I did something today that terrified me: I took my daughter to lunch at a restaurant- by myself.
We take her out with us all the time, but it's a whole new ballgame when you don't have a partner to help. Just getting the enzymes and applesauce into her mouth takes two steady hands and a patient head. Here's how this went down: I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in other blog posts, but we are selling our house. For those of you who've never experienced the home buying/selling hell, let me explain one horribly necessary thing called, tours. Basically, a tour is when an interested party gets a free look at your house. This usually happens at extremely inconvenient times for the homeowner, but since every tour is a potential buyer- the homeowner does it anyway.
What's more inconvenient than the timing, is all that goes into getting your home ready for this touring party. In a nutshell- it's just cleaning and vacating the premises and for those without kids or pets, or a life, that's really not a big deal. For us, however.... oh boy.
I started the process immediately upon waking up. Mostly that means that I was making a mental checklist while brushing my teeth and getting Avie upstairs for breakfast. But as soon as she was settled with food, I went to work.
Dishes: It never ends, I just keep washing
Wipe down: Countertops and all dusty horizontal surfaces
Clean: bathroom sinks, tubs and wipe down the outside of the toilets (it was too damn early in the morning for me to scrub the inside), litter box
Laundry: her soiled sheets from the night before (girl must drink a gallon of water before bed, I swear) and all the towels.
Sweep: floors. duh
Hide: clean, unfolded clothes in the closet or dryer and all miscellaneous kitchen crap gets jammed into the dishwasher
Pickup: toys on the living room floor and books from the bedroom floor
Mom: the verb- because somewhere in this list Avalyn did breathing treatments, used the potty, read books quietly and had a snack
Pack: enzymes, hand sanitizer, water, extra pull-ups, jackets and some travel toys
Music: turn on ambient "spa" music so the touring party gets pleasantly swept away upon entering your sparkling space... because, after all, this one will be the one to purchase your home
Then, you go careening out of the driveway because you've just barely made it out in time, all sweaty and frustrated because your limit-testing toddler HATED that you were cleaning, rather than playing with her.
*I have 100% embraced the yoga pants*
So that's how we found ourselves out and about at lunch-time. Like I said, it's always inconvenient timing. So I took a deep breath and requested a table for 2.
And she did great! I mean, luckily it was a near-empty restaurant so when she got a little wiggly, it wasn't a big deal that she stood next to the table and bobbled around. She greeted the neighboring tables quietly and smiled and listened to me when I asked her to calm down a bit. It was pretty easy! She even asked to pee on the potty. Yay! So our first mommy-daughter date is in the books.
I guess the home tour thing isn't ALL bad. And it's nice to come home to a clean house.