Adventures in eating out with baby

I love to cook, but I’m not great about grocery shopping, so hubby and I end up eating out a lot for dinner. Last night we went to Ruby Tuesday’s. The food was great, and I love their salad bar because I can get little bits of things for the baby to eat without having to bring something along. See? This is what I’d call a totally balanced baby meal: cucumber bites, peas, edemame (minus the shell) and shredded cheese.

Anyway, we finished up dinner and I decided it was time to change the baby’s diaper. So we trotted over to the ladies’ room to take care of it. I got the wet diaper off her and was digging in the diaper bag for the tube of Boudreaux’s (yes, I use Butt Paste – hate the name but it works like a charm). When I looked back up, there was a steady stream of urine quietly soaking my child, the changing table and her clothes.

You’d think after 9 months I would have learned a couple of things about diaper changes. After all, the first rule as a new parent is always have the next diaper ready when you take the dirty one off. But I guess I didn’t learn that lesson well enough. Oops.

The other thing you learn as a new parent is to always have a clean change of clothes in the diaper bag. Heck, you should probably have two. But apparently I didn’t learn this lesson very well either because as I looked for a new outfit, I realized that I didn’t replace the backup outfit after the last time we used it. Double oops.  

Well, at least my daughter was now wearing a clean diaper, and we had removed the pee-soaked clothes. The only problem left to solve was figuring out something for her to wear between the restaurant and the car.

So what do you think my daughter wore home from the restaurant? A cape, of course! We tied a light-weight blanket around her shoulders and bundled her up in the bigger blankets. She was ready to face the snowy night. And she loved it! The cape protected her skin from the cold car seat, and the big blankets kept her warm.

Once we got home, she toddled around the house with just her diaper on until it was bath time because she didn’t want to sit still long enough to put new clothes on. Fine by me. The house is warm enough.

So maybe I made a couple of mistakes yesterday. But nothing truly tragic happened. My little girl is still healthy and happy. And she got to wear a cape!