Little Bits of Pixie Dust

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thourougly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO, what a ride!!"

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Trashin' it Up in Wal-Mart

Usually, C. is my go-to errand runner. He loves to be out and with people, and it really doesn’t matter where we go, he will find something to interest him and he never complains about doing those boring things that we all must do. Yesterday his head must have exploded or something, because he completely lost his shit in Wal-Mart and I was so embarrassed.


We were walking along an aisle and his elbow knocked into a shelf, causing a two packages of peanut butter crackers to fall on the floor. He looked and me and I shrugged and told him no big deal, it was an accident and he should just pick them up. With no fanfair, he shook his head no. “Come on, C.” I said, “just pick them up. If you drop something on the floor you have to put it back.” He stood his ground, a tiny soldier in the cracker aisle, refusing to look at me. I knelt down beside him and began to speak in the mom, talking-between-your-teeth-because-you’re-mad-but-you’re-in-public voice. I told C. that he BETTER pick up the crackers or I would put all the treats we had in the cart back. C. told me that he was “too tired” to pick them up. Switching tactics, I told him that I would pick up ONE package if he would pick up the other one, and then I showed him how easy it was to pick up the package and put it back on the shelf. C. continued to shake his head. I could feel my blood pressure rising, and started methodically taking things out of the cart, all the while telling C. that kids that don’t listen CERTAINLY don’t get strawberry applesauce or mandarin oranges (C.’s favorite treats). I threw items onto a random shelf and checked to see if it affected him at all, but C. is definitely stubborn and he wasn’t having any of it. I was totally losing my shit by now, you guys. Not a proud mom moment. I just couldn’t believe he was making such a big deal over something so small. I picked him up and told him that I was going to leave the cart and take him out to the car, but since he knows that nothing will happen in the car (ie: I won’t spank him) he didn’t care, and I seriously had a whole cart full of stuff, so this really only inconvienced me. In a grand showdown of wits, I lost and grabbed C. by the hand, DRAGGED him over to the crackers and physically placed his hand, none too gently, onto the package, forced his fingers to open, and threw the (probably hopelessly broken) crackers onto the shelf. Then I heaved C. into the cart and proceeded to tell him how MAD I was at him and how I couldn’t BELIEVE his behavior and just went on and on for way longer than a four year old would even be listening. I honestly was making myself kind of mad with how I just kept going on and on, but it was like I couldn’t control the flow of words coming out of my mouth. C. was exhausted and tear- stained by this point, and he didn’t say anything else as we quickly finished shopping and made it to the car.

I know every mom goes through this, but I hate the feeling of not being able to control something and no matter what I say it doesn’t matter. I hate not having an immediate solution to just make him LISTEN. And I hate feeling like I didn’t handle things in the best way, matching wits to a four year old when I’m supposed to be the adult. Bad parenting moment of the weekend, for sure.

To top it off, I was wearing bleach stained sweat pants, C. had a runny nose that was causing those snail tracks on his cheeks, and we were in Wal-Mart yelling and having tantrums, so I felt like the biggest white trash family in the world. I should have just set up camp in the bedding section and had C. go and watch some DVDs in Electronics while I slurped down some off brand soda and didn’t brush my teeth. Sigh.

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