Grocery Store + Kids=Adventure. Every Time.

Now that I am a blogger, I am realizing how many moments of insanity I have when everything happens all at once and I'm flailing my arms trying to put out the fire. Looking forward to writing up a post helps me sit back in the moment and crack up instead of getting frustrated about it. Here is my latest moment of insanity:

It's 5:30 on Tuesday night, and I've just finished feeding Jake. Ethan and I ate dinner at 4:45 since Kyle was going to be studying late and I figured it would be a nice treat to avoid the daily 5:30 meltdown. (I call it the 5:30 blues, because it doesn't matter if Ethan has had a snack, been outside, read stories, gotten attention, watched a movie... he just loses it at 5:30 at night. It's been that way since he stopped napping) Anyway, I decide spur of the moment to go to the grocery store to grab a few things, wondering if I can be back by 7:30 for the youth to come over the my house. Two hours, I'm thinking... can I make it back in 2 hours if i just grab a few things at the store?! It will be tight... by the time I get everbody ready to go and loaded up....yeah, I can make it. Ridiculolus, I know, but that's the way it is. So we head to Meijer and we get there and of course Ethan wants to ride in "the sitting part" of the shopping cart. I couldn't have bribed him with anything to sit in that thing before Jake was born, but now that Jake's car seat goes there, Ethan has now claimed that spot for himself--which is kind of nice to have him somewhat contained, but it means I have to put Jake's car seat in the big part of the cart, the diaper bag on the bottom, and that leaves room in the cart for about a loaf of bread and a box of cereal. We didn't have a million things to get, so I figured I would capitalize on Ethan being inside the cart and just roll with it. As we go, I load some things around Jake's seat, fill up the bottom with a box of diapers, and then start giving stuff to Ethan to put on his lap. He thought it was really fun, and kept saying, "Look at me, mommy! I'm loaded up with a big load!" He was covered in tomatoes, fruit snacks, avocadoes, bananas, underwear, flushable wipes, and whatever else. Of course, a few minutes before we're ready to check out my blood sugar gets low, so I fumble down to my bag to get my Glucometer and check, and then eat a few glucose tablets. Some good descriptors for how I feel when I'm low are: Annoyed, frustrated, panicky, cold and sweaty, hazy, spacy, and irritable. Awesome combo with two kids, an overfull grocery cart, and check-out lines and a 7:30 deadline at home. So we zoom over to the line, and we get to where there is one person in front of us and two people behind us, and Ethan looks up at me and says, "Mommy, I have some more potty." Oh, man. Let's see. What would be more inconvenient right now? Cleaning up an accident, or weaseling out of this line and taking my kids into the bathroom? Then I think, I can't let Ethan have an accident when he's telling me right now that he has to go. It would devastate him. "Can you hold it for a few minutes, or do you have to go right this second? "Right this second." I am trying as hard as I can not to disclose my frustration and irritability to Ethan because I want him to have a good experience with potty training and for him to feel supported and confident about going in public places--and having low blood sugar, it is taking every ounce of self control I have ever worked to develop in my life. So, we shimmy our way out of line ("excuse me, sorry, thanks...":) and head to the bathroom which I can't find right away and then the second person I ask explains that the bathroom is through the exit doors and then to the left. Someone's genius idea to curb shoplifting, I guess. I wanted to deck that genius in that moment because I couldn't just waltz my cart of unpaid groceries through the exit, but I also didn't really want to take hats and coats and the diaper bag into the bathroom because I only have two arms... And Ethan is completely buried in groceries. So I get to the exit doors and I start offloading stuff from Ethan's lap unto the basket of one of those sit down and drive carts and then I grab Ethan and Jake and my wallet and pray that no one will steal our other stuff and we scurry unto the bathroom. Ethan had a success, so that was great, but as I was unloading the box of diapers off the bottom of the cart onto the conveyor belt, I tried to figure out why everything inside my diaper bag was covered in yogurt, and why that yogurt was also all over the strap of the bag...and all over the floor! Oops. I had squashed Jake's car seat onto a yogurt when I put it back in after our bathroom escapade. 7 paper towels and one burp rag later, we had it all under control, and except for the blob of gooey grocery store floor hairball mixed with yogurt that I found on the shoulder of my coat when I got home (from carrying the bag to the car) I think we managed an ultimate triumph, against all the odds.
I just have to laugh that with two little ones, when everything happens all at once, the most basic daily activity can turn into a full blown circus act. Next time I leave the house maybe I'll bring popcorn for spectators.

Carnation Instant Waterfall

Okay, so the other day I was stirring up a glass of carnation instant breakfast, and all of a sudden I felt wet everywhere, with the majority of the feeling focused in just below my waist. WHAT IN THE WORLD?!?! Did I just...?!?! No way...
Well it turns out that as I was stirring, the glass completely broke. But not in a way that I've ever seen before...





Isn't that crazy? A hole in the side of the glass, just like that. But because I was swiriling it around, it came gushing out with a lot of force and it was so sudden and so strong that it really took me a few seconds to figure out what had happened. And the counter happens to hit me right below the waist, so it felt a little weird. Part of this complete breakfast, right?


