There are so many things to do and see this time of year. Last year we drove through a lights exhibit and ended up at a carnival type place. The kids rode rides and ate chicken fingers and french fries. It was nice, but a little pricey. This year we thought we'd try something different. Last year I remembered a bunch of friends talking about Gum Drop Square. Low and behold, guess what comes up on my twins club message board?!? A couple of moms were planning a trip to Gum Drop Square. Perfect. I'm in. I thought I would just take Jordan & Mikayla...but after finding out their plans, they were going to leave right after the kids got off the bus, I wasn't so sure I would join them. Darin can't get home that early, and I've never been there and don't know exactly what to expect. I talked to a friend that goes every year. She assured me that it would be fine - maybe a little tight with the stroller - but encouraged me to come with all the kids. Great! I get Jordan off the bus, make sure all the little people are good to go, tell Jordan & Mikayla to grab there coats, load into the car and away we go!
We drive the 1/2 hour it takes to get there and get to the general vicinity. I only had to circle once to figure out where to park. That's not too bad. We're off to a great start. We're parked. I give my friend a call. No answer. No worries, we'll find each other. I get the babies dressed in their coats and hats. Now it's time for Jordan & Mikayla to get out...Where are their coats? So I ask, "Where are your coats?" "Our coats?" they reply together. "Yeah, your coats. I told you both to grab your coats!" "Oh, we didn't hear you." "So you mean to tell me that it's winter and you guys didn't bring your coats? What does winter mean? It means it's cold." I stop the lecture and try to find some way to keep them warm. Jordan at least has a shirt and a sweatshirt with a hood. And I found his hat. Mikayla has on a turtleneck and I managed to find her hat in the car too. But I know she's going to be cold. So, like any good mother would do, I offer her my coat. My coat that's 10 times too big. But she'll be warm. She'll be warm...but now I'm going to be cold! UGH! I hate to be cold!!
I try my friend's cell again. No answer. Alright, I'll head in the general direction of the events. It is just a short jaunt to Main Street. Just as I get to Main Street, my phone rings. It's my friend telling me the group is already in line at Gumdrop Square and be prepared, it's a long line. She then directs me to the exact location of the line. OK. Not TOO bad. I've stood in worse. But it's a bummer we won't be together.
I take in the sights....it's very Norman Rockwell-like. Small town. To the left is a children's choir lined up on the steps of City Hall. Their parents are gathered at the bottom of the stairs, intently listening to their carols. To the right is a young dance troupe performing on a patio in town square, their parents also aligned as an audience. Shortly after the dance troupe's bows, the kid's hand bell choir begins their concert of carols. Families are greeting each other. The Lion's Club is selling hot chocolate and nachos. A horse-drawn wagon is circling Main Street with loads of riders taking in the sights.
Meanwhile, this is my chaos...
All the little kids have by now performed their Houdini acts of getting out of their buckles. They all have their unique way of bypassing the security, but all manage to escape before the stroller comes to a stand still in line. I send Jordan & Mikayla off to watch the dancers. They're still within clear view and earshot of me. I hear one woman say. "Look at that girl. That coat is as big as she is." referring to Mikayla. Jackson is rocking back and forth. On his back swing he is hitting the chair so hard he is bumping Payton. Ryne is standing, grabbing at Payton's hat. Payton is whining because she is being bumped by Jack in the front and being picked at by Ryne from the back. By now people in line have begun to notice that which is the triple stroller. The whispers are getting louder and louder "look at her, triplets bless her heart" "oh my, that's a lot of kids" I pick up Ryne to help relieve some of Payton's annoyances. Ryne decides to play the mommy fetch game of let me drop lovey and see how many times mom will pick it up. As I reach down to pick up the lovey, I see out of the corner of my eye, Payton plummeting towards the cement. Bonk! "AHHHHHHH" The woman in line in front of me scoops her up and almost starts crying, "Ohmygod". I put Ryne down. I am concerned, but at least she's crying. That means she's breathing and able to feel pain. I look her over, feel her head. No blood, no bumps, her pupils look fine. I give her her milk cup and lovey and a kiss and place her back in the stroller. Jordan & Mikayla have now made their way back to me to see what was up. Meanwhile, the woman in front of me in line is trying to buckle all of the kids. She asked why the buckles were already together. I let her know that at the beginning of our adventure they all were strapped in, but they all wriggle out of them. As she talks I hear a hint of disdain in her voice. I'm now annoyed because as if we didn't already have enough attention, now we have the attention that nobody wants. The "bad mom" attention.
Just as everyone has settled back down, I notice that people are parking their strollers at the bottom of the stairs and holding their child in line. Notice I said child, because no one has more than one young child. I begin to wonder, can you not take strollers at all? My friend said it will be tight, but she didn't mention that I couldn't have any stroller...my wheels are turning. Jackson & Payton aren't in the mood to just stand beside me and hold my hand. And I can't hold all three for any period of time. Not by myself. I give my friend a call, as by now they are all inside. "Do you see anyone with strollers or did you see a ramp to get the strollers inside?" "No, oh no" The conversation went on for a little bit longer. I haven't given up yet, but I am starting to consider just heading back home. I should have. Instead, I found a gentleman that was helping. He informed me of a handicapped accessible area around the back and said they would be more than happy to help me inside. My hope of salvaging this experience was renewed.
