Multitasking

Well, the anniversary party at work yesterday went off fine. I had to take two overtired children with me because B was working (K was up late the night before, Alec had only napped for half an hour that morning), but they did surprisingly well until the inevitable meltdown, which K was kind enough to hold off until 3, when the party ended.

Working while taking care of small children wasn't too bad. It worked mostly because we have a new library science student volunteering, so I sat behind the desk holding Alec and told her what to do while she did all of the physical work that I couldn't do one-handed. Still, I have to assume that the tiredness and distraction was what led to my two most stellar parenting moments of the day:

1. I finally figured out how to adjust the labyrinth of straps on the baby carrier I bought a while ago and had quite a bit of success using it to wear Alec on my back. However, I had not anticipated that his habit of leaning way over to the side when walking onto the elevator, resulting in an unfortunate head-bonking incident. And I may or may not have knocked it a bit more trying to take him off my back so I could comfort him. All with a large audience, of course. Sigh. Sometimes you go out in public and feel like the very model of ideal parenting. And then most of the time you find yourself worried people are about two minutes away from calling CPS.

2. I took some of the balloons we had for party decorations for K when we left, since what else were we going to do with them? And I put Alec on my back, put K in the stroller because she was in no shape to walk, and very carefully watching our clearances, got on the elevator and left to go to the car. We got to the car. I shoved our bags and the balloons in. I worked on getting Alec off of my back without dropping him on his head. Then I realized how hot it was in the car and opened all of the doors to let it cool off.

I didn't realize what I had done until I had everyone finally in the car and strapped in and K asked, "Where are my balloons?" Oh shit. Cue heartbroken wailing from an already overwrought child. And I just could not contemplate getting everyone back out to go back in. But as I was driving past the museum, I realized there were balloons on the outside, so I stopped the car, hopped out and stole those suckers.

As I was walking back to the car with the balloons, a man approached me and I braced myself for being yelled at either for taking balloons or leaving my children in the car within my sight with the windows down and the engine off for a whole minute. But he actually just had a question about the museum. So I guess I'm safe from CPS for another day despite my best efforts.