“Well, what time does Abigail usually take a nap?”
After several rounds of phone tag, voice messages, texts messages, we have a time that works for all three of us.
Hugs greetings and a table near the door, which is evidently preferable for easier baby care. “Do you have any high chairs?” oh, poor server. “Here sweetie, want some snack bar?” as my dear high-energy friend fishes out a gooey sort of go-baby organic thing looking like a mini-nutrigrain bar for her 10month old from a cute coordinated bright orange stuffed diaper bag…as a much needed appetizer..and now sticky ‘real-fruit-center’ stickiness is everywhere.
Amidst spoon throwing and goldfish all over the table, we manage to order a pizza and salad…Thankfully the two of us could win a talk-a-thon,… such dedication to intense communication proves necessary in order to engage in any sort of coherent conversation amidst keeping crayons out of Abbie’s mouth or the water glass out of her reach or confiscating the butter knife or moving the hot tea pot…however some hiccups are inevitable: suddenly, little Abby spastically loses control of the weight of her head and hits her teeth on the table…and then silently looks up at mom and freezes..ok, so I’m thinking: all is well..oh no,…Lindsey quickly jumps up and scoops her close, just in time for an ear-piercing wail as she ducts out the strategically close front door…disaster contained
I sit alone, enjoying my salad, looking around to see just how disturbed the other patrons are enjoying our entertaining fiasco…
Lindsey returns, cargo in arms. All is better; Abby, red faced, huffy and puffy, is calmer. Yeesh ..Motherhood and its instincts. I ignorantly congratulate her well-timed escape, who knew hollering was coming?,.. “ah, when she pauses like that, it is the calm before the storm..gotta get out quick.” Right, right. I imagine, that was learned the hard way..
As Abby grows restless the chaos of leaving begins: Lindsey stands by the table swaying nuggers, I give the credit cards to the server, toys are spread out in front of the door, the stoller blocking the narrow walkway, Linds drops the pen, then takes the wrong credit card slip, forgets the to-go portion of her pizza but thankfully laughs at us, we finally make it out to the sidewalk…aahh. Okay…
After stopping by a neighboring baby store and realizing that baby stuff is crazy expensive, and superfluous, who needs a 4 foot net butterfly to hang from the ceiling? we head to our cars…because Baby Abby’s day planner has a nap scheduled.
Moms opens the 2nd-seat door of her huge SUV and quadrouple buckles Abigail into her car seat, soothes her tired grunts, grabs the car teddy, then circles round to the hatch back/door, collapses the cute pok-a-dot stroller, stores it, and hugs me somewhat out of breath quickly, as Abby begins to wail from inside..
I then walk towards my tiny 2 seater standard sports car, hop in with my cool big sunglasses, put down the convertible roof, turn up my non-childproof rap music, and speed away while checking my phone for the up-to-date details on the evening plans…
Yep…quite the juxtaposition…my young married, mother friend with a house on the eastside, and myself: single in the city…footloose and fancy free…living in my small cheap apartment with a roommate and my twin bed…
