The point of this post is not to strike fear into the hearts of those yet to embark on this journey, but rather to shine a light into the trenches of parenthood and preach to those found therein that THEY ARE NOT ALONE. Other people struggle, too.}

. . .


Ug.

You guys.

When will I learn?! Remember the library trip of doom I told you about HERE? Well, apparently I didn't learn nearly enough from that experience. . . like, for example, to "just say no".  Today's trip was such an epic shopping experience that I was writing this post in my head on the way home. I knew I couldn't keep it to myself. :)

. . .

I had a trio of stores I wanted to hit at a shopping center; none of which had shopping carts."Good thing my nifty baby carrier came in the mail," I thought. "This'll be the perfect opportunity to try it out. I'll pop Hannah in the stroller and strap Curtis to my chest and we'll be golden."



{photo source}


I suppose most of this doom could have been avoided had I only been patient and fed Curtis at home. But I decided that I could just feed him in the car before strapping him in his carrier. . . anything to get me out of the house a half an hour sooner.

We arrived at the shopping center and I cleanly sidestepped Murphy's first attempt to foil my outing by providing Hannah with a notepad and pencil to doodle with as I fed Curtis in the front seat. She was reaching the boiling point of boredom and wasn't shy about telling me.

Things started to get interesting a few minutes later when I tried getting the harness on with Curtis still on my lap. Firstly, the front seat doesn't provide ample room to maneuver a wobbly-headed infant and a seemingly bulky carrier. Pretty sure being a contortionist is a requirement. Secondly, I forgot the fact that I have to strap myself in before I can strap Curtis in. . . and doing so with him already on my lap was near-enough impossible. Meanwhile, Hannah was ripping pages out of her notepad and likely calculating the odds of causing lasting damage should she launch her pencil at my head.

I finally managed to get Curtis in all right, but dropped the burp rag in the parking lot {and stepped on it} as soon as I got out of the car. Off to a great start, per the norm. :)

Come to find out, bending over with a child strapped on your front is kinda tricky, so I bypassed buckling Hannah into the stroller. That lasted all of 2.8 seconds because she was trying to climb out before I even had the stroller stopped in the first store. Perhaps her plan was to tuck and roll {to reduce carpet burn, of course} and then run for the nearest open door into oncoming traffic. Who knows.

I finished snapping the stroller seat belt and stood up to talk to the cashier {I was exchanging something, see} when Curtis spit up. I reached for the burp rag and watched it flutter to the floor a good 3 feet away. It was mocking me, for sure. I managed to get most of the spit up cleaned up, although I swear he aimed for the impossible-to-clean-harnesses on purpose. I had the nerve to think to myself, "Wow! He didn't get any on himself or me-- talk about good luck."

I may as well have painted a big 'ol target on the back of my head for Murphy's Law to hit.

However, I will say this. . . cleaning up his spit up was a blessing in disguise because it was then that I realized I had inadvertently tucked the front of my shirt up into the carrier, giving everyone a riveting view of my tank top {thank goodness for undershirts}. I had no sooner finished discretely readjusting my shirt than Hannah decided she was going to die a miserable death if I didn't provide animal crackers forthwith. Unfortunately, she ate all of them on our last outing and I forgot to replenish the stash.

Whoops.

Exiting the store was an interesting experience because I had to 1) sweet talk all of the stroller wheels into rolling in the same direction instead of "every wheel for himself", 2) hold the door open while trying to push said stroller through, and 3) not run over my own toes or bang Curtis into anything. "Little Man" upped the ante when he spit up again during our horrible attempt at a tactful exit. At this point, my Mental Stability Gage was reading around a 5.73 out of 10.

I was now realizing the odds of reaching store number 3 were practically zilch and I'd better wrap up our required stops with much haste. I suppose it's only fair that our second stop was to buy soap from Bath and Body Works. Trying to pick out 4 soaps that smelled good while keeping Hannah from laying waste to everything within a 2 mile radius of the stroller was a t-r-e-a-t. Curtis was growing quite convinced that the carrier was a mode of torture and decided to start telling me all about it in no uncertain terms. At least he had the presence of mind to wait until after I purchased the soap to spit up for the third time.

This time, neither Curtis or I escaped unscathed. He aimed for my shirt front and I could feel the wetness slowly seeping down my shirt all the way to my waistband. Uh-oh. Good thing there was a baby to hide behind until we could scurry our little bums to the sanctuary of the car.

Mental Stability Gage : 2.16/10.

I fully expected all four tires to spontaneously blow up on the way home; that's how well our excursion went. Thankfully they didn't blow up, but something else did. Namely? Curtis' diaper. In short, the only article of clothing that didn't have either poop or spit up on it by the time we got home was his socks.

. . .

So.

First rule of wearing a baby in a carrier : don't feed them right before putting them in. No, no, no. Just don't.

Second rule of wearing a baby in a carrier : when you're retreating to your vehicle with your head hung in defeat, put the baby in his/her car seat first because hefting a toddler into their car seat while having a baby strapped on your front is bothersome.

Third rule of wearing a baby in a carrier : don't be deceived by the pictures on the carrier's box. Take this guy here, for instance:


{photo source}

He looks all peaceful and happy. . . but he's probably just checking for spit up. Or maybe he's checking to see if his child is trying to burn a hole through his chest with a look of utter contempt. One of the two.

Seems legit.

Fourth rule of wearing a baby in a carrier : if you feel yourself beginning to sweat profusely and you're not sure if it's from public humiliation or because you have a small heater strapped to you, it's probably the latter. Odds are that no one even noticed your supposed faux pas {except you, of course}. . . and if they did, it was probably done so in the spirit of "Dang guuuurl, I've been there before. Don't give up!"

. . .

So my message to myself and to you {should you find yourself in similar shoes} is to keep your head up. Parenting is messy and glorious and embarrassing and enlightening. You learn new things every day-- what to do and what not to do; what works and what doesn't. So just keep learning and making adjustments along the way!