Today I had the brilliant idea of taking all three children with me to the mall. I had a return to make at the Apple store and figured this short trip would be a piece of cake.
Um, no.
We actually got from the car to the mall with no incident and even made it up the elevator and down to the Apple store with no problem. Our return was handled easily and we headed on our way. Being the eternal optimist that I am (don’t choke on the sarcasm there!) I decided to stop in to Starbucks and get the kids each a hot chocolate. The are like $1.15, come in cute little to-go coffee cups that are kid sized, and it tends to shut the kids up for a good 30 minutes or so, long enough for me to finish my mall adventure.
Not three stores down from Starbucks Amelia drops her cup and spills her hot chocolate everywhere. Well, the kids immediately went in to full-on psychotically crying, exorcist mode! She melted into a big ol’ pile of ‘it sucks to be the kid that dropped their treat’ mode. I swear I even heard her say ‘reagan’ and spit out a little pea soup.
Jacob, being the brother that he is, proudly looks at me and says, ‘See, mommy. I didn’t drop my hot chocolate. And he did this while sporting a cross between a fu manchoo and a van dyke made entirely out of chocolate and spaghetti-o’s.
I was torn between being the ‘life sucks; get a helmet’ mother and the ‘I’ll give you whatever you want just quit crying’ mother. I chose the latter and immediately headed to another Starbucks on a different level. Sure, I probably could have gone back to the other one and they would have replaced her drink, but that would have embarrassed me and all I wanted to do was save face at that moment. I mean, I’m the mom of the crying kid that just made a mess in the mall and is being taunted by her unwashed brother with a ‘Batman For President’ t-shirt. Yes, we were going to another store on another level away from the scene and never to return.
I was torn between being the ‘life sucks; get a helmet’ mother and the ‘I’ll give you whatever you want just quit crying’ mother. I chose the latter and immediately headed to another Starbucks on a different level. Sure, I probably could have gone back to the other one and they would have replaced her drink, but that would have embarrassed me and all I wanted to do was save face at that moment. I mean, I’m the mom of the crying kid that just made a mess in the mall and is being taunted by her unwashed brother with a ‘Batman For President’ t-shirt. Yes, we were going to another store on another level away from the scene and never to return. Luckily, we replaced the drink and made it out of the mall without further incident. We’ve arrived home and naps have commensed. All the while I keep thinking how grateful I am that the incident didn’t happen while I was shopping for Spanx. That really could have been ugly.
