Last week, Foster and I tagged along when Tanner had to spend a day in DC for work.
Like all trips with toddlers, it was one of the least relaxing days I’ve ever had.
Here’s the text I sent my articles club when we landed at Dulles:
The aforementioned Ginna, perhaps the wisest member of our club, was right. We weren’t miserable — thankfully, far from it! — but a lot went wrong. And (a week removed, with ample sleep and a good antibiotic in my system) we still had the best time.
Think pink
We woke up at 4:20 a.m. to discover that Foster’s slightly watery eyes from the night before had bloomed into a (seemingly) bad case of conjunctivitis. I wiped off his eyes as best I could and fired up Teledoc on the drive to the airport, mentally preparing myself for a day of keeping a toddler from touching his eyes and/or everything else around him.
Our kind virtual doctor was able to see us moments before we boarded the plane and called in a prescription to a CVS near our old house in Arlington. Foster, miraculously, kept his hands mostly off his eyes until we were able to snag the prescription and put in the eye drops (sequestered in the handicap stall of a chic but parent unfriendly hotel lobby bathroom in Foggy Bottom. Cool people need changing tables, too!).
A short winter’s nap
My plan was to visit a few of the museums on the Mall, ducking in and out at the whims of an almost two-year-old. We took a short train ride from our medical pit stop to Federal Triangle, which Google Maps told me would deposit a mere 0.3 miles from the National Museum of Natural History. (Me: “Want to go see some dinosaurs?” Foster: “Raaaawr! [holds hands as high as he can, straining] BIG!”)
I either took a wrong turn or Google didn’t account for the fact that some train passengers need to use the elevator, depositing them in a different location than the escalator riders. Regardless, our 0.3 mile journey was actually a 1.1 mile trek. In the cold. While pushing 47 pounds of kid and stroller, another 5 pounds of diaper bag strapped to my back.
This was more mentally humbling than anything else: I am, by now, accustomed to pushing my big kid and his heavy stroller over longer distances in tougher terrain. I was annoyed with myself that I hadn’t correctly mapped the journey, a common occurrence in my life as a Directional Dingbat. But, as I discovered after a woman glanced at Foster and made an “aww” face, my boy fell asleep for most of the jaunt — a nap he sorely needed after our early wakeup call.
The case of the missing coat
After a pretty good hour at Natural History (Foster didn’t find the dinosaurs as compelling as I thought he would, but he was fascinated by the life-size African and North American animals), we walked over to the National Museum of the American Indian. I had read that their kids’ play place was excellent and uncrowded on a weekday afternoon — both true.
We spent a solid hour there (and, pro tip, probably could have stayed longer if we hadn’t needed to get lunch and take the train back to McLean to meet Tanner). And then, once we returned to our stroller, I discovered Foster’s coat had either gotten lost or been stolen.
In the grand scheme of things, this was not the end of the world: We also had his rain jacket with us. I’d only left our coats and my water bottle in our stroller, so I knew nothing more important (like my phone or wallet or those hard-won eye drops) was missing. We encountered five extraordinarily kind and helpful Smithsonian employees in our search for the coat at American Indian, Natural History and the few blocks between the two. And we are fortunate enough to be able to afford a new coat.
This is the kind of thing that would have actually ruined my day a few years ago. And it irritated me badly: I was mad at myself for not tucking the coat into the diaper bag or having Foster keep it on. This coat was one of Foster’s few non-thrifted clothing items, and while I bought it on deep sale, it was a Patagonia coat, so I still paid the equivalent of a small country’s GDP for it.
But motherhood or age or a small voice inside of me that I managed to listen to for once told me that this was OK. This was frustrating, of course. But this should not derail the fun day I’d had with my boy — a kid who gleefully yelled “ahhh bohhhhd [all aboard]” as we got on every Metro train. A kid who woke up early, stayed up late, and had just one five-minute meltdown in between. A kid who, when asked his favorite part of the day, said: “Wee oo wee oo geen!” [shakes head no] Balue!” (Translation: We saw a green fire hydrant, not a blue one!) (Take a kid to two outstanding museums in the biggest city he’s ever been to and he’ll remember the green fire hydrant most of all.) (Also, we’ve never seen a blue fire hydrant?) (Please no one tell him there is no “a” in “blue.”)
We did not find the coat. But we didn’t let it make us miserable. And we made so many imperfectly perfect memories.
Wisest!?! In a word that Molly keeps misusing: “Hardly.” It’s the company I keep. 😘