Getting to Meet Great Grandma

I am in awe of my husband’s grandmother. She is truly a renaissance woman. Very spunky, no nonsense, sharp as a tack and tells it like it is. If we had grown up in the same generation, we would have been friends I am sure. As it is we do correspond occasionally through snail mail, email, and over the phone. Which reminds me, I had to chuckle to myself when she pulled out her iPhone at dinner and started snapping pictures of Emma like an old pro. I was waiting for her to upload them to Facebook and tweet, “chillin with the fam yo.” But anyways…

Of course her being a retired Floridian with a zest for life, she does not have to worry about curfews or bedtimes or baby melt downs or working  a full day and coming home to clean or anything at all like that. So naturally I was a little hesitant when she requested our presence at a weekday dinner!  I knew it was not going to be easy. I also knew that she is rarely up from Florida and even having a vivacious love of life, with great grandmothers you never know when you will get to see them.  So, reluctantly I gave in and told my husband we would go to dinner on a Tuesday night with grandma.  And boy did I regret it…in the beginning at least.

It was a cold, rainy night. Dinner was scheduled for 5:30pm  (a half hour prior to bed time) and Emma and I usually make it to the homestead around 4-4:15pm on any given day, which left an awkward amount of time between going home and having to leave for dinner. So I let Emma play while I grabbed everything we would need to make it through a dinner at a restaurant. I should probably back track a little bit and mention that Emma is in a new phase where when we get home she does not want to leave my side until she falls asleep. If mommy has to go potty or do anything else that requires her to be kid free, a full on meltdown ensues. Fast forward to our outing and after playing for about a half hour, it was time to pack up the car and go, but leaving home meant not being attached to mommy during the car ride. The restaurant location was picked in close proximity to my husband’s job so he would not have to leave work early, which made logical sense at the time. However I quickly found out that anything that logistically makes sense for us adults does not work for the baby (oooh rookie move.)

 

As soon as I put Emma in the car seat, she erupted into an “I need mommy” meltdown which lasted nearly an entire hour on the way to the restaurant.  I had already managed to have a headache from a rougher than normal work day and now I was being treated to the tantrum that would never end. Of course I felt an extreme amount of guilt. What was I thinking taking Emma away from her serine night time routine? What kind of a mother am I driving almost an hour away when my kid needs me now? Well, needless to say, I had a “mommy meltdown” by the time we got to the restaurant. Luckily, my husband is an expert at calming me down (he has only had to do it a few times before J ) and the baby too.

All in all, I am glad we had the opportunity to visit with Emma’s great grandma. My favorite part of the night? When my husband says “Oh, I forgot there is a (fill in restaurant chain name here) 5 minutes away from the house. We could have gone there instead.”  Gotta love those logistics.