A Pleasant Surprise

I assumed, before I had Cubby, that outings with a baby would be unpleasant. I thought it was just a given that the baby would cry and scream and make me into that woman rushing through her shopping or whatever to get out of the store before the kid busted the eardrums of everyone in the store. Lord knows, I've seen enough of those women myself and always imagined that that's just the way it goes with babies. So I was prepared for the unpleasantness.

What I was NOT prepared for was Cubby. Who, it turns out, is more than pleasant when out in public. He's downright charming.

We took an outing to a nearby city yesterday to visit a children's consignment store in the never-ending quest to keep the ever-growing Giant Infant clothed in seasonally appropriate clothing. This store just happens to be right next to a diner. And this diner just happens to serve the best milkshakes in the world.

Okay, maybe not in the world. But certainly in our little corner of the world.

So of course, we always plan our trips to this store around lunchtime, so we can go to the diner and I can indulge in my unnatural love for milkshakes.

The first time we went, Cubby was around five months old and he sat in my lap while we ate. This time, when the waitress offered a booster seat, we said sure. I was envisioning something more like a high chair, with straps and things, but instead we got basically a box with a little indentation on the top. I was thinking there was no way Cubby would sit on that, since when I put him in his strapped-in booster seat at home, he spends all his time leaning as far over as possible to view the dog or the chair underneath him or my feet. But we put him on it anyway, with an arm behind him in case he decided to fling himself backwards, and he just . . . sat up at the table.

It was the strangest sight. Here was this not-quite-eight-month-old child just sitting up at the table, playing with a spoon and looking for all the world like a normal person. He sat there for the 45 minutes or so we were there, sucking on the spoon, playing with a little tub of blackberry jam, and staring at all the waitresses rushing back and forth. He was perfectly happy. And so were we.

Of course, then he got overtired and had something of a fit when I put him down for a nap when we got home, but that is but a small sacrifice for a peaceful milkshake-interlude.