Back to the grindstone....

Well, here's an interesting story for all of you out there in blogland...

This week marks my first week back at work. As sad as it is, I have to face the fact that my maternity leave is over and I have to work again. However, as I am reflecting back on the last eleven weeks of my life, I am reminded of a few happenings that make me glad to be back in the hospital and not in my living room with two small children. The following story and photo date back to a couple of weeks ago. I was going to skip putting this one on the blog, but looking back, I have decided that it needs to get posted cause it's just too funny...and it would be a crime not to share it with you.

It all started with an ambitious mommy. I decided to run out to WalMart to buy some quilt binding for the quilt we had made for the LIC auction. So, for the first (and only...) time ever, I took both girls out alone into retail land. We arrived at WalMart and found what we needed. Julia walked beside the cart, Mary was content in her car seat. Julia only ran away once or twice, and we made it out OK. This is where I should have quit while I was ahead. But NO....I had to think, "Well, they're being pretty good! I should reward Julia with a trip to see the Thomas the Train set at Barnes and Noble."

So, we stopped by the mall and went in. I took the girls over to the play area where the Thomas set is. There were a LOT of moms there with their kids (way more than usual), and I had to sit on a shelving stool in the corner to feed Mary her bottle. I watched Julia out of the corner of my eye. A few moments after Mary began to eat, Julia disappeared to the other side of the children's section. As I was trying to mobilize myself while feeding Mary, a yuppie-ish, thin, stern-looking, million-dollar outfit wearing mom came over to me and said, "your child is over there."
"Well," I thought, "Julia must be amusing herself somehow." I thanked the lady. She did not look pleased.

Minutes later, I was dragging Mary in our huge double stroller across the children's section to find Julia. Unbeknownst to me, it was the "Tuesdays at 11:00" story hour. There is a stage with little benches around it for the story hour. The whole kids' reading area at B&N was decorated in a state fair theme, complete with little stuffed animals in paper fences, carnival rides made out of tinker toys, and game booths made out of tagboard. It was really neat, and it looked like the storyteller was about to begin. Then, I saw Julia. She was up on the stage, grabbing as many of the little stuffed fair animals as her arms would hold. The little horses and the chickens had been abducted from their made-up pens and held ransom by my two-year-old. If that's not bad enough, Julia had an audience. Not just any audience, but an audience of forty-something mothers of two perfect children dressed in babyGAP clothes with patent leather shoes and sweater vests. They were all sitting perfectly on their little benches, waiting for the story to begin. Behind them sat their mothers with their Starbucks coffee, glaring at my daughter like she was the ............
I abandoned Mary and grabbed Julia from the stage, which instantly caused a blood-curdling scream and a tantrum from my darling oldest daughter. I took her back to the corner and told her that if she didn't shape up, we would go home. That was my second mistake: I should have skipped the bargaining phase and gone straight to the "strap the toddler in her carseat and drive straight home: phase. I think I was weak because now Mary was wailing from the stroller...she was hungry and her dinner had been rudely interrupted twice now. I left her for another minute, went up on the stage, and replaced the stuffed animals to their temporary homes.

Then, I took the girls down to the other side of the children's section by the trains. It took me several minutes because I had to push the conversion van-sized double stroller across a crowded room again. Julia said that she didn't want to listen to a story and that she wanted to play with trains. So, I sat down again to feed Mary. This lasted two seconds. Julia ran back across the children's section AGAIN...and I had to drag Mary back across, this time abandoning our stroller and still feeding the infant. When I got back to the stage, the story lady was reading a story to the kids...and I stopped in horror when I saw what my kid was doing: she had grabbed a book on her way over and was standing on her tippy toes in front of the story teller, "reading" a different book aloud, trying to overpower the storyteller lady. I am not kidding. Now, imagine the looks I was getting from the yuppie patrol in the audience.....

I did what I had to do. I put my beautiful innocent infant on the floor. I ran up to the stage and scooped up my terrible twos toddler...who promptly had an enormous fit and turned her body into a screaming, wrything wet noodle. I dragged her across the kids' section, leaving Mary where she was, alone on the floor. I had to drape Julia across the stroller becasue she wouldn't sit up (wet noodle thing again). I went back and grabbed Mary, who was also screaming (now her bottle had been ripped from her grasp three times). On my way out of the children's section, I tried to put away all of the merchandise that had made its way into our stroller.

As we were leaving the store, I noticed one more piece of merchandise in our stroller: a pink book with a bunny on the front. Oh great, another kids book. Just what we need. I also noticed it had a clearance sticker for five bucks. I thought, "I am rather high-profile at the moment with these screaming kids....I can't just throw it onto a display...I'd better buy it or they will never let me back in here."
So, I went up to the cashier and threw the book on the counter. He was young and rather good-looking. He immediately asked me if I wanted a gift receipt. I told him "no...it's for us." I should have known something was amiss when he shot me a really weird look and then a tiny little smirk. What was this cashier-boy thinking? I have two screaming kids and I want to get out of here and get home....just take my credit card and let me run home!!!

Well, he handed me the book and out we went. I threw it in the back of the car, and after I got home and banished Julia to her bed, I went back out to the car to get the kids book that she had selected. This is what I had purchased: If you can't read the little grey fine print, it says, "How to Walk, Talk, Tease, and Please like a playboy bunny." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Anybody want a free book?