A Quick Trip To Wal-Mart And A Spatula Named Oinky

We spent last Saturday with OB’s family and both girls fell asleep on the car ride home. This is a really rare occasion and it was very unusual for OB and I to actually be able to carry on a conversation together without interruptions. Without, “Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? What was I going to say?”. Without, “Mommy, what did I just say? What did I SAY?” It was nice! I don’t even know what we talked about, but I bet it was deep and meaningful.

We decided that since it was getting late and neither one of us wanted to cook, we’d stop by a restaurant close to home to grab dinner. And then because we can never actually have the kids sleep for the entire car ride, LB woke up when we were about ten minutes away from the restaurant. “I CAN’T feelin’ WELL!” She says this when she fake sneezes and also when she has teeth coming in. Since she had four of her two-year molars cutting through, we thought we’d make a quick trip to Wal-Mart before the restaurant so we could pick up some Children’s Tylenol. The thing is that when you have two kids, you can’t make a quick trip to Wal-Mart. Unless by quick, you mean an hour and seventeen minutes.

Here are a few reasons why: One will have to pee. Once you leave the bathroom, the other will need a clean diaper. You’ll go in for a clean diaper and you’ll remember that you have to pee. While you do that, your toddler will touch every surface, pretend to lick the floor and then attempt to crawl out from under the stall. For a millisecond, you’ll enjoy the privacy and then you’ll remember that your toddler is on the loose in the bathroom. You’ll finally get that situation wrapped up, head back out to the store to find your husband and other child, only to be told that you’re just in time. Other child needs to poop. Back to the bathroom for a running commentary on everything she sees, hears and smells, all the while you’re wondering what it was you came here for in the first place. Tylenol!!!

We made it out of the bathroom and met back up with our other halves, but not before one of the kids caught a glimpse of the bike section. Once they saw that, it was game over. We had to let them run around that giant circle of bikes, wide-eyed, searching for a Hello Kitty or a Disney Princess bike to try out. And they couldn’t try out a bike without trying on a helmet. And once they were looking at the helmets, they saw the roller skates. They obviously needed to try those. That didn’t last long because two and three year olds can’t roller skate. At least mine can’t. As I was trying to put the roller skates away, the kids saw the Leap Frog display and found at least three new games that they wanted to bring home in order to ensure that their Leap Pad does in fact need new batteries at least once a week.

We managed to make it past the toy section with only a few minor setbacks including the girls wondering why they couldn’t have every last Princess Sofia doll. We thought we were safe in the children’s medicine aisle, but the kids somehow spied a clearance rack filled with miscellaneous items, one of them being a pink spatula with a pig at the end of the handle. PR managed to grab it and almost made it to the checkout with her “Oinky”. I’m usually a total pushover and will spend money on anything that will make my shopping experience easier. I mean, I spent about $5 on a grocery store balloon for goodness sake. But I had an unusual strength that day and didn’t let her get it. The poor thing. She cried once before we even got out of Wal-Mart. But to be fair, I think that I cried too because they only had three aisles open and they were filled with people who didn’t realize that the store wasn’t giving away everything for free that day, so they waited until they had everything from their cart rung up, only to look at the cashier with bewilderment and then make a mad dash for the ATM. And with people who wanted to pay split tender between a personal check and their bag of change. Or the people who want to argue about the price of every single item as it rings up as because they know that the 22 oz. bag of fun-sized Twix is supposed to be $5.24, not $5.97. Evidently none of these people knew that it was now after 8pm and my kids hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

We finally all made it out alive, with our Tylenol. (I won’t even go into the time that we spent 1/2 hour filling up a cart at Big Lots, only to get to the checkout to find one lane open and an endless line. OB immediately declared that nothing in our cart was worth the time that we’d spend in line and we abandoned cart and went home.) PR did not forget about her “Oinky”, but because she has the best Daddy in the world, he came home a few nights later with a spatula just for her that he’d gotten on an actual quick trip to Wal-Mart he’d made earlier that day. PR loved it, even though there was no pig at the end and it was blue and not pink. She named it “Oinky” and it’s in her room next to her favorite unicorn and Rapunzel doll. I’m thinking it will be a while before we make another family trip to Wal-Mart; my Amazon Prime orders practically get to me faster.

“Where is my Oinky?”