Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Molly the Mom

Today I tried to be a fun Mom and do back to school shopping at the same time. I have never been a great multi-tasker, so I should have known this would not go very well. The day started out as most do, with bribery. If the boys were good while we did some of the boring back to school shopping I would take them to Toys R Us, one of their favorite places to spend time.

So, we headed off to one of my least favorite places Wal-mart. This went ok, but they were out of everything, and Spencer was being picky about his new shoes so I knew this was not going to be one stop shopping. I could not find one box of crayons or markers in the entire store. They did have about 10,000 glue sticks on hand, an entire aisle. Whatever, I didn't need those because I had leftovers from last year.

We then headed to the toy store because that is what I promised, but I had to let them know first that our day of shopping was not over. Off we go, and I was really applauding myself for being such a fun, cool, relaxed Mom. We wandered the store for over an hour, not kidding, and they just loved it. But, then they started to get all whiny and running away, and begging to buy things.

So, I lost it. There was counting and dragging naughty boys out of the store. So, then I felt horrible and guilty and mean. Next we head off to Target to try and finish the school shopping. I thought maybe a refreshment would help (at least with my guilt), so they each got to pick their very own drink. Of course they each wanted a blue icee and cheetos. Ok, great, whatever you want boys. I am so fun and casual, I would never think twice about the fact that those are the two messiest choices on the planet.

After Spencer spilled his bright blue icee TWICE and the boys were all covered in cheetos and fighting over the bag, that was it. Good-bye fun, casual Mom, it was time to lay down some rules. No, you cannot take your lids off your icees and give me those cheetos because if you can't share, then I will have to eat them all myself. We did manage to find Spencer some shoes that he wanted and magically found the white erasers on the floor of some random aisle, the last pack in the store.

Mission accomplished.

6 comments:

BrianJ said...

No wonder Sam wants to go to dance school.

Troy and Nancee Tegeder said...

What fun things to look forward too. I also just took Erica to Toys-R-Us for play time. I thought I was this brilliant mom for thinking of this, but apparently other moms know this trick too. At least she's not old enough yet to ask to buy things.

Jeremy said...

So... were there any Cheetos left?

Lewis Family said...

This sounds painfully familiar... back to school shopping with boys never ends well. When we were kids my brothers pulled over an entire rack of clothes doing chin-ups. Glad you survived.

Rachel said...

This sounds like my summer (do some errands with me and I'll do something fun with you). Now 2 of them are in school and Max and I went to, like 5 stores in a row together yesterday. I just kept going until my list was actually finished. It felt like some kind of miracle.

WendyJ said...

I've tried to be "fun mom", but somehow "fun dad" is always outdoing me in fun-ness. I prefer to be "napping mom" or "over in the corner eating my secret stash of chocolate mom" who needs fun anyway.