One of the hardest things I've had to adjust to since the twins came home is my restricted freedom. When it was just Isabella and me, we were rarely home for an entire day. We met friends for playdates. We shopped. We visited the library and her favorite playground. She liked to be out and see people, and although I am far from a social butterfly, I did too. Staying at home is not my thing, and having plans to get out of the house virtually every day was essential to my mental wellbeing.

Enter the twins. Enter colic. Enter nap strikes and ensuing crankiness. Enter hours and hours and hours of crying. Enter my absolute fear of handling two tiny grenades (plus Isabella) in public on my own. Enter agoraphobia. Enter unhappy Kristi.

As I mentioned in their six-month update, I have taken the kids out a few times on my own, but only to places, such as friends' houses, where I know my screaming brood and I won't be thrown out on our collectives arses. Most days, I am home all day long with them. There are weeks when I don't leave my house for three or four days. Each time I consider taking them somewhere, I talk myself out of it, not only because it takes me approximately seven hours to dress them all, pack their gear, load them into carseats, and get on the road, but also because the process is exhausting and the mere thought of the preparation and work involved makes me want to take to the couch and apply a cold cloth to my forehead. But the biggest reason I stay holed up in my home like a Branch Davidian is because I am terrified that Luci and Nicholas will simultaneously implode in public and I will be unable to get them under control.

There are many things I miss about my former freedom, but going out to eat tops the list. I think it's well-established on this blog that I do not cook (I do, however, reheat like nobody's business), and therefore any meal I do not have to prepare is a gift. And while we didn't do it often, eating out with Isabella was fun.

This Sunday, the hubs and I skipped mass given the "if-not-swine-flu-than-eerily-close-to-it" pandemic that apparently has infected the unofficial "families with small children" section of back-of-the-church pews we normally frequent, and opted on a whim to instead go out to breakfast. We had never before taken the twins to a restaurant.

We prepared for battle by packing no fewer than 15 toys, 4 burp cloths, 8 diapers, several teething rattles, and 4 binkies. We also both wore track shoes, lest we have to cut and run from the restaurant at a moment's notice.

Upon arrival at the restaurant (chosen for its wide open floor plan and high ceilings to deflect noise) we crossed our fingers, took two deep breaths, and entered. Both twins were awake in their infant carseats. To say we were terrified is to put it mildly.

We sat down in a booth with Luci on my side and Nicholas on the hubs' side. Isabella sat in a toddler chair at the end of the table. The babies stared at us, perhaps mentally calculating exactly how many minutes of silence they could deliver us before we'd relax our guard.

We ordered. The babies stared at the lights. They were silent. The calm before the storm, we thought.

And then...

They fell asleep.

My two little time bombs, who can transition from happy to harpie in three seconds flat, who take a brutal combination of nursing and rocking and walking and black magic to get to sleep each evening, and who even then wake up 15 minutes later, put themselves to sleep. In a restaurant. And they stayed that way through our entire meal.

The first meal we have eaten together as a family that didn't involve one or both of them screaming through it.

Two very ordinary buttermilk pancakes never tasted so good.