Blueberries, Milk, A Hairbrush, And You

Is what, I assume, Margaret says makes a perfect evening.  (We’ll come back to this.  I’m going to have a bit of a ramble here, but it circles back around to blueberries, milk, a hairbrush, me, and – most importantly – photographic documentation).

I’ll tell you what doesn’t make a perfect evening for Margaret – dinner at a barbeque place, even a nice, upscale-ish one, that doesn’t cater to her particular wants.

Leo’s brother Patrick is in town, because Leo’s sister is getting married this weekend (Helen’s in town too, but she doesn’t enter into this story, so you can feel free to ignore her).  We all went out to this restaurant.  We left a little late, but I figured that Margaret would be okay, because she had gotten up late, had a late nap, and in general given every impression of being a baby who had shifted her schedule by about an hour.

But when we got the the restaurant, nothing was making her happy.  She kept picking up her sippy cup full of water and trying to transfer it to the floor.  She wiggled and squirmed.  We ordered her mac and cheese as soon as we walked in the door, but even that wasn’t making her happy.

So when the food came, I bolted mine, and took her home.

When we came in, she squirmed out of my arms, ran over to the fridge and started banging her hand on the door.  I opened it, and she pointed and stretched and made adamant noises about her sippy cup.

She slurped her milk (we had been giving her water at the restaurant) and apparently that was the whole problem.

(And here’s where we return to the title of the post).

So I put her in her chair, and gave her milk and blueberries, which are guaranteed to soothe the savage Margaret.

See how soothed she looks?

And then I decided that I would take advantage of her immobility to brush her hair, since the fussing and the heat and the sunscreen and the mac and cheese that made it into her hair had combined to make it a bit bedraggled.

Margaret commandeered the brush.

She looked at it carefully, considering the possibilities.

And then she took a stab at brushing her hair. 

And didn’t quite get it.

Anyway, I let her down out of her chair after she finished eating, drinking, and primping, and she played happily for another half an hour.  So the moral is that we should not go out without milk, I guess.