Not Quite As Planned

Last night our family went to a wedding reception.
It was the kind of cool, swanky wedding receptions that people have when they aren't 23 years old and trying to meet everyone's expectations, including their own, of the perfect wedding. There was no seating chart, no banquet hall, no dance, no huge announcements of the wedding party.
It was a stand up affair where everyone ate high end yummy appetizers and there was babysitting for kids.
And outside there was this french fry making station and they just kept handing out the world's yummiest fries.
It was pretty cool.
Except that Matt did not want to stay in the kids room, or with us or anywhere. He wanted to RUN. Mike was hot. I was feeling a little ill. And I wore stupid shoes that hurt. I should have worn running shoes to chase Matthew.
We didn't stay as long as we had planned.
We barely made it to dinner.
And when Matthew jumped in front of the long line of people to grab food with his hands (again, these were swanky uber-cool people he jumped in front of) I knew it was time to leave. It was that or lose my mind ... and temper.
My parents tried to help out. They offered to take Matt for a walk. But, the truth was I had totally worked myself up, I was kind of freaking because Matt was refusing to go to the bathroom.
So we left.
I'm okay with this.
I've learned in the past 3 years that when Matthew gets started and gets me started it's better to remove myself from a situation than to drag everyone down with me. When I feel myself close to tears I walk.
Truthfully it's partly because when I just.can't.control my child, no matter what I try, I revert back to this feeling of complete parental insecurity. I try. I try to be strict and I try to be nice and it doesn't work.
And then I realize that maybe, just maybe, it's not my parenting but the fact that it's a situation that Matt doesn't do well in. And that's okay. (I told our daycare teacher the other day about how much I hated gymnastics because Matt had a meltdown every week. She told me that was probably just him letting me know it's too much for him. good point).
So we left.
After an hour.
And then we went home. Of course the Gardiner (the highway that gets from the reception venue to our house) was closed. Mike opted for the Lakeshore. And then we drove down to the street right next to the lake. Both were extremely slow.
The truth was NONE of us minded.
It boggles my mind how we were all a little nuts at a beautiful reception with yummy food and good music, but put us in a van that isn't moving and we're having a great time, laughing, singing along with the music and basically chilling.
Until Matt announce "I need to pee on the potty. NOW"
CRAP!!!!
We were stuck in traffic. As we had been for an hour. Luckily I spied a Shoppers Drug Mart. They don't generally have public bathrooms, but I figured I could ask. So, I took Matt out of the van (Mike didn't have to pull over - we weren't going anywhere) and we ran to shoppers to beg for a bathroom.
We were in luck. The manager came and brought us to the bathroom. And, we made it just in time. And, thank goodness we did because Matt needed to do both #1 and #2. And that would have been messy.
And, I realized this was one of the first times that Matt told us he needed to use the bathroom as opposed to us dragging him. I think he's afraid of having an accident in the van.
Of course, Matt and I both realized we were hungry and thirsty, so after choosing drinks and snacks we went out and eventually we found Mike. He'd done some sort of bizarre turn and was fuming in the car thanks to the traffic.
We decided to try another route where we were also stuck in traffic. But, it was fine.
I took pictures. Matt ate about 5 rice krispie treats and eventually made it home. I realized Mike was about to snap, and we were all still a little hungry so we stopped at Mcdonald's for a 9:15 dinner.
All in all a nice evening.
Not what we planned. But, you know, sometimes the best things in life are the things that happen unexpectedly.