Thank you, Javier.

You’re just like the Canadian government but way sexier!

Disclaimer: My sweet, SWEET WONDERFUL husband did his best. Most everything that went wrong was not his fault and he could not have stopped it from happening.

Javier made reservations at a new restaurant in the city. A restaurant whose chef we have “experienced” (to our delight) in that past. The resto’s schtick is comfort food… well-crafted, highly original comfort food. How can you go wrong with that for a mother’s day brunch, you ask?

Well, the greatest injury was the first. After having TWICE requested high chairs – once when reserving and again the day before mother’s day to be DOUBLY sure – turns out there were no high chairs. NO HIGH CHAIRS!!! Two eighteen month old children and no high chairs to sit them in. As we were told upon our arrival: “Oh, the hostess was mistaken. We thought we could borrow some from another resto but it turns out that no one has a high chair to spare on mother’s day”. NO SHIT! Really? OMGWTF? The woman greeting us continued: “But we’ve put you at a table with a banquette so the kids can just sit there, right?” HA! No, really, HA! HAAAA! Why, yes, of course my toddlers will sit still on a banquette… in a parallel universe… the same universe where my dog isn’t getting fat from all the scraps of food that hit the floor during lunch, thanks.

This lack of child restraining hardware was enough to have called the brunch a bust. We certainly didn’t need anymore help beyond that point but, alas, when it rains, it pours.

No menus for 15 minutes. Only to be followed by the classic moment where the waitress comes and says something to the effect of: “So you must have looked over the menus and someone’s taken them away?”. Uh, given that you’re our waitress, we were hoping that you’d be the one in-the-know here. In other words, NO. NOOOO. And we have a couple of toddlers squirming like greased pigs at a bacon factory so, please DO take your time.

It should come as no surprise that when we finally DID order, our food came about as quickly as mail on a Sunday. Everyone around us was eating AND LEAVING before we got our main courses. We got there slightly before noon and despite eating as fast as humanly possible, were in no position to leave until 1:30 pm. The service was a disaster. Which is fitting because of the aforementioned toddlers… you know the ones… the squirming ones. But, heck, they offered us a free plate of waffles for our troubles. Score!

Back to those squirming toddlers.

It goes without saying that when you restrain a toddler against his will, he’ll fight you with every fibre of his soul. Especially if he knows you’re a mere mortal and not an unyielding, unsympathetic high chair. So, a third of the way into our outing, Nicholas starts to lose his shit. He’s had just about enough of us plying him with Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and every utensil, placemat, shiny and/or edible thing within grasp. He’s ready to go now. NOW. GO. NOW. So he starts wailing. Wailing in that way that makes you, as parent in a public place, recoil in horror. But you know what? It’s mother’s day and it’s brunch. If ever there was a potentially sympathetic audience for this sort of meltdown, this would be it. I mean it’s not like we’re ruining anyone’s romantic supper, right? It’s not like we’re totally insane for taking our toddlers out on this of all days, right?

You’d think that.

Except leave it to the smug woman sitting at the table next to us, the woman with the single sleeping-in-a-stroller 13-or-so-month-old to actually get up, walk over to Javier and say: “Can you take him outside?”.

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!? It’s mother’s day. Is there no solidarity between parents of young children trying to live a normal life? Are you so lulled into a sense of superiority by your sleepy little angel that you think you’ll never find yourself in EXACTLY the same situation hoping for the kindness of strangers? God almighty. If I hadn’t been so stunned, I would have punched her in the nose. Or thrown Nicholas at her.

(As slight consolation, this woman’s mother stopped to talk to us on her way out and told us how beautiful our boys are and how crazy it must be to have twins. I think even she was embarrassed by her daughter’s – daughter-in-law’s, maybe – gall.)

So that’s the gist of our mother’s day outting… except for one thing.

Javier took some photos so that we could remember this day. An opportunity we seldom get, capturing Mama with her boys

… with the camera on Manual mode.

I thought, at best, I would nurse my boys until they were 6 months. If I was lucky. If I was lucky enough to have babies who made it easy for me. Babies who took to breastfeeding easily. Not like the sad stories I read on all those website when I was pregnant and scared witless. Not like those women who virtually cried on-screen describing how, no matter what they tried, their babies wouldn’t latch on. Or they couldn’t produce enough milk. Or it was too painful. Or they hated it.

Well, my babies latched on right away. From day one, literally. And they made it easy. It took a little while to gain my footing but I did. And I never looked back.

The boys are almost 17 months old now. I’ve nursed them all this time. Granted, it’s only once a day at this point – before bed – but that’s all they really want.

Somehow, for many reasons and none at all, it seems like it’s time to quit. The reasons that I can articulate in my mind are not worth sharing here. They’re banal and trite. So are the reasons for NOT quitting, actually. I guess it’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling that the Mama who breastfed her little babies has to move on like they’ve moved on. They’re walking, almost talking and it just seems like we’re moving into a whole other ballgame.

Soon enough, we’ll start looking at pre-schools. We’ll be looking at weaning them from full days at home. Like I said, it’s a whole other ballgame.

I’m melancholy about it. I’m not entirely happy to move on… but that’s me, not them. I’ve had this purpose for the last 16 months. A purpose that was easily defined and could only be fulfilled by me. I’m sad to let that go. Such a clear and definite purpose in life is not easy to find.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m too busy to think about it too much.

xoxoxo Javier, Catherine, Sebastian & Nicholas

Vegas seemed like the nearest destination where we could effectively pack in such vices as fine dining (damn fine!), drinking, cigar smoking, gambling and other mature amusement that we’ve thoroughly neglected in the past year. So here we are!

30 hours into our adventure, I can report that all is going according to plan.

Yeah, I think I can see a little something.

Click on the image for a larger version.

For the last 11 months, I’ve been driving Javier’s SUV and he’s been driving the convertible. It was a reasonable compromise because the infant car seats could easily be snapped out when we wanted to fit more people in the big car. But now that the boys have gotten bigger and so have their car seats. We’ve graduated to giant La-Z-Boy sized recliners which are not removable. The result is that the once mighty 7-seater SUV has been reduced to a 4-seater: 2 adults and 2 babies. Needless to say, that’s kinda impractical.

Enter our brand new (used) Audi allroad. Yes, it’s a station wagon. Yes, that seems boring… until you realize that this bad boy does 0-60 in six seconds! It completely blows the convertible out of the water, performance-wise. Actually, it kinda blows most cars out of the water performance-wise. It is, to use a marketing cliché, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

So while I’m bummed that we’ve gotta sell the convertible, I can take solace in the fact that I leave three quarters of the folks on the road eating my dust!

Behold crappy photo of the wolf:

Oh, and I forgot to mention the AWESOME sound system. The subwoofer makes the car bounce ghetto-style (albeit rich, white, suburban ghetto-style)!

No longer in the huddled mass, longing to be free!

• My boys are constipated. I’m constipated.
• My boys need shots (vaccinations not photos). I need shots*.
• My boys are teething. I’m teething… sorta. I’m suffering a mysterious tooth ache for which I’ve seen my dentist 3 times to no avail. It’s so frustrating that I’m thinking of crying and drooling all day long just to distract myself.

* Apparently, to get a Green Card, I need to be better inoculated than any American I’ve met. I guess they’re building a better, heartier breed with us immigrants in case the Big Macs kill off the natives.

(I can’t anticipate a day when I won’t be willing to suffer mind-numbing repetition just to get that fantastic smile out of him.)