Health and Safety

I'm flying to Dallas tomorrow to visit my grandmother. That makes today pretty much the most insane day ever. Nater helpfully stayed up all night last night so that he could sleep, like a little sleeping angel, from 7:00 a.m. until I woke him up - I am not kidding, there is absolutely no kidding in this entire post - until I woke him up at 11:15 a.m.

I woke him up because I needed a few items and Ess and Gee and Cue and I were tired of grouching at each other while I tried to get a million and one things done for my trip, so I decided to break up the day by going to Wal.mart. Will I never learn?

We ate packed lunches in the parking lot of Walm.art because we are ca-lass-sy like that. I called my sister and my mother to let them know that I was hanging out in my used minivan in the Wal.mart parking lot nursing my baby while my three other toddlers ate goldfish crackers and a man in full camo, I mean full camo, head to toe, loaded some kind of herd animal food into his truck. They like it when I give them these little visuals of my life on the border of Idaho.

When everyone was full and relatively non-grumpy, I assembled my little procession. Nater sat in his pumpkin seat on his stroller frame, Ess held the left hand side of the stroller, Gee held the right hand side and Cue "helped" me push the stroller. No, there is no where for me stand. Also, I was wearing a tacky red backpack. (In case you are visualizing.)

I neglected to fasten the strap that secures the car seat onto the stroller frame. That becomes important in a moment. (Matt never forgets that freaking strap and he is rolling his eyes at my trials and tribulations as I type this.)

The kids each had something that we needed to "find" in the store. That keeps them busy. Gee had his little magnifying glass because he thinks "finding" something at the store is like Blue's Clues and he needs it to look for clues. Click! I don't know what Click! had to do with anything but I assume it's an annoying Blue's Clues thing because we all have to say it as we walk through the store. Click! Click!

We made it halfway down the first aisle. Half way down. No kidding in this post. At all. Cue kept hanging from the stroller handle and I kept asking him, ineffectively, not to hang from the stroller handle and then my phone rang. I thought. I didn't actually ring. No one ever calls me because I never have my freaking phone, but I thought it rang and I put my ugly red back pack down to find it. In doing so, I let go of the stroller.

So you know what happened then right?

Cue tried to hang from the handle again and the entire stroller flipped over on top of him and the unsecured back of the car seat let go so that it too flipped over. I couldn't see them, but I imagine that he and Nate lay there, suddenly eye to eye, wondering what the hell just happened.

Right at that moment, as I lunged for my upside down baby and pinned toddler in a blind panic, a man walking passed us commented, without stopping to help, "that doesn't look safe."

You think? Well I'll be a camouflaged deer-feed buying Walm.art shopper. You must be some kind of safety engineer. What tipped you off, Einstein? The upside down baby? The toddler laying flat on his back with forty pounds of stroller and upside down baby on his chest? I wanted to retort something obnoxious and clever like that, but unfortunately at that exact moment, I was grovelling on the floor of Wal.mart trying to rescue my two small children from what was, in all fairness, an unsafe situation of my own making. So yeah. I had to eat the Wal.mart shopper parenting commentary. Bummer.

I righted the baby and stroller. Cue lay there looking utterly shell-shocked. Nater never took his fingers out of his mouth, but his expression was all "what's with the loop-de-loops, milk lady, I just ate? And whoa! It's bright here! Is this Disney World?" Thank all that is holy that he was secured in the actual car seat.

Then, Gee screamed, "A CLUE! A CLUE!" Because enough people weren't looking at us already and I'm like, "WHAT MFING CLUE?!!"

I need a clue. Here's a clue, dumbass, stop taking four kids under the age of five out in public. He pointed at the large puddle on the floor by Cue's head. The large puddle of my expensive, precious chai latte, which I bought because I drove to Wal.mart, where things are cheap and made in China. Oh. Okay. Sure. A clue. Investigate while I pick up your brother and make sure I haven't permanently damaged him in front of like 200 witnesses.

Cue seemed fine. I reassembled our procession, wiped up the chai with a wet wipe, scraped my last vestiges of pride off of the cold, gray tile Wal.mart floor, and we carried on following CLUES! to the MILK! Click! Click?

Nate fell asleep again in the car on the way home. He had slept six hours already by 2:00 p.m. today. He wants to make sure that he is very well rested so that he can keep me up all night and we won't miss our 6:00 a.m. flight tomorrow morning.

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It's 9:30. I think it felt good to write that out. Takes the sting out. A little. Wish me luck, I'm off to Texas in a few hours. I'll be handling only one child for the weekend, so with any luck I will be able to properly orient him with the earth at all times.

(E, K, A and M, that title is for you. I'll miss you. Any chance we could start taking shopping trips as a group? Apparently, I'm a danger to myself and others and I need better supervision.)