Playing Hooky

Yesterday I woke up not ready to deal with my day. I was sick of being stuck in my house and needed a break. When our speech therapist called to cancel we decided to take the day off from life. Our pulmonologist, I'm sure, would shake her head sternly if she knew we took our little BPDer in public (*gasp*) in the middle of flu/RSV season (*sigh*) but we were very careful. We didn't let Noah touch anything that didn't belong to him personally and we used gallons of purell before touching him. When we were shopping at the mall, we even went as far as to not go down store aisles littered with other people. Things went really well until almost the end of the day. We ate a quiet lunch at a table at Sbarro's far away from everyone else and did tons of shopping. When we were at Target we found these really cute shirts that said "I tried to be good but I got bored" on the front. Unfortunately while we were looking for Noah's size he got bored. He took out his hearing aid and threw it. Not too big of a deal if we had noticed it just then, but of course we didn't notice until we were looking at the video games 10 minutes later. We frantically retraced our steps and finally found the hearing aid (a little dusty but in working order), but it was a harrowing experience. Later we decided to end our day with a bit of dinner at Applebees. That would've been a great idea except for the minor detail that Thursday is family night at our local Applebees. There were a million small children breathing the air close to us and it was a little more than we're used to. Noah was his charming self so we drew lots of attention from the other diners. They all thought he was cute and our waitress even said she wished that when she had kids they were just like Noah. She meant a happy social baby with big dimples who didn't rip up napkins and throw them on the floor like the baby at the table next to us, but I was amused. You want a deaf-blind baby who doesn't eat, can't leave the house and spent the first six months of his life in the NICU? Here, take ours. The big test of our new resolve that it was ok to leave the house sometimes as long as we're careful came just at the end of dinner. The little boy from the next table over came within inches of Noah's face to say goodbye. He literally leaned his germy little face on the edge of Noah's nice germ-free highchair cover. When he started talking, Noah (as is his custom) went to put his nice clean fingers in the germ-monster's mouth. I quickly grabbed his hand and said sternly "don't hit". Fortunately germ-monster's daddy bought my line and extricated him from the situation lest he be beat up by the happy social baby at the next table over. Overall we seem to have survived the day, and it was nice to get out for a little while. I can't wait until spring when we can go to museums and the library and the theatre without feeling guilty.