A day of firsts

Friday, October 26th, 2007

So, I’ve wanted to start a blog for some time but I keep getting hung up when they ask for a title, and then a url. Is this MY blog, or Caroline’s? I don’t know. But this will be a place for me to share my days, our adventures, the bumps and the bruises, the successes and failures, the obsessing thoughts, the dreams, the aspirations…there won’t be time for much editing, so spelling grammar and tense will be all out of whack but it’s a way to share with all of you…

Today’s been one of those days where all my values of motherhood have been thrown out the window and I’ve felt like a completely incompetent mother, over and over, and it’s only 2PM. Which is why I have chosen this time to start my blog on motherhood.

Today we set out to the Trumbull Mall to meet a friend and buy Jamie his birthday presents. It was not a plan made in advance, more of a spontaneous one. I can handle these now. I look at the time, try to calculate how long until Caroline will want lunch, and pack accordingly. I change her diaper, fill up the diaper bag: diaper, wipes, lunch, snacks, water for bottle, seltzer for mom, wallet. No cash, but they must have an ATM there. I momentarily wonder if I have enough for Caroline’s lunch, but decide I’ll be fine, she never eats much anyway…

We start out at Macy’s since I have a credit there. Turns out they’re having a great sale on kids clothes which I hadn’t known, but given we have time before Lisa arrives, I browse. I choose an outfit and a shirt, and head over to pay when I realize Caroline has dumped her water all over herself and the stroller. Not her fault, I didn’t put the valve in the sippy cup, thinking she didn’t need it any more. WRONG! So, the outfit I buy (which I intended to use a gift card for but couldn’t locate) will become the “back up outfit” as that’s one of the items that were left out of the diaper bag. We head to Lord and Taylor with their newly redone clean restroom where I change Caroline into her new outfit.

First rule broken: Never put child in new clothes before washing. But what am I going to do? So she’s probably coming in contact with all sorts of terrible trace chemicals, but I try not to think about it. Dry, we head out into the mall. Caroline seems antsy and it’s almost 11:30AM so I see if she’ll have some lunch. I open the jar I’d brought, a yummy organic sweet potato and chicken puree (Earth’s Best’s NOT mine – guilt guilt) she takes one bite, and waves her had at me politely to say, not thank you. No problem I think, she’s just not hungry yet. Well, we connect with Lisa and Julia (age 4) and Jack (age 2 months) and shop some more. I feed Caroline her organic cheese cracker snacks as she’s antsy and I guess hungry. We all head to the food court. I figure NOW Caroline will enjoy the yummy organic food I’ve brought for her, but I am wrong. Again, the polite wave to say, “No thank you Mommy”. I start to panic a little, but figure one of these places must sell yogurt. (I’m kicking myself for not bringing some as I thought about it on the way out the door, but she turned it down earlier today and I felt lazy, so I didn’t-BAD MOMMY!). I manage to stuff some cheerios and dried fruit into Caroline as she eyes Julia’s chicken nuggets from McDonalds. Julia and I both think Caroline wants them, and the chocolate milk, but I am not about to give her any! I always swore she’d never get McDonalds, at least not from me. It was to be a special treat with Daddy that Mommy won’t know about, when she’s older, say, 16.

I wait for Lisa to return with her food, as I tend to Julia, Caroline and momentarily Jack as he starts to squirm looking like he might wake up. Once Lisa is back, I go from station to station looking for yogurt, but none seem to have any on display. I even looked at McDonalds, but didn’t see any. I am too stressed out by the germs of a food court to buy anything for myself, and would prefer not to get anything for Caroline, but know she’s hungry. I settle on some steamed white rice and veggies, which Caroline spits out over and over. The elderly couple next to us finally looks at me and says, “I don’t think she likes her lunch” THANKS, I wasn’t sure.

Lisa remembers McDonalds does sell yogurt, so against my beliefs; I buy the yogurt (using change because I had no money, had to borrow money from Lisa for the first meal). I taste it first. Sure doesn’t taste like the organic plain yogurt we’re used to, more like custard..custard has egg in it, I better check with them. They assure me it’s yogurt, not custard and there’s no egg in it. This kid is starving and I’m the worlds most unprepared parent today so she gobbles up the yogurt, and a tiny bit of strawberry. I think, “Shit, I’ve never given her strawberries and they’re an allergen…at least I have the epipen if she’s allergic to them.” Luckily she seems okay. Soon enough, lunch is over.

We stroll around the mall a little and let Caroline walk with Julia and of course her hands go to every germy thing you can imagine. Ugh! Julia walks obligingly up to Lisa for her Purell, Caroline doesn’t know the difference but I chase her down, wipe her hands and throw her back in the stroller. Soon I realize the time and that she really needs to nap, but she’s still acting hungry. So, I go to make her a bottle, and the ½ pint Poland Springs water I brought doesn’t open. (We bought a case with several defunct bottles, been meaning to email Poland Springs about that but that will have to wait another day.) We start to have a meltdown and I turn to Lisa and say, “We gotta go”. Meanwhile, I have not bought ONE thing on the list for Jamie’s birthday, nor brought the return I had, but did manage to buy more clothes for Caroline.
Now I am home. My daughter is asleep in the car in unwashed clothes, never having gotten to drink her bottle since she dropped it as I was driving. It’s probably leaking onto the seat…oh, the smell of formula. The few bites of white rice and fruit from the mall are sitting in my stomach in a way I can’t describe but it feels as though I ate much more than I did. I should go now, and tend to my house, which is a disaster, and think about what nutritious meal I can provide for my child when she wakes.