Daddy’s Day Out

So at 6:00 this morning I was bundling half'-sleeping kids down the stairs, cursing squeaky stairs that I was certain would wake my wife. Yet somehow I pulled it off – all three kids in the car, driving away undiscovered. Daddy took the day off work without telling mommy, so he could give her a day off work. :-)

 

Of all the exciting places we could have gone, our first stop was: Wal-Mart. Yep, that’s right. It was in the Wal-Mart that we changed  them out of jammies and did hair. Then we went in to browse their breakfast menu, and finally settled on bananas, granola, and yogurt. And since I discovered that Darian’s shoes were too small when we were all getting dressed, we tossed that on with the breakfast list. As well as deodorant and, um, plastic spoons.

 

From there we drove in to Savannah and found a park to hang out in until the Children’s Museum opened. We had breakfast on a park bench, wherein I found my first fumble – it was kindof cold, and of course I had only grabbed the first clothes I could find in my haste. <sigh> Well, we managed to get the yogurt eaten, and then we went back to the car for bananas and dessert (doughnuts). After a little time, though, it warmed enough that I was able to coax them out and we had some fun on the playground for a while.

From there we went to the Children’s Museum, to discover my second fumble – it’s closed on Mondays <sigh>. But luckily the Railroad museum is co-located with it, so we got to explore train cars and play with some toy trains for a while.

After that, it was lunchtime. (Just to let you all know, this is the good-parts version, where I edit out all the potty breaks, diaper changes, and power struggles. I will say that surprisingly there were no tantrums.) I’d originally thought to get something to go from Walmart as well, but since it was a special occasion I decided I’d permit myself the liberty granted by my doctor’s salary and take my kids somewhere nice where we could actually sit down to eat. I thought Subway, since feeding kids and adults for $10 is pretty awesome, but Burger King had a pretty awesome playplace and that settled it. When the manager gave the kids crowns, and I discovered you can get 20pc (two boxes of) chicken nuggets for $5, everyone was happy with the decision. Oh, and we had doughnuts for dessert again.

So, after the kids FINALLY got tired of the playplace two hours later, our afternoon entertainment was provided by ToysRUs, free of charge. Actually I considered it a reconnaissance mission, it just happened to last about two hours. Watching them wander through the aisles and play was like watching a kid in a toystore. Well, I guess three kids. . .

I was going to take them to the petstore after that, but Darian had passed the point of diminishing returns (kids can only go for so long without a nap, when woken up at 6am). Oh, and he and Eliora had noses running like faucets. And it was already like 4pm, and I didn’t want dinner to be TOO late. So we headed home, apparently just in time. The mission appeared to have been successful on all accounts. . .