Admittedly, I've been hustling the kids around from place to place all day long for several days in a row. Even I think we do nothing but drive from one end of town, back across to the other end.
We're renovating our main floor (which in a bungalow includes all the bedrooms too) and have had all our schiz in either the garage or the basement for the past month now. When the painter finished with Kiddo #1's room and I was able to reassemble her closet, it gave me a new lease on life. Plus, I don't have to tread through 3 feet of her clothing every time I want to join them in my bed.
Oh yes, that's the other thing-- it's been like living in a hippie commune, minus the pot, for the last month, too. We're all co-sleeping, and let me tell you, it's like sleeping with blue whales. At any moment, my coma-sleeping children can roll onto me and I would essentially drown in sleep-slobber and my own sweat.
So, since they need to be punished for my lack of sleep, I've been schlepping them all over hell's half-acre looking for bits and bobs. Plus it's been like, 600C here and the workers prefer to leave doors open, which means no friggin' A/C. A second reason to be driving around in my frigid, heavily air-conditioned car.
After the children made it successfully through the China shop, the grown-up section of the library, a broken-glass store and a candy shop (in which they were forbidden to get anything! bwaaa haa haa!), they were a little testy. Now that I've re-read that paragraph, I think I must've been a little testy, too because that's some cruel shit.
Anyway, I took them to Canadian Tire because I was looking to see if they had bathroom cabinetry as well as a watering can; conveniently, Kiddo #2 began skating around the store in his worn-out flip-flops. Chasing his sister around, who was squealing like we were actually in Wal-Mart (because that's where all the kids scream, non?), I usually would've had better control of my children. But frankly, I had Just. One. Stop. Left. Just let me find the watering can and let's get the hell home.
Only... there was something between the sliding sound of his flip-flops and the happy giggles of my first born that irritated me. How dare they STILL be happy when I was running on no sleep and had been driving them around all damn day?
So I, gently, asked them to stop. No dice.
I counted back from 5 telling them "5, you are done or you lose your iPad; 4, you are done or you lose your iPad..." No dice.
Then I told them they'd lost the iPads and they just giggled between aisles 14 and 15.
I hung up the P.A. system phone and sent up a flare from aisle 132. Ish.
The children followed the flare and path of glowing pebbles I'd left Hansel-style, to aisle 157, and I was quite cross.
Truthfully, I was annoyed that I had to call to them, and also oddly comforted by their initial absence. I think we might need to take separate vacations next summer. For the whole 2 months.
When they finally arrived at my side, I flashed my angry-mom eyes and told whisper-yelled, "Kiddo #1, you sit at this end of the aisle. Kiddo #2, you sit at the other end of the aisle. I don't care if you make faces at each other, but you are NOT TO MOVE OR SPEAK to one another until I'm ready to go."
Honestly, I don't even know what's IN the aisle we were in. Might have been fishing lures, might have been hockey skates; all I know is that I spent a total of 11 blissful, quiet minutes pretending to be deciding between several important items on the shelves.
I grabbed an industrial fan and impulse bought a paint roller (totally forgot the stupid watering can) and headed for the check-outs, ornery kids in tow. Ok, the kids weren't ornery, I was ornery, and the kids were annoyed that they had to deal with me raining on their parades. Whatever. Po-tay-toe, -po-tah-toe.
When we got to the car, I didn't say anything. I just had them get their seat belts on and I turned on the music. Then Kiddo #2 said, in a not very hushed voice,"Hey, Kiddo #1? Are you ever gonna do that to your kids?"
Kiddo #1: Which part?
I feel like I should note that they were speaking as though I were nothing but a driver who should've put up the partition. It was surreal. Like watching TV, only it's your kids?
Kiddo #2: Make them sit on the floor in the aisle ways when they're bad.
Kiddo #1: NO! That was hu-MIL-iating!
Kiddo #2: Really?
Kiddo #1: Nope. No way. Especially not to my 8-year-old.
Kiddo #2: ...I dunno...
Kiddo #1: Are YOU gonna do that to YOUR kids?
Kiddo #2: Well, it worked pretty well... So maybe.
Today we went to the park.
