Out on the town

Yesterday I had my first successful solo outing with Adriana. (Actually, the first time wasn't completely unsuccessful. I was just too nervous to even go into Target to buy one thing without panicking.) I packed Adriana and the stroller into the car and headed to the mall, where I had scheduled an appointment at the salon to have my brows done. The only crisis was a small one: once I was in the parking garage, I couldn't figure out to unfold the stroller, even though I'd practiced before we'd left the house. Reasoning that not using the stroller, which is just a frame that holds thecarseat, meant that I didn't have to worry about whether I got the carseat back into the car properly at the end of the trip, I tucked Adriana into her pouch and went on my way. She lay quietly on my chest while Jasmine did my brows, and slept while I visited a couple of other stores in the mall. When she started to stir, about an hour after I'd figured she would want to eat, I headed to the mothers lounge inNordstrom . By the time I got there she was asleep again, but I needed to adjust her in the pouch anyhow and I thought that would wake her up. No luck: she slept solidly when I took her out and put her back in. An hour later, as I was waiting in line at the bookstore, she woke up angry that it had been four hours since her last meal. Deciding that carrying a screaming infant all the way back toNordstrom was more frightening that trying to nurse in public, I found an armchair in the store and fed her there. The man in the chair beside mine looked up and nodded at me, but went back to his book, and I think I managed to be pretty discreet (although Adriana is a noisy eater and I am not yet a graceful nurser, so even if you couldn't see any skin, it was quiet obvious what we were doing). Who needs a mothers lounge?

But I'm glad I went into the lounge that first time anyhow. It gave me a chance to sip the cold drink that I bought on my way in, and to talk with another young mom who was there. Her son was seven months old, and it was nice to chat with someone who was relatively new at this mom business but still more experienced than I am. Throughout the trip I discovered that Adriana is a better conversation piece than Zorro (although I haven't tried that on the Metro). Whenever I went into a store the salespeople would talk to me about her, several people stopped to ask me about the carrier I was using, and other moms would gush over her hair and her size (they all thought she was so tiny, until they knew that she was only a month old). I, however, refrained from chasing after a woman I saw heading into the Gap with a stroller identical to mine to ask her how the hell to open the damn thing.