2 families, 1 Thanksgiving...and a baby

This Thanksgiving Adam's entire family came to spend the holiday with us and to meet Maison.  We just moved back to our house on Wednesday, as in the day before Thanksgiving, so there was no way we could do Thanksgiving for 7 people.  We hadn't even stayed at our house in 5 weeks, our dinning room table chairs hadn't arrived yet, and my dad and I were distressing our kitchen table and it was sitting in the garage half finished.  So we literally had NO place to eat.  My wonderful mother graciously agreed to host everyone at her house.  We had 12 people for dinner plus Maison.  After dinner we watched the UT vs A&M game before heading back to our house. 

Adam's family stayed until Monday.  Through the weekend we did a tour of local Dallas restaurants.  We even took Maison to the original Sonny Bryan's on Saturday for lunch and to Bread Winners for brunch on Sunday.  Both were learning experiences for dining with a newborn...

Sonny Bryan's only has old fashioned school desks inside and a couple of picnic tables outside.  Maison's carrier wouldn't fit in an old fashioned school desk so we didn't have much choice but to sit outside.  Luckily, the weather was warm enough for her but the table next to us had several smokers.  Not exactly the best environment for a 6 week old and this wasn't exactly the part of Dallas where you could politely ask them to stop.

At Bread Winners on Sunday it was packed we had called ahead so luckily got a table in the corner with a booth on one side.  But the hostess had counted Maison as a 'child' so she brought us a booster seat...uh she is 6 weeks old...what on earth would I do with that?  We told her we didn't need it since we were trying to make it work so her carrier could sit in the booth with me.  Then she brought us a high chair which too was useless.  Third try she just bought a normal chair after I had told her twice I would just put her carrier in the booth with me.  The restaurant was super busy and the table was rather cramped with the carrier taking up more than a seat, but what are you going to do?   That's not really 'news worthy' but the fact that they discontinued their impressive coffee drink menu was rather disappointing.

So lessons learned:  Don't take a baby to a restaurant that doesn't even have adequate sitting even for an adult and don't take a baby to a crowded brunch place and expect the hostess to appreciate your situation of trying to eat with a newborn in a carrier...much less expect them to know the difference between a child and a baby.  But most importantly, call ahead to make sure they still have fab coffee drinks especially when you could use a little something to take the edge off ;o)

Adam's family returned home on Monday and it was back to work for everyone except me as I'm still on maternity leave until 1/25.