Eating out

Ok, so I only used that title to see how many people find this blog searching for porn.  I'm guessing  my numbers are going to go way up and I may get some pissed off comments.  Hey, I take my fun where I can.

But it is an appropriate title, as we just got back from Henry's second outing to a restaurant. I'm pretty sure it's going to be his last for a good long while.  We've been wanting barbeque, so we decided to introduce Henry to the glory of pulled pork.  He's been sick, so maybe this weekend wasn't the best time for it, but I wanted to get out of the house, dammit.

When we got there, he proceeded to try to eat the menu, then yelled at it.  Thus began the fastest, most apprehensive meal I've eaten since that bad first date with the guy who ID'd me to make sure I was over eighteen because he'd "been tricked before" and then asked me if I liked DANGER.   (Like I've said, I used to pick some winners).

We basically spent the whole meal on the edge of our seats, waiting to appease our son if he let out the slightest noise, in order to spare other people their meals.  Ben looked at me about five minutes in and said "You know, I'm not really enjoying this."  Luckily, lunch arrived, my plate had a pickle on it, and Henry was content to gnaw that into bits for the entire ten minutes it took us to shovel in our food.  We then picked pickle bits off the floor and made our exit.  Not really a relaxing meal, and I'm pretty sure it will be a while til we go out with him again. It's not like it's his fault, but what's the point of getting out if you're on pins and needles the whole time?

Also spent some of this week talking to my friend Melissa, who has reached the point of sleep deprivation where letting the kid cry it out is suddenly a very, very viable option.  As I told her,  everyone I know with a kid, including me, gets there at some point.  Some people do it early, some people read about other options and try those first, and some of them (I hate to admit it, but like me) think their kid is just going to magically start sleeping on their own at some point.

But we all get there.  And we know if we have another kid, we're going to get there a whole lot sooner with that kid.  Like the night they come home from the hospital.

It's a different kind of exhaustion, when you have a kid that doesn't sleep.  Because even when they DO sleep, you can't really, because you're tensed for the moment they wake up.  It's kind of like waking up one day, and knowing that you're going to be punched in the face at some point, but you don't know when or how hard.  It's a bit difficult to focus on anything else.  The first time Henry slept eight hours in a row, I went to work the next day and felt GREAT.  I couldn't figure it out-I hadn't run that morning, or had coffee yet.  Then I realized-I'd just forgotten what not being tired felt like.  You learn to live with a certain level of tired all the time when you have a baby.

But now my own kid is asleep, and Ben is tinkering with the furnace, even though I got him to admit last night (after a mysterious loud boom came from the basement) that we may need to get a professional to look at it before it kills us all.  Sleep sounds like an ok idea to me, too.