Embarrassing Confessions of my Day Thus Far...

#1. Running errands is always a big gamble with little ones. Pluto has to be alinged with Jupiter in order for them to behave perfectly well the entire trip. We ventured to Target this morning for a few things. It has been my first trip back for awhile since being banned from there by my husband. Apparently I made one too many a trip for small items (deoderant, detergent, coke) and ended coming home with $75 worth of merchandise.

Let me first rant a little about the cart situation. Target doesn't have any fun carts with steering wheels, squeaky horns, etc. to distract the little ones from realizing we are running boring errands. They have one cool cart with little harnesses that the girls like, however, there is no room for Tate so we have to pass that one up. We are forced to resort to strapping Tate in a regular cart and letting the other two....WALK (a.k.a "run", "skip", "hide in the clothing racks").

Our deal is, they both get to walk until they start acting up, pulling things off the shelves, running ahead too far, etc. Then I toss one of them in the back of the cart. Well, we made it to that point today and Drue was the lucky winner that got tossed in the back. She'd been in there maybe 3 minutes when all of a sudden Tate started HOWLING! Drue doesn't have a great poker face yet, so I could tell she had done something to the poor lad. She 'fessed up to biting him, and then I saw the unmistakable indentation of her tiny teeth on his finger. I scolded her in a loud whisper...one where I could get my point across without drawing the attention of every customer within 5 aisles, and plucked Tate out to console him.

As the unwritten rule tends to go...once a child is plucked from the cart, they are never to return to the cart during that trip. So I held him the rest of the way while Reese pushed the cart. (I think she only ran into the endcaps about 7 times. She looked like one of those little old ladies who can't see over the steering wheel.) We got quite a few odd looks from people which I attributed to Reese's erractic driving, or the ever familiar, "I was in your place once with 3 little ones, hang in there" look.

As we manuevered our way back to the van I happened to glance down and realize what everyone was probably looking at. When Tate needs to be soothed, and his blankie isn't around, he grips tight to my shirt. Thanks to him, the entire Target store now knows what color brazierre I'm wearing..he had pulled my V neck shirt down so far it had exposed my unmentionables (and not just the straps mind you)!

#2. We're having company tonight so I am frantically trying to get the house ready and I have a certain order in which I like to do the chores. For instance, I don't sweep and mop the kitchen floor until AFTER lunchtime. (Otherwise it would be like bathing the kids, then sending them outside to play in mud puddles). And I don't vacuum the living room until right before everybody gets there. It is acceptable to vacuum the upstairs rooms, however, because they don't get quite so much foot traffic during the day so they'll still look presentable this evening.

So I vacuumed upstairs during breakfast and left our upright vacuum in the hall while we ran our errand. Since I've been home, I have jumped out of my skin about 22 times thinking our vacuum is an intruder in the hallway. I laugh at myself everytime, fold some more clothes, turn around to start putting them away, and jump a mile again at the sight of our unwelcome visitor!