I'm sorry I haven't been blogging lately - my brain has been feeling dead.  I haven't even really been reading very much.  I've started a lot of books but haven't finished most of them yet.  I am very close to the 52 book goal though.  Anyway, so I was thinking about this story that I posted on my Twin Tales blog two and a half years ago, and decided to post it here.  While life has gotten a bit easier since then, I still suffer from unrealistic plans and I am still very tired!

February 24, 2007:

After a disastrous attempt to take the twins with me to see a special exhibit at the Museum of Art last fall, I should have known better than to do what I did yesterday morning.  I had to drop my oldest son off to meet his math tutor on campus, so I decided to take the five younger children to the university's art museum while waiting.  I had this picture in my mind that the twins would happily ride in their stroller, Ryan would be awed by the artwork, and the girls would have a perfect educational field trip. I of course would beam like the Madonna with all my beautiful young children in tow.

Here's what really happened.  We had a half hour to kill before the museum opened, so we walked to the bagel store.  For some funny reason, campus eateries are not built with double strollers in mind, and especially not with two strollers being in the store at the same time.  After finding out that buying four bagels with cream cheese would require another mortgage on my house, I decided we would have plain bagels.  The store was empty so I let the babies out of their stroller. While doing that, I noticed the bags of day old bagels that were half the price I had just paid.  Grrr!  Neither baby wanted any bagel; they just wanted to cry.  So I nursed them.  Ryan didn't want his bagel because it was hot.  We sat for about five minutes and then I decided we would leave so I could go put more change in the meter.  This required putting coats back on and strapping 3 children back in their strollers.  Just before I put Christopher in, he grabbed half a bagel so I let him keep it.  Then we had to coordinate with military precision our exodus from the store.

Back to the van to put money in the meter.  Where's my purse? Oh, it must be back at the store.  Wonderful!  We turn around and go back to the bagel store.  Thankfully it was still where we had been sitting, contents intact.  Back again to the van.  Finally, we walk to the museum.

The museum employee who helped me get the double stroller through the doors politely asked me to put Christopher's bagel away.  Here's a multiple choice quiz for you:

A baby whose bagel is taken away from him for no good reason in his opinion will:

A. Accept it and be perfectly happy.

B. Sublimate his suffering into a deep affection for art.

C. Scream and make his twin brother upset too.

I think it's pretty obvious that C is the correct answer.  However, he got over his screaming pretty quickly and let Alexander be the unhappy one.  I quickly decided to take Alexander out of the stroller and carry him in the sling, but that didn’t help either.  We walked into a room with a lot of religious art and the girls began walking around looking at it.  The security guard, not very surreptitiously, followed us.  I was embarrassed when he told Mary not to put her hand on the wall, but then realized that I had not given them ANY instruction on what to do and how to behave in the museum, and after all, they are only 10 and 8!  Alexander was still screaming so I sat down to try nursing him, even though he had just nursed in the bagel store.  I looked around to check on Ryan and discovered that he was going under a bench instead of admiring artwork.  At this point, I was started to wish the floor would open up and swallow us all! 

Christopher began fussing because the stroller wasn’t moving.  I realized that Gabrielle was pushing the empty stroller around and asked her to switch and push Christopher around while she looked at the paintings.  She did, but every time she came back to where I was, she would stop the stroller right in front of me.  Time for another quiz question:

A baby whose bagel has been taken away from him and whose twin brother is being held and nursed by mama will:

A.       Accept it and be perfectly happy.

B.       Begin a discourse on European religious art.

C.       Scream.

Again, C is the correct answer.  At this point, I glanced over to check on Ryan and saw him moving very quickly toward a sculpture that had caught his eye.  He probably thought it looked like a knight.  I began to panic, having visions of him crashing into the sculpture and knocking the whole thing down and breaking it.  Then I really would need that additional mortgage on the house!  Or does homeowners’ insurance cover the instances when you have totally lost your mind and let 3 year olds loose in a museum while trying to keep toddler twins happy?  Thankfully, we didn’t have to find out.  Ryan stopped short of the sculpture and very nicely pointed it out to Mary. Alexander finished nursing, and I decided, “WE ARE LEAVING!”  Alexander began screaming again because I was putting him back in the stroller, Christopher was screaming to get out, and Ryan didn’t want to put his coat back on or get back in his stroller. 

Now other people had come into the museum.  I saw two women with clipboards and pencils looking like they were getting ready to do some serious studying.  Yikes!  How fast can I get out of here with all these children????  Finally, we were ready and I pushed a stroller filled with screaming babies out through very narrow double doors and sighed in relief.  On my way out, I said to the security guard, “It obviously wasn’t the morning for this!”  He very nicely agreed.

We did salvage this field trip by walking around campus and seeing a few historical sites.  Also, there are lots of low brick walls for the children to walk on, which they loved.  So if you happened to be driving through campus and saw a woman pushing a double stroller with one hand and pulling a single stroller with the other so the children wouldn’t fight over who got to walk on the wall and who had to push the single stroller, I hope you said a prayer for her.  She’s very tired!