On Saturday, the 27th of June, Toby needed to go help his brother work on his apartment that they are moving into soon. I wanted to be in the vicinity, since I was due to pop a baby out at any time, so I decided to go and bum around town with the kids for as long as I could that day, so we would be near each other if I went into labor.
First, we all got haircuts from Aunt Laural. Hollis got his first big boy haircut, that he can spike up if he wants. I do sort of miss the Christopher Robin look. Ivy kept sneaking tastes of the cape during her trim. MMMMM.....hairy. We hit a couple junk stores and found a new shirt for each of the kids, then met they guys for lunch at Taco Bell. Toby wanted us to find him a clean t-shirt, since he had fiberglass insulation all over him.
I decided to go to the mall. It is air-conditioned and we could walk a lot of wiggles out. Not that I had much wiggle left at that point, but Ivy sure did. We found Toby a shirt at Old Navy (yay for LONG shirts!). Nothing much to make a baby budge, yet? Well, then I thought the kids would like to ride the escalator, because, hey, it's like a cheap carnival ride for kids, right?
We walked the length of the mall to the one store that actually has two floors. Liv and Hollis bounded right on and left me with Ivy, Maggie, my bowling-bag purse (no shoulder strap), and my ginormous belly. Wait a minute. Maybe the escalator wasn't such a good idea. Oh, well. I picked up Ivy and had Maggie hold onto my wrist, above the purse handle. We hopped on without much incident and started the climb. About halfway up, I realized that I always hold on to the rail, so I don't get dizzy. Um, no hands for that. I leaned WAY forward, so that if I fell, it wouldn't be backwards, thus pulling four people to their deaths. We finally made it to the top.
It's always easier coming down, isn't it? Once again, before I could stop them, Livvie and Hollis were off down the escalator. I picked up Ivy and pulled Maggie on to the moving steps with me. She panicked and lost one of her Little Mermaid flip-flops, then jumped back off. I was by this point about five steps down from her, holding Ivy and my purse. I turned around and RAN up the SAME five steps for about a minute, while Princess Margaret got hysterical about losing her shoe and being left behind.
I finally made it back up to Mag, and called down for the kids at the bottom to get her shoe when it came down to them, and ride the up escalator again. Then we all rode down in the elevator. My dad says if I'm lucky, I won't see the security camera footage on the news with some serious "What was she thinking?" discussion.
That's not all. We made our way back through the whole length of the mall towards where our van was parked. I stopped outside of Sears at a little lounge area to rest, and the kids played hide and seek around me. When I gathered my strength sufficiently, we walked through Sears to the van. As I buckled Maggie into her seat, she suddenly started to cry because she only had one of her Little Mermaid flip-flops. Have you had a conversation like this with your kids?
"Where is it?"
"I don't know"
"Does anyone know where Maggie's shoe is?"
Of course no one does.
"Maggie, where did you lose your shoe? Why didn't you tell me when your shoe came off?"
"I don't know"
At this point we both panicked. Maggie bought those flip-flops at the Disney store on clearance with her own money, the day before in Branson. She was severely traumatized at the thought of not being able to wear them continuously for the next month or so. I was so irritated at her. I looked all over the van, under it, and scanned the parking lot hopefully, thinking maybe she only lost it on the way out to the car. Of course not. I couldn't believe she had walked over the hot pavement with only one shoe and not mentioned it.
So I unpacked everyone from the van. We went back into Sears and asked at every customer service desk we had passed on the way out of the store. No one had seen a shoe like we were looking for. At this point I gave up, because I was NOT going to retrace our whole journey in the mall to find out that it was still lost or someone had stolen ONE shoe. Stupid dishonest people, what are you going to do with one Little Mermaid flip-flop?
Back to the car again. I was fuming more or less silently about how none of the kids can keep track of the most basic wardrobe items for more than five minutes. It was probably less silently. We all climbed into the van, and Maggie looked into the front seat and said, "Oh, there it is." Yeah, pretty much it was in the van the whole time, I just hadn't looked hard enough.
That's how the boy likes to spend half his time. The other half he likes to spend attached to me, sucking for all he's worth. Sorry, no pics.
