The Relaxing Dinner that Wasn't and Recently Pinchy

We just got home from our usual Friday-after-work-kindof-date-dinner. It was exhausting. And, almost comical...if you weren't us. It was the least pleasurable $35 I have ever spent in my whole life (well, maybe paying all those speeding tickets was less pleasurable, but you get the point). I remind you that our girl is in the midst of teething, and frankly it's our own fault to think we could sit down and comfortably unwind when she's in this state. I guess we had just hoped she would stop whining long enough to be enraptured by all the bustle of a busy restaurant with a window seat to observe everyone walking by outside. Not so! At first, it was good. She was smiley and happy to see me when I met her and her Papa at the restaurant (having gone straight from work). I was so looking forward to a nice margarita to unwind. We started with an immediate trip to the bathroom to change her pants. This she did not like. Not in a house, not with a mouse. Think "someone is stabbing me with scissors" crying when I put her on the change table. Suddenly, through all this teething business, she has started acting like we have kidnapped her, latched her to a backdoor surgical table, and intend to steal her organs to sell on the black market when we try to change her diaper. This shrieking-while-mom-is-standing right HERE crying only intensified when I stepped 2.5 feet away to wash my hands. No tears though, so that was all just for fun, a little preview of our dinner date.

We made our way back to the table where my eternal optimist of a husband had set up G's infant carrier/carseat on an upside down highchair, G squealing and laughing as if she didn't remember the theatrics she had just pulled in the bathroom. You see, we had had tremendous success with this as-now-unused seat last weekend at brunch after church, where G had literally slept most of the meal in her seat while we gleefully stuffed our faces two-handed* with Nonni and Grandaddy, and Andrea and Doug and had big kid conversations without the various mouth noises, silly faces, and constant attention we find ourselves lavishing on Little Miss G when she is awake and engaged in the meal (I realized tonight that this is really quite an onerous task-what we do every day-entertaining an infant when she becomes bored). Well, this week it didn't work. As soon as I put her in it, in hopes that lightening could in fact strike the same place twice, she proceeded to whine and snort, and cry and try to turn over in it, precariously hanging over the edge. This was already not exactly what I had hoped for.

Clearly, she was not having being out of my arms, where she writhed, squirmed, fussed, whined, pushed her legs against my stomach to make her legs perpendicular to my torso over and over and over (meanwhile, my arms are getting a workout fanning out to accommodate her vertical downward facing dog against my ribcage, which I did, Oh, at least 50 reps of in the one unfortunate hour we spent "eating"). Oh, she had her rays of sunshine, mostly in the form of laughing when we played one of our many suspenseful "gonna get you or surprise you with a funny sound or well-played jolt" games, and flirting with an 80-year-old man at the table behind me. I would sneak gulps of the lovely margarita with her over my shoulder making eyes at the older man, as I had already made the mistake of sitting her on the table in front of me, where she promptly channeled Sherman in his March to the Sea, laying waste to everything in her reach. Things that ended up on the floor: my silverware, my napkins, two of her toys that she was not interested in, a drink menu (oh, how I would have loved to peruse that a bit more), a regular menu, and a stack of coasters, and ALMOST my beloved Corona. All of this in one fell swoop of her dimpled arm. This just meant that I had to hold her suspended away from the table the entire meal. Sean cut my blackbean burger in half for me in hopes that I could eat with my right arm doing curls with her and her buckling vertical downward facing dog repetitions, which I managed alright until she kicked the whining up a notch to the point where I was sure even her 80-year old boyfriend was growing weary of her, hearing aid and all. Then I gave up on my one-handed efforts on freedom fries even, in lieu of standing and shushing and swaying our Malcontent. Sean, who had managed to down two beers and half his burger and fries felt pity and took her so that I could inhale more of my food.

This all was Unsatisfying. If I'm going to eat the equivalent of a pound of vegetable oil and transfats I WANT TO ENJOY IT. By this time, my fries were vaguely warm, but mostly not, but ate them I did. Meanwhile, G made friends with a 3 year old girl behind Sean (so fickle she had already forgotten about her 80-year-old-deaf-boyfriend). This made her laugh and squeal with delight, and flirt with the girl's father, and reach out for the girl. Then Not. The whining and fussing magnified. I asked for the check. Sean took off to go outside, anywhere, to stop annoying the surrounding patrons at the restaurant with our teething, miserable (albeit, seriously cute, but not enough to get a pass for her behavior) baby. I horked down the rest of my cold fries, inhaled the last of my beer, packed up the rest of our gear (which we brought enough of to entertain a normal baby for weeks but not a teething baby for 5 minutes), and off I went. Nauseous from inhaling my food and beer/margarita cocktail, my cold fries, and my burger. My arms were weak from the unplanned calisthenics during the meal (but, man, I noticed they are toned these days!). We were both tired and unsatisfied. We decided that going out in public without the ability to immediately escape during teething hell is a terrible idea...so we learned something. One thing I know for sure is that if anyone in the restaurant who observed our very challenged dinner was a childless couple on the fence about having a baby, they may have seriously considered a vasectomy.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that G has recently (within the past two weeks) discovered the joys of pinching. During our dinner games tonight, I was riddled with very painful pinches when she grabbed my eye socket, jugular, my dewlap (this is a real thing, and not that I necessarily have the exact definition of this, but I LOVE this word for under-the-chin-on-the-neck skin), my nostrils, my lip, my ear, and the back of my arm skin. She likes to pinch and pull. Did you know how a tiny little baby can waste you with a well-placed pinch with tiny little vice-like fingers?? And the BEST is when she pinches and twists my milk blister when she nurses-that is kindof like rubbing an exposed nerve with sandpaper.

The some-what encouraging news seems to be that I really think I feel a bump on the ridge of her gums on the front left side. The toothbuds have been visible for months, but have not seemed to be emerging really. Maybe I am feeling what I want to feel when I touch her gums. Who knows. She has gone on a solid food strike, and is like a goat-chewing on clothing or blankets, or any material she can get her pinchy little hands on.

What I wondered more than once tonight, is what aliens stole my content baby and replaced her with this pained, miserable, little monster baby? And how long will she be gone? And how much Tylenol can you feed one baby?

*You childless folks don't realize how you will miss eating two-handed when you have your very own baby; consider yourself warned. Bask in your two-handedness while you have it!