Difficult, But Doable

I remember this post from the October after the boys were born. It was my first trip out alone with the boys and I went to a MOPS meeting - maybe the easiest place you can go for an outing with babies! At that time, they were just under two months old, still pretty much sleeping all the time and fully contained in their car seats at all times. And I thought that was challenging!

Yesterday was my first attempt at taking all three kids out by myself - and it was a total success!! I met my friend Janice and her kids at the mall for walking and dinner and was feeling a little nervous going into the outing. I preplanned as much as I could, thinking through the order of operations for loading and unloading and strategically packing the diaper bag with several emergency items. We pulled into the parking spot and I set up the (huge and heavy) double jogging stroller and loaded in the boys, who thankfully didn't give me a hard time about getting buckled. With their new airplanes in hand, they were happy as can be. I loaded an awake Garrett into the Bjorn and headed into the mall. We walked a lap, let the kids play at the play area, walked another lap and ate dinner, all the while toting happy kids! Garrett had fallen asleep, the boys ate everything I packed for them for dinner and we headed back to the car. It was raining by the time we went outside, which woke up Garrett who started screaming... but we were on our way home and we were successful! My confidence was boosted in venturing out alone.

We all headed out again this morning to go to Preschool Playtime and succeeded again! Garrett slept the whole time in the car seat and the boys followed directions to hold onto the stroller as we walked across the parking lot into the gym. Awesome!

Almost two years ago, I thought it was tough to go somewhere with two contained babies. That, compared to taking one baby and two two year olds who have the potential to throw massive tantrums and only listen 50% of the time, was a piece of cake... but we're getting the hang of this!