Ladies Who Lunch

I had a wonderful lunch with my two sisters-in-law, Jen(left) and Karen(middle), my mother-in-law, Gail aka Mammom (right), and my niece, Tara (Sophie's future idol in the orange stripes), who is on Spring Break from school. It was delish, as well as interesting to spend time with the women who helped shape the person my husband is. They just adore Sophie, so if I didn't already think they were great, that would tip me over the edge.

At the end of the meal, I had to take Sophie to the bathroom to change her diaper. This is challenging even at home where the set-up is ideal, because Sophie will simply not lay still. But in a restaurant bathroom where you're working within the confines of a small stall, things are even more complicated. Luckily, they had one of those changing station things, although the stall it was in was only slightly larger than a regular stall. So when I sat down to do my own thing, Sophie was literally laying across my lap on the fold down table. Pretty weird to be staring into my daughter's eyes about one foot away. I felt like the cats when I walk in on them in the litter box.

I did manage to get us both taken care of, though, and get her dressed and all of her diaper gear back in the bag. However, I waited until coming out of the stall to return the changing pad to the bag. A woman comes out of an adjacent stall and walks up to the sinks as I finish wedging the pad in my bag and "wash " my hands with my antibacterial gel. I do this because washing my hands while holding a baby is darn near impossible. Holding baby requires at least one hand, washing hands requires two. Where do I put the baby? Under my arm like a clutch purse? So I use the antibacterial gel. Truth be told, it probably does a better job of de-germing my hands than the pathetic wash I could accomplish one hand at a time while holding Sophie. Meanwhile, this other woman does a cursory rinse of her hands, I don't even think she used soap.

We wind up walking out at the same time, with me ahead of this woman. I hold the door open for her and instead of grabbing it, she awkwardly hits it with her elbow and then her butt so as not to touch with her hands. Now, I understand the desire to avoid contact with germy public bathroom surfaces, but this woman could only marginally have been considered to wash her hands and she was concerned about touching the door after me? At first I was offended, but I have since come to the conclusion that she was actually doing the rest of us a favor by not touching the door with her disgusting hands.

Speaking of bacteria-laden hands, how about this picture of Sophie with most of her hand in her mouth. That's my girl!