The Mum Sweats
October 2, 2017
We’re fresh back from two weeks in Orlando, and we had a really brilliant time. Our eldest adored meeting the characters and started well with her penchant for rollercoasters and the youngest was amazingly chilled during the day taking in the sights and feeding. We made some immense memories and had some quality time together.
Obviously a fortnight with a three-year old and six month old isn’t without its challenges though and at times it did feel a bit relentless. One particular evening almost broke me, but the reason it nearly did wasn’t directly the kids and I should have known better….the Mum Sweats were a-plenty.
Picture the scene; we’re in a busy family buffet style restaurant at Disney. It’s one of my favourites – they have some amazing dishes on offer and they’re famous for one of their puddings, a zebra dome cake, which I could keep going back for until the supply runs out / it becomes socially unacceptable to go back up….whichever happens first. We’d been passing Lilly between us when we were eating out in an evening and by this point we felt pretty well rehearsed with the drill (she was too little to go in highchairs). We decided to take the car seat in for this one as we both wanted a good go at the food so figured she’d be ok for 20 minutes having a play with some hanging toys. She wasn’t. Not at all. I tried feeding her, hugging her, walking with her, putting her down…all then repeated by her Papa. Still no let up. Then this amazing hostess (Shantell) who was seating people around us kept walking by and Lilly really took to her – I mean REALLY took to her, she just had to smile at her and it was like she was plying her with sweets.
About 15 minutes in, a table got seated next to us by the lovely Shantell and as Lilly caught her eye she did what had now become the usual calm down. I turned to Shantell and tongue in cheek said ‘oh if you could just stay with us until the end of the meal that would be brilliant please’ – one of the newly seated diners pipes up not so subtly ‘yes if you can please’ along with a little eye roll and tight smile. Oh. My. Word. My bottom lip almost wobbled. For the next 10 minutes I felt so on edge the moment Lilly made a sound I got up from the table. The eye roller kept giving little glances over and I just kept looking at Graham willing the ground to swallow me up.
At some point out of the blue they started to make conversation with Graham and making a fuss of Polly. The ice queen (or so I thought) started to talk to me with the usual grade small talk – where are you from, how long are you here for etc. We ended up talking to them for over half an hour, and where we were talking about the kids they talked about their brood of dogs (no they weren’t the classic child-friendly people by their own admission!). I realised mid conversation with them that Lilly had fallen asleep in my arms – cheers kid.
Maybe she had worn herself out or maybe as I relaxed so did she. I rarely react to comments like we had at this meal in that way – I try to think if people wanted a meal without kids around they wouldn’t go to a family restaurant that’ll be packed full of them, so whilst I would never let my kids run riot or just leave them to cry, there’s only so much you can do with a tiny tot.
The Mum Sweats are not fun and they can put you off your dinner / tea / going out ever again, but if they’re going to come then I’ll just have to embrace them and get through the other side at some point! And to Shantell at Boma at the Animal Kingdom hotel – you are the baby whisperer….charge handsomely for it.