I venture to the side of the building and wait for a handicapped person to vacate the area. As I get inside I notice that they have a chair lift. Basically it's a platform with a little half door at the bottom and a half door at the top. I'm sizing things up and am not optimistic the stroller will fit. Gumdrop square utilizes pre-teen volunteers dressed as elves. So our little elf greets us at the platform and tells me to go on in. I manage to wedge it in there. Jordan and Mikayla can't fit so I sent them up the stairs on their own. We slowly make our way to the top. The platform latches...but the door doesn't open. Our elf is frantically trying to open the door. He decides to try to send us back down and then back up. Nope...not working. The elf goes for help. In comes a nice woman. But she doesn't know how to operate the lift. She asks me to read the large sticker on the lift. I tell her that it just says if the door remains locked I should use the call button. She asked me to try that and I explained that the call button probably just notified someone in the building that assistance was needed. She was my help =) Oh...so after trying several things, I told her that I could take the kids out of the stroller and lift the stroller out of the lift. She asked me to hang on as she went to get 4 more pre-teen elves. Each elf took a child and I managed to lift the heavy stroller up and over the half-door. The kids get put back in the stroller and the one elf opens the door to the main hall. As soon as the door opens, there is a short line of elves and Santa is right there. Everyone in line is staring at us. There is no where to go with this stroller. The elves shoo me past Santa to wait. The nice woman is now looking frazzled and midly annoyed comes over and says "You'll just have to wait here until we get to your spot in line." That's fair. I will wait my turn. Then she gets flustered and says..."There just isn't enough room here for the stroller. What are we going to do?" I stayed calm, hoping that she would have the same effect. "Just tell me where you would like us to wait and we will." As the nice turned panicked woman is trying to figure it out, one of the elves escorts Jordan & Mikayla to Santa's lap. Now we're starting to not only skip the line but hold up the line, because I wasn't prepared. I ask if we should go. The woman hims and hauls and says "Well, ok! Some people will be mad, but you should go" I tell her that we would be more than happy to wait our turn. She says shortly "No, just go". Well great, nothing like being made to feel like a pain in the butt!! Doesn't she know that I'm just as frustrated with the situation as she is.
I put the kids on Santa's lap one by one and held my breath as I placed Payton. See when we went on the Santa train last week, she screamed bloody murder when Santa entered our car. Payton didn't cry and miraculously, they all relatively co-operate and we got this decent photo:
Whew! That was nice. A moment of good settled in and as I asked the photographer how much the pictures were, he said they were free. They were his gift for Christmas. That was mighty nice. I gave him a warm smile, said Thank You, and wished him a Merry Christmas!
Only one more thing left in this building, Santa's secret workshop. Jordan & Mikayla were looking forward to this. They were anxious to go in the store all by themselves, pick out the gifts, and pay on their own. One elf escorted us from Santa to the Workshop and asked for our tickets. I ask her what tickets? She says "Oh, yeah, you didn't wait in line. Just a minute. How many tickets do you want?" I give her the money and she gets the tickets. The nice then panicked now condescending woman from before shows her face and says "Be sure you have your tickets." I feel like I asked for a Red Rider BB Gun!
Again I feel like we are holding things up. The elf comes back with the tickets and Jordan & Mikayla happily enter the store. I venture back down the chairlift. This time I tried a different angle and we went down no problem. Then all of a sudden, Ryne screamed. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Then I figured it out. An elf gave Jackson, Payton & Ryne candy canes and I didn't know it. Ryne's candy cane was missing, but his sticky fingers and the red goop on his arm gave away the fact that he once did have a candy cane. I looked down. Yep, there it was, on the floor of the lift. And Ryne was crying because he was not done with the candy cane. The lift eeks to the bottom. I get out and scoop up the remnants of the candy cane so nobody else has to crush it and get all sticky. But now I'm sticky, and all the babies are sticky. Thank goodness for wipes. (All you pre-teen-elf-wanna-be's, don't give kids candy canes without asking or at least informing their parents! Ryne can handle it, but not too many 11-mos.-olds should handle a candy cane unsupervised. )Just as I'm cleaning them up, the phone rings. It's my friend. "I heard you took the elevator. Some people in line were talking about you." Great!! That's what I want to hear. Strangers were talking about me...YES!
I felt like Chevy Chase on Christmas Vacation (one of the best Christmas movies ever) when he goes into his rant: "Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny **** Kaye. "
The group was headed to the horse drawn carriage ride. Why not. By darned we were here to have fun, so let's have at it. By the time we got to the horse, the group was already on the ride. When they got off, they offered to watch the little ones while I took Jordan & Mikayla. So that's what we did, I didn't really have the energy left to struggle with the babies to give them this experience. Until Payton started screaming. So Payton joined us for the ride too. Here is a pic of Jordan & Mikayla on the ride:
It was a quick ride. At this point, I was freezing and my Christmas Cheer was drained. Jordan & Mikayla begged for hot chocolate. I didn't give in. I promised them hot chocolate at home. So home we drove. On the way home I pondered how many times I made the wrong decision and looked at how many times I could have avoided some of the chaos. Maybe we should have just spent the extra money and gone to the light drive and rides again. Who knows.
Tomorrow we are making more efforts to invoke the holiday spirit. The Mom's of Multiples holiday party is tomorrow, then I'm taking Mikayla to see the Nutcracker ballet, and in the evening Darin is going to an office holiday party all by himself. Hopefully all of these events will go off without a hitch and the Spirit will be revived!
Oh, all the kids did get their hot chocolate and as a special treat - a chocolate chip cookie. And as I sit here typing this blog, my husband is so lovingly, combing his fingers through my hair, as though I have lice, pointing out my grey roots that are now showing. He's laughing and trying to kiss me. Saying he 'still loves me' anyway. Will the night get any better? I don't think so. It's time for bed and I'll start again tomorrow!
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