Mommy's Purse

It is amazing the things that you carry in your purse as a mother. The list can be quite extensive if you have reached the phase where you no longer need to haul a huge diaper bag, but still require a few baby necessities on outings. In the last four years, my purse has held everything from the usual...wallet, keys, lipstick, to the not so usual..., nursing pads, race cars, Butt Paste. My purse is so well-stocked that I am sure that if we were stranded somewhere with no immediate hope of rescue, I could quite easily put together a meal, provide an entertaining after dinner show, and remove a gallbladder if the need arose.

More than just a vehicle for carting around all of my mommy stuff, my purse holds within it the power to distract a toddler for a good two hours if I get really creative. Case in point...dinner this past Friday. Mike, the kids, and I met my sisters, brother-in-law, and mom at Cheddars for dinner. I was relatively confident that we were screwed when we pulled into the parking lot and saw that it was so full and you had to park so far away, that some people were riding camels on their incredible trek to the front door. Oh yeah, it was that crowded.

Luckily, Ang and Derek got there before anyone else and had our table already when we got there. So we sat down and Elyse was happy with the initial menu and crayons bit, but she was really hungry, and after ten minutes she decided that she wasn't buying the crap that we were selling and she started to get, let's just call it cranky.

I pulled out the Teddy Grahams and it was like the clouds parted and beams of light radiated from the baggie of tiny, honey-flavored bears. She was beside herself with joy and was content for another ten minutes. After the novelty of the bears wore off, we turned to books, but Princess wasn't much in the mood for reading and she flung them across the room. Maybe her toy phone? Ah Hah! Success! Another ten minutes. Now if you are keeping track, that's thirty minutes since we sat down and if the cannibalistic looks on the faces of the people next to us were any indication, it appeared that there was no hope that we were going to see our food any time soon, and also, maybe we should move to another table because Leroy over there is starting to drool just looking in our general direction. Creepy.

After I had pulled out every legal baby item in my bag, I had to move to the illegal objects...you know, the stuff that you would never give your child until you have exhausted every other option and are left with hand sanitizer, appointment reminder cards, and the pepper spray. Finally, in a last ditch effort, I grabbed the hand lotion and you know what? That bottle of lotion kept her happier and more entertained for a longer stretch of time than anything else that I pulled out.

Kids, you just never know. Tomorrow I might pull out that same bottle of lotion and she might toss it aside with absolutely no interest whatsoever, but at that moment, the lotion was the magic object. She was happy pretending to put lotion on everyone at the table until our food arrived and once she saw her plate of spaghetti she was like, "Huh, what lotion?" The girl LOVES her some spaghetti. So I put away the lotion and twenty other items that were all over the table, for the next time that we get stranded or end up at Cheddars or get stranded at Cheddars.