My 15 Minutes as Pit Boss
Jan 17, 2007 at 10:40 AM I went to a casino for the first time while we were in Punta del Este. It was a small-stakes place – mostly slots (dull), blackjack (interesting), and roulette (fascinating). In the beginning, I felt a bit claustrophobic and like my every move was being watched and analyzed by the dudes in the suits lurking at every turn.
The first night we each had a budget of $20. We played a bit of roulette, some blackjack, then more roulette. Lost everything, but learned a lot and it was fun, especially the people-watching aspect. We went back the following night with the same budget. Jonathan won back everything we lost spent both nights – and then some- in blackjack. I played roulette.
At one point I saw a young woman put down a chip in the winning number after it had already won. I was the only one at the table who noticed. I waited to see what would happen – it was clear she hadn’t meant to – and I wanted to see what she would do when she realized her mistake. The dealer saw her chip, prepared a large stack of chips, and placed them in front of her. I watched as she slowly realized what happened and she pointed out her own mistake. Veddy, veddy interesting. After that, all the dudes in suits watched her quite closely.
This picture is Jonah in the bassinet on the plane ride home from Montevideo last week. You cannot reserve the bassinet, nor are you guaranteed the plane will even have one (which it didn’t on the way down). And, unless you’re in first/business, the only row you can use it is the bulkhead. The next picture is a very tired Jonah waiting an hour for our luggage in customs (mechanical failure of some sort, we were told). 
A customs officer reprimanded me for taking photos in the customs area and was annoyed by my indifferent shrug. “Yes, officer, I am photographing my son because I forced him to swallow a bag of cocaine before we left. Also, we have several endangered parrots in our luggage because we have the time and energy to care for them as well as two 11-month-old boys on this trip.”
An aside: someone asked me recently where we got the preemie clothes for our boys. Knowing beforehand they would be preemies, I bid on a few lots of preemie clothing on Ebay and got seven gently-used outfits for less than $20, shipping included. But had I not known ahead of time, I would’ve gone to Wal-Mart – it offers a good selection of cute and comfortable preemie outfits. Try to look for kimono-style outfits – they are the easiest to put on and take off of any newborn, especially the tiny ones!
Daily Life, Photos, Preemies
Reader Comments (1)
Good for you for being prepared with preemie clothes. When my tot was born, she was unexpectedly early so we had no clothes small enough for her. Not even newborn stuff yet. Of course, Walmart has since added a bunch of preemie stuff, which is great, but many of the sleepers have zippers. When my daughter was in the NICU, she could only wear snap-up sleepers so that the cords had a way to escape the clothing. Still, there's more and more affordable stuff out there if we just look for it.