Oh, and part two to this story is that I wiped it all up with a big blue towel, threw the towel in the laundry room towels bin that I was planning to put in the washer that day, and of course never threw in the load... A few days later, after my 3 year-old puked on me three times in a row (and I helplessly sat there, holding out my hand, like it was going to catch the eruption), I put everything we were wearing and everything else that got contaminated by the throw up in the washing machine and cloroxed up the kitchen and anything that smelled like puke. Still smelling something unsettling, I then sniffed out the now curdled milk towel that I had never washed. Then, I seriously almost puked.

I Can't Stand It...

This is a blast from the past from September of 2005 when Ethan was learning how to stand up in his crib. Do you ever feel like this?!?! :)

Stinkin' Valentine's Day

I forgot to put on deodorant yesterday morning.

See, the power is out in half of my house (yes, just half), and the "out" half includes my bathroom, so after showering and brushing my teeth by candlelight (Happy romantic Valentine's Day to you, too), I moved my hair-doing operation to my bedroom, but neglected to bring the deodorant. Huh. I only remembered after I got to my office, which is a 40-minute drive from home, WAY too far to go back, especially when there's a CVS two minutes away.

But I didn't even have to drive to CVS. I only had to go as far as my car in the parking lot, where I applied the deodorant that I had purchased and left in my car three weeks ago, the LAST time I forgot to put on deodorant in the morning.

Yup. Welcome to my world.

Shopping Cart Love Lost

So after losing my phone at Disneyland (where yes, people are better and nicer and it was returned to the Space Mountain front desk) --I realized cargo pockets don't hold everything in if you go hurtling about in the dark round and round, and made a mental note to try and not misplace things that are important to me.

Less than 24 hours later, I'm just swinging by the grocery store (luckily it wasn't raining so I didn't need an umbrella bag) to pick up a few things--you know, only like $20 bucks worth of the quick things like banannas, a bell pepper, some lysol, couple things of ice cream etc. And I think I started talking on my newly recovered phone or something, cause when I got home, went inside and started unloading the plastic bags (plural) I only had one plastic bag (singular). What the...?! Did I leave it in the car? Checked, nope. Where in the...?! Could I have possibly left it at the grocery store? Did the dang checkout kid not give me one of my bags?! Do I really drive back to the store when it might not even be there, and they'll just laugh at me like I'm escaped?

So I asked my roommate if I should go back, and after ascertaining that there was ice cream involved, he advised there was no question about returning. So back to the store I went and walked in. And after giving a steely eye to that dang checkout kid, I look past him and there it was:

Lovely. Yup. He did his job well, and I promptly left it in the cart and walked out of the store. That's my bag, don't worry about it, I got it. At least no one was like, "Hey free Ben and Jerry's ice cream and walked off with it...Welcome to my World.

Umbrella Bags

I can just see the headline:
"Woman suffocates in mall parking lot. Two-year old and 4 month old boy found alone in the rain."

Well, good thing I realized how dumb I am before it got to that point. Here's what actually happened.

Okay, so I went to the mall yesterday in the rain, (without an umbrella of course)and when I got inside Von Maur, I saw this little stand that said "complimentary umbrella bags" and I thought, "hey, one of those could really come in handy for me on the way out." So, after visiting Old Navy and feeding Jake while Ethan played in the little indoor playground (I think all of that took us about 3 hours) I made it back to the umrella bag stand. I was glad for a landmark to tell me i was at the right door because i have been known to go out the wrong door and not be able to find my car... Anyway, after getting Jake all bundled up in the stroller and Ethan's hat and coat and my coat on, and keys ready, and everything consolidated so we wouldn't have to stand too long in the rain, I decided to try out one of those complimentary bags since I didn't have an umbrella. "I'll just grab one and hold it over my head and it will keep me dry. That's so cool that they have those there for you if you forget to bring your umbrella." Right. So the thing is long and skinny and I'm trying to figure out how to sort of put it over my head and I'm thinking, "I'm going to suffocate myself if I put this on! How is this supposed to work?!" After asking Ethan again not to run through the doors and out into the parking lot until I'm ready, I had the epiphany. "Wait a second, this is not a bag to be used as an umbrella--this is a bag FOR your umbrella." It's long and skinny--shaped exactly like and umbrella--so that when you get inside, you can put the thing over your wet umbrella and then stick it back in your bag and it won't get everything all wet.
I am a moron.
But at least I didn't actually put it on, right?
I hope somebody from a distance got a good laugh. :)

Gingerpants in my pocket!!

Ok, sometimes things DO go very very right in our worlds! Like when we think the last of the Gingerpants (amazing little gingermen cookies that were to DIE for in DC this year, thank you guy that liked Steph but she wasn't sure so we helped her eat the cookies) are gone and we've said our goodbyes, and then we reach in our pockets and there are a few left!

(Ok, so sometimes it's cause we totally forgot about something we did before and leave food in our coat, and it ends up working out really well, but still!!) Welcome to my Gingerpants.