Last night we went out to celebrate Chris’ birthday, and since my brother-in-law and his girlfriend had offered to watch Maia “anytime”, we drove the 45 minutes up to their place to drop her off and just did dinner in that city. It’s the city we used to live in, so we knew how to get around anyhow.
Neither of them have any experience with babies, but as we went over the basics, I felt way more comfortable about leaving her with them than I thought I would. I thought I’d be losing my mind over oh my god my baby will not be with me and she will be unhappy and looking for me and I won’t be there and she’ll be mentally damaged forever, but nah. When her uncle held her, Maia looked totally content.
So Chris and I went out to dinner at The Keg, which you may possibly remember I had a totally freaky dream about back when I was pregnant, and despite the horrors I imagined then, it was a great experience. An obnoxiously expensive one, but still, great. They make pretty much the best Caesar salad I’ve ever had, and then I had tuna for dinner, which is a completely different fish than what you get in the can (thank goodness, because the canned stuff is gross). We each had a glass of wine, made googly-eyes at one another, and talked about the baby. Of course.
We ordered some desserts to go to bring back to our sitters, and I tell you what — no matter how full I was, five inches of ice cream atop a chocolate crust with almonds, caramel, and hot fudge waiting to be poured on it looked REALLY GOOD. I abstained, because honestly I don’t need my stomach to explode, but damn, I hope they enjoyed the treat!
On the way from the restaurant to pick up Maia, I started getting a little tense. It was 6:30 at night. She might be getting fussy. What if she was screaming and gassy and they couldn’t calm her down? What if they never want to watch her again? What if she’s upset herself so much over me not being there that she puked, which would break my heart?
When my brother-in-law opened the door, I was expecting to hear screaming and crying. Nope. There was Maia, lounging in his arms like a sultana (the royalty, not the raisin), totally happy. She didn’t even seem very interested in the fact that we had returned, as if our existence was just not relevant to her happiness at that point in time. When I asked how she had done (as he still carried her!) he said she had been pretty much perfect, a little fussy, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed by just walking around with her. Or watching television, which I know she loves (she’s half American, how could she not?) and it’s sort of my dirty little secret for calming her down. And then, as he lead us into the living room: “Oh, and she LOVES caramel.”
“What?”
“I dipped my fingertip into some caramel, just a little bit, and gave it to her. She was really happy.”
OMG. Obviously, she’s alive, and she’s okay, and she’s happy, but deep down inside my mommy stress alarms went off. “That’s… not something… I would have done,” I said slowly, as his girlfriend grinned up at me sympathetically and said, “I told him that it was probably not a good idea!”
Whatever though. She’s not dead and she looks pretty chill, so I can’t complain too much. I did ask him not to feed her anything like that in the future. And then in the car, I told Chris not to do it either, just because his brother had gotten away with it — which I guess was insulting, because he said, “I’m not going to take parenting advice from my brother. You’re the food master.”
Anyhow, it was altogether a lovely experience. Maia got a bit fussy in the car on the way home, but fortunately that was only 20 minutes away from the house and she would just fuss quietly, fall asleep, wake up, repeat. They’ve offered to watch her anytime. Maybe we will take advantage of that!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
yeah the caramel would have made me worry for a minute too, and someone needs to warn him about first time mothers…he is lucky you didn’t rip off his arm and beat him with it! I used to dip pacifiers into apple juice
Glad to hear it went well!
I’m so happy that it all went well and you guys had a great time.
It gives me hope that I won’t die and neither will Lil. In a couple of weeks we are going out for our anniversary and leaving Lily for the first time. At least I know she won’t get any weird stuff to eat. I’m leaving her with a former coworker who’s a overprotective grandma.
My in-laws watched Sophie the other night. When we got home they told us that she felt like she had a fever so they gave her Diet Coke because it was cold. They showed me her sippy cup that was 3/4 full of DC. What? An 18 month old doesn’t need to be anywhere near Diet Coke.
@Cara: I must admit to getting a laugh out of their reasoning for giving her a Diet Coke! too funny.