Number Three

My family ventured out tonight with a list of things needed for the house, namely a dresser and nightstand for our oldest. The furniture shuffle will move her dresser to the baby’s room, you know, because the sterilite drawers in there for now won’t cut it once she’s out of the bassinet, and out of our room. (PS- Said drawers are cracked, right down the side. What the what? I’m guessing that it was that way in the store when I bought it, since they’ve only been in the room for about a week, and the older two are waaaaay more interested in scattering the basket of baby toys around than exploring the world of “putting things away.”)

During the day, we went room-to-room making a list of things we need so we can pick them up when we spot something that will work, some a little more important than others. Curtains, paint, that pesky dresser…things like that. So, we leave close to dinner time, decide to eat out, and away we go.

We figured we’d hit a couple of places to check the goods before ultimately deciding to The debate is mainly should we spend a little more now, or get something for the next however many years that will probably need to be replaced. So we hit Big Lots first, only to find that the stuff was so cheap that we would probably only get a year out of it. The result? Two small bags of spicy Chex Mix and a roll of kraft paper. Nice.

Then we told the kids we’d take them to dinner. The plan was to feed the baby, head in, get something to eat, and hit the next place on our list.

I fed the baby in the car, and, long (or not so long) story short, she pooped all over my lap. I had a stain on my jeans, and a handful of baby excrement, not to mention two kids in the back who wanted to eat in. Naturally, I had removed the change of clothes from the diaper bag earlier because something leaked on them, and never replaced them. Undeterred, I undressed the baby, cleaned her up and changed her diaper, kept her socks and bib on, and headed to a drive through for din-din. (Yes, it’s not the best, but it’s such a treat for the kids because we let them have it maybe once every couple of months…)

After eating, my husband asked what I wanted to do. “We may as well head to where we were going.” She has one of those nifty zip-up car seat covers, plus a blanket…not to mention the bib, diaper and socks. As long as no one unzipped the cover, it would go unnoticed that she was nearly a naked baby. And off we went to the next place on our errand list. Thank goodness, because it takes darned near as long to corral everyone to get out the door as the amount of time we were actually out.

And so it goes with the third child.