Saturday came early for us three parents, as we stumbled into the family room blinking sleep from our eyes and trying to keep up with our riled children. Saturday is the busiest day for the active family Mardi Gras-er, and we knew we’d be gone til after supper time. We organized the acres of stuff that two toddlers seem to require for an extended day away from home, packed a cooler, and bundled everything into the back of the minivan the in-laws had brought. Once we found a spot to park near the parade route on Saint Charles, we loaded our children and their necessaries into two wagons and a wagon trailer and dragged them a couple of blocks to our spot. BIL Clif’s family had staked out a great area in the neutral ground, right on the streetcar tracks, and we had the luxury of front-row seats without the pain of having to get out there early and fight for them. Clif’s dad even provided Popeye’s chicken for everybody for lunch, and I can say with assurance, if not pride, that I ate more than my fair share of that crispy, spicy deliciousness. We saw two parades in a row on this day – Iris and Tucks – and the kids collected ridiculous amounts of stuff. My niece Ella especially raked it in – nobody can resist a tiny sweet girl with a huge pink bow in her hair. Jack spent most of his time running up and down the grassy neutral ground, picking up disgusting, mud-and-alcohol-covered beads and putting them in his mouth, an activity that I spent most of MY time trying to prevent. It was capital E Exhausting, but wonderfully fun. Somewhere during this morning he learned how to put up his hand and say "wooo" when floats went by. Most of us would scream "WOOOO! YEAH! GIMME SOME BEADS! FOOTBALL, THROW ME THE FOOTBALL! YEAH! HAPPY MARDI GRAS!" Jack would just quietly whisper "wooo" and raise his hands, and it was heartbreakingly cute. Whenever I caught a bead, I’d hand it to him, and he’d ball it up in his little fat fist and put it over his neck, and give me a sweet, happy smile. Gooshy gooshy goo, I know, but I really loved this part of Carnival – his simple delight.
After Tucks was over (they throw toilet paper in Tucks! and toilet bowl sunglasses! the hilarity!), we packed everything up and drove over to Canal Street to watch Endymion. The Canal St spot was a bit more nightmarish for we two mothers-of-toddlers, because they only close traffic on one side of the street. I spent the entire evening with my eyes glued to my child, and with good reason – at one point in the evening, some drunk mother’s toddler took off through traffic and came inches away from being hit and dragged by a huge Cadillac. The car only stopped because some man was near the kid – the driver didn’t see the kid, it saw the man, and if it weren’t for that stranger he’d surely have been killed. It was a full minute before his mother went tearing across the street, where the kid had toddled into a Burger King. My SIL and watched open-mouthed, horrified, and clutched our children closer. We didn’t stay much longer after that.
What we did see of Endymion was pretty cool. Most of the floats are double decker, and all are lit up since it rolls at dusk, and in between each float is a truck that pulls roving spotlights and confetti cannons. It’s pretty spectacular, but it started a little late for us, and so after the first handful of floats went by, hurling footballs and spears at the crowd, we packed up our chairs and coolers and wagons and headed home for dinner, baths, and bed.
The next day we were supposed to drive over to the Westbank to enjoy a picnic with Clif’s family and then go to the airport to pick up Patrick, but instead we ended up surrounded by a parade. There was simply no way to drive out of uptown that morning, so we gave up, and dragged the kids a block up to a good parade-viewing spot in front of Whole Foods. Thoth (sounds like "both") rolled by pretty quickly, and we took turns protecting the kids’ heads from flying beads and eating our picnic lunch of sandwiches and Zapp’s chips. This parade literally encircled my house and cars, so poor Patrick was stuck at the airport for several hours til I could get to him. However, I brought him some Tucks toilet-bowl sunglasses and some Valentines Day heart-shaped beads, which more than made up for his pathetic lunch of limp shrimp po boy in the airport terminal.
That night, Clif and Erin were heading to a family-only party, so Patrick and I agreed to take the kids to see Bacchus downtown by ourselves. Mistake. The King of Bacchus was none other than Drew Brees, which meant this parade was so packed we couldn’t get within fifty feet. It was also more of the Bourbon street, drunk and shoulder-to-shoulder type of scene – not the place for a wagon with two kidlets in it. After dragging them nearly an hour, we stayed about 10 minutes, and then dragged them an hour home, and by the end of this spine-rattling ride through the buckling and broken streets of New Orleans, they were both screaming and hungry and OVER IT. We fed them, bathed them, pjed them, storied them, and tucked them in, and afterwards decided that maybe we’d changed our minds about the whole parents-of-two-kids thing. Luckily, Angus the Fetus (not his real name) will not be mobile for quite a while after birth, which makes things easier. He may scream, but I can put his little baby butt down somewhere and know it will stay there until I pick it up again, which is more than I can say for the Squirmalicious Toddler Twins.
Patrick and I didn’t even wait up for Erin and Clif. We went to bed a little before 10pm, and slept hard and long, like the kids. The next day was Monday, and we had even more activities planned for well into the evening. I felt a little bad for Erin and Clif, out late for their third or fourth night in a row and clearly now running on fumes, but that feeling only lasted as long as the 30 seconds it took for me to drift off to sleep.