"Those parents" can be found on airplanes, at concerts, movie theaters and anywhere else where a screaming kid can destroy a peaceful moment.

"Those parents" get looks from other people and others talk about them in whispered tones, "Why would they bring a baby here?" or "What are they thinking?"

I promised myself that we would never be that way. I figured parents of newborns should be like lepers and never venture into public until the kid was old enough to muzzle.

Now, our child is nearly eight weeks old and I finally realized why parents take their child out: they are bored. Strangely, the desire to get out of the house not only doesn't go away with a baby, it actually increases.

The only thing that works in the house to quiet him (and then only sometimes) is this activity center he has. He lies on his back on a blanket and looks up at two arching bars hanging full of brightly colored toys and he gets hypnotized.

After days and days of trying to quiet our son in our house, we were ready to get out.

Most of the time, he has been very peaceful on quick shopping trips and other errands because he falls asleep in the car (a trick used by generations of parents).

So we started getting cocky. We decided to take him to the mall while we went Christmas shopping.

We loaded up all the necessary items (as well as two other bags of stuff we knew we wouldn't need but had to have anyway) and went to the mall. Our son was asleep peacefully until we put him in his stroller.

His eyes went wide and we were sure he was going to start wailing. But then his eyes glazed over in his standard hypnotized look.

That was when I noticed that he was looking at all the brightly colored decorations hanging from the ceiling of the mall. Yes, a mall is just an adult activity center!

For the most part he was pretty good. But like any shopper, he started to complain after about an hour.

In our attempt to avoid being "those parents" my wife and I had already scoped out and practiced our emergency crying escape plan. She would pop the pacifier in his mouth as I found the nearest exit and then we would race there before his screams reached ear-piercing decibels.

Fortunately, we were able to escape with only a few nasty glares from other people. At this point, we figured we had this parent-outing thing down, so we pushed our luck.

We decided to go out to a restaurant for dinner.

We made sure he had plenty to eat so he would sleep through our meal. We found a table in the back of the restaurant within running range of the restroom (which is where all parents take crying babies because it amplifies the sound as it echoes in the enclosed space).

We whispered our order to the waitress so we wouldn't wake him up and we cringed as the minutes went on until our meal was at the table - sure that he would wake up and start wailing.

But he was quiet. Only as I brought the final bite of my dinner to my mouth did he start to make noise. We were able to grab him, pay the bill and run out the door before he hit full bore.

My wife and I just assumed we had the perfect baby. We could take him anywhere and he would be great.

We didn't even think much about it when we decided to go to a Christmas band concert last week with him.

He was fed. He was warm. We got seats on the aisle just in case we had to make a mad rush for the door. And he was sleeping.

Then the music started. The drums. The brass. The singing. I was sure my son would try to join the chorus with his own version of "I'm Dreaming of a Whining Christmas" at top decibel. But he still slept.

My wife and I relaxed. We avoided being "those parents" again.

Then, as the first song ended, the packed house applauded … LOUDLY. His eyes flew open, his arms flung out and he screamed in top form.

We were caught off guard and were not very quick about gathering our coats and various baby luggage and heading for the exit.

As the applause died down, his screaming continued. We got "the looks" and I noticed quite a few people whispering.