Thursday, February 8, 2007

Desperate in DC

UPDATE-
Our lunch outing was great! Eleanor was a perfect angel, and a few of Jared's co-workers even said so. She almost lost it right at the beginning, but we held it together with lots of face-rubbing and hand-holding. Yea, Eleanor!!!

Okay, I need some answers here. So, anyone who has a baby or knows about babies, please comment here with your wisdom.

In my last post, I mentioned that Eleanor 'loved to be out and about.' Well, apparently that was so six days ago. She has now decided that she would like to only be at home or in her carseat in our car. Here's the deal:

Last Saturday, I called Jason and Robin up and asked if they wanted to go grab all-you-can-eat chicken fajitas at this Mexican joint downtown that Robin had found online. They did. So, we all piled into our car and set off in search of some real, authentic Mexican food (okay, really I was desperate to taste Tex-Mex). About 45 minutes later, we arrive in the vicinity of the restaurant. There was a little bit of a walk to get to there because the parking in DC is so fabulous. It was just a couple of blocks, and Eleanor seemed perfectly fine in her stroller. We get inside the restaurant (my mouth begins to water because I had skipped breakfast to make more room for fajitas), and Eleanor seemed fine- for about 30 seconds. Then, her little lip came out and started to quiver. This was the beginning of the end of Megan's Tex-Mex dream come alive. She started wailing at the top of her lungs. I don't mean crying- I mean we needed a team of holy people in the restaurant to extract the demon that had clearly inhabited my child's body. I had no idea what to do. This had never happened before. I got her out of the stroller and took her to the bathroom, which was downstairs next to the banquet room. Needless to say, the people having a party did not appreciate our added soundtrack. Jared (who is such a great daddy) came downstairs with the diaper bag, and we tried desperately to figure out what was going so terribly wrong with our daughter. Seriously, we thought she surely must have some sort of immediate medical need or something. Nothing was working. I went back upstairs. I knew the correct answer was to take her outside, but it was about 30 degrees, so I stood in the little area between the outside and inside doors for a few minutes. Our fellow diners clearly did not appreciate that, so I told Jared to bring me the stroller and I would go outside and push her around. (I thought it would be wrong to just put her outside in her stroller so I could eat fajitas.) I pushed her around outside for a few minutes to absolutely no avail. Finally, I motioned through the window for Jared to bring me the keys, so that I could take my precious little banshee to the car. He came out, and (did I mention he is a great daddy?) took her to the car himself. He sat there with her until Jason, Robin, and I finished eating. (We did bring him a nice to-go box of food.) He said that as soon as they got to the car, she calmed down and started smiling and babbling.

So, part II goes much the same way, but happened last night at the mall. When we got back home, I turned on the light, and when Eleanor saw that she was in her room, she did the happy dance and squealed.

What is going on with my child? And when will it be over?

We're supposed to have lunch with Jared's work friends today. We need prayers.

(I know the picture is a repeat, but luckily I don't have that many opportunities to capture my kiddo in a full-on bout of crying.)

4 comments:

Denise said...

No magic answers from this mommy but you do have my sympathy. And, as you hear all the time because, well, it's true - this will pass! :) What restaurant did y'all go to?

Megan said...

Tortilla Coast. Totally YUM!! Can't wait to go again!

Lisa said...

OH NO! I'm so sorry that she has been so *pleasant* while you are out. We have had that happen once and to be honest I still don't completely know what happened. I think it may have been too loud at the restarant we were at. We did what you did and got our food to-go. Anyway, so advice... hmmm... I don't know. I have found that when we do go out Grace usually is thrown off on eating/sleeping times... so sometimes I will make sure she is nice and full before going out. She may have smelled that yummy Mexican food and decided she wanted to try some :) Anyhoo, give us an update on how lunch goes.

ps... Grace is now at the age where she screams in delight... when it is totally not the right time... like in a nice quiet restarant when you are eating with all your old co-workers that don't have kids. Oh the joy of being a mommy :)

Lisa said...

Megan,
Glad that the lunch went well! Maybe it was just a fluke thing... well pray you have no more dinners like that one. I can't wait for the day that Grace throws a toddler tandrum in public! YEAH!