Legos and bathrooms

O had a birthday party On Sunday for one of her classmates at one of those places with the giant inflatable bouncing contraptions. As I am amazingly organized, I had to run out that morning to get him a present.  I budgeted approximately one hour for this task. HAHAHAHAHAH. Bless my silly little heart. It took us about 2 hours from door to door.

I was feeling pretty good because I remembered to the boy’s father what he is into these days.  I adore this family for many reasons but a huge one is that the dad takes care of picking up and dropping off their three kids, while the mom works. The father has a very thick accent and it is reminiscent of talking to Gru from Despicable Me. I say this not to be mean or make fun, but merely to illustrate how difficult it actually was to figure out what he was telling me to buy for his four year old son. Eventually I concluded that he likes to build things so… Legos it is. I took O and S to Kohls to see if I could score some kind of lego set that didn’t cost as much as a black-market kidney. No such luck. However, I did manage to leave with two barbies and a shirt for D, because obviously I can’t ever just go into a store and come out empty handed. As we were leaving O informed me that she needed to use the bathroom. So we went back into the store and located the bathrooms which were obviously in the waaaaaay back. We were practically running there and… false alarm.  ” I don’t have to go anymore Mommy”. I asked her if she was sure approximately 15 times in the next 2 minutes. She was sure.

An hour later and still no gift for O’s buddy, so across the street to Toys R Us we went. It is important to note that baby S HATES her carseat (until the car starts moving and then she is fine). She puts up an impressive struggle for a 9 month old. Her go to move is to stiffen her body until she is basically a wooden board, and I have to chop her at the knees in order to get her into the seat. Obviously, she is screaming bloody murder the entire time. Trojan would make millions if they filmed these moments.

Eventually,  I  managed to put both girls back in the car and drove over to the shopping center from hell.  I have a love/hate relationship with the shopping center that houses Toys R Us.  On the one hand, it is very convenient to live 2 mins away from certain retail stores (ahem Gap), on the other it can be costly. Also, People drive like such asshats in that parking lot, but that is a story for another day. My current gripe about this shopping center is that most of the stores do not open until 11 on Sundays. I forget this fact pretty much every week. I park  the car at 10:37 and I figure I can bribe O with a cake pop and milk from Starbucks (bribery = stellar parenting in case you didn’t know).  As an aside, O once asked me the name of the lady on the Starbucks logo (if you don’t know what I am talking about, it is nice that you finally ventured out from under your rock). I told her she was named “Starbucks O”. She thinks this is the greatest coincidence ever and every time she sees the logo she freaks out. “Look Mommy! It’s Starbucks O!” She is more excited about sharing her name with the logo than I have ever been over anything in my life. The thought of her finding out the truth breaks my heart because her innocence is just breathtaking. Also, it is funny as hell, and people look at us like we are crazy whenever she does reacts to it. Anyway, we sit down and she eats her cake pop while S and I patiently wait.

Finally, it is 11 and we hightail it over to Toys R Us which is located at the opposite end of the shopping center.  We begin looking at the Lego section and I try to get her to narrow down the choice. We are about one minute into the task and O announces that she needs to use the bathroom…URGENTLY.  Seriously kid???? We already visited the Kohls bathroom less than half and hour ago AND we were just in Starbucks.  Let me state for the record that I could have handled this more gracefully than I did. I am pretty sure I am not going to win any parenting awards by grabbing her hand and power walking her and the giant stroller back to Starbucks. I should have been overjoyed that she didn’t have an accident on the floor of Toys R Us. Instead, I was annoyed. Ugh. In any event, I apologized to her as we were making our way back to Toys R Us. I also got cajoled into buying her a Monsters Inc. Pez dispenser. My three year old knows how to work mommy guilt to her advantage.  Clearly.