How...romantic?

Its been a while since I've poured out my soul onto these keys, giving insight to the life of a young, single mother of a toddler. In all honesty not much has changed, life hasn't been about me at all. Life has revolved around taming the toddler. And taming the toddler I have tried.

More recently, I have been made to feel less like a mother and more like me by someone special. They say it's when you least expect it that you find happiness, or rather happiness and contentment finds you. And this it has. That someone special makes me forget that I am tired, makes me sit down and rest, forces me to eat a meal and rubs my head until my eyes begin to close. That someone special also offered to take me and my daughter out for lunch. A beautiful sentiment but...Oh, what a nightmare.

As a single mother, dating is immeasurably harder than what it would be sans children. On the rare occasions that my baby isn't around, I can be whisked away on romantic dinners or the like. But, more often than not, any kind of date involves my toddler too. Most men would run at this, not just a casual jog...but a record breaking sprint. This man, with an undisclosed identity for now, is not running. *Touches wood* for now, he is not.

Back to the lunch date...It sounded perfect. A small, but casual cafe just out of town. Room for the pram... not too quiet, not too busy. I packed the nappy wallet, the crackers, the fruit bars, the bread sticks, the dummy. I buckled her into the carseat and smiled at the sunshine beaming down. Stella had a giggle and spent the entire car ride chatting to herself. The first ten minutes of the joint mama + baby date was going well. Too well it seems.

We sat down with our menus and I stocked Stella up with crackers and pacifiers, we gazed into each others eyes and....then, it hit. The crackers were on the floor, the pacifiers thrown in a glass of water. She screamed to get out, then screamed to be up. She grabbed my salad bowl and aimed the dressing drenched leaves at the wall.

I tried to smile and speak calmly, I even tried the stern-in-public growly voice. People were turning in their chairs and giving me either a sympathetic smile or an annoyed glare. A mother with perfectly groomed 5 year old twin girls sat behind us, the girls whispered to their mother that "the baby over there is being naughty". If there was a hole in the ground, I'd be leaping into it and not looking back.

While my beyond perfect date hurriedly ate his lunch and paid our bill, I strapped Stella into her pram. The screams intensified and I could feel the stares burning into the back of my neck. I kept my head down and fought back tears with all my might. The  minute we got outside I couldn't hold it in any longer. The tears flowed and they didn't stop quickly. In an over-emotional mama state I had convinced myself that I'd ruined all chances of making a good impression with this incredible male species that had stolen my heart and had also convinced myself that my child was the devil.

This where my previously conceived ideas about relationships and men all vanished into thin air. He took my baby, he smiled and hugged us both.

Heart = stolen permanently.