Shopping with Four

After dragging my lazy bum out of bed at 9 am, I decided it would be a good idea to take the kids (yes, all four of them) shopping. Before we left, I mixed up Elliot's bottle and fed and changed him. Asked Brenna no less than 5 times to get herself dressed and brush her hair. Poured some cereal for Maya (2 bowls, please) and persuaded her to get dressed (with my assistance, I wanted the task accomplished in 30 sec rather than 30 min) and allow me to fix her hair. Ethan was still wearing his clothing from yesterday which I deemed clean enough to wear again, and had already had his breakfast. Somewhere in the midst all of this, I decided to take a shower, only to discover that our hot water heater was once again on the fritz. So, instead of my nice, relaxing shower I leaned over the side of the tub and washed my hair in cold water. In the final moments before heading out the door, I made sure the diaper bag was stocked, tracked down Elliot's nuk clip and strapped him into his car seat, found socks for Ethan and helped him don both them and his "softball" shoes, located socks for Maya and put on my own socks and shoes. Once at the van I anticipated the usual arguments over who gets to sit where, but was pleasantly surprised when everyone found a seat to sit in and was happy with it. As we pulled into the Target parking lot I ran through my usual list of rules (which were, of course, made to be broken): stay by mom, no running, no asking to buy anything, no complaining. I put Elliot in the stroller and asked Brenna to push him and we were off. Once inside, I snagged a "roller coaster" cart for Ethan and Maya to ride in. As they fought over whose legs belonged where, we began our journey through the store. By this time, of course, Elliot was getting tired. We had just begun to browse the aisle of clearance toys when he started in on his "I'm tired" cry. So with a crying baby and 3 other kids running around like hooligans throughout the aisles (breaking rules 1 and 2) whining about all of the toys they weren't being allowed to get (breaking rules 3 and 4) I quickly filled the cart with 75% off merchandise to save for some of the many bday parties my little darlings get invited to. After corralling the three vagabonds, I took Elliot out of his stroller and carried him (while pushing the heavy "roller coaster" cart) through the rest of the store. After purchasing our items and bringing them out to the van, we reentered the store to find ourselves some lunch. While standing in line to order (Elliot was back in his stroller at this point, on his way to dreamland) Aaron called and wanted to know if he could join us for lunch. Not wanting to make the natives any more restless than they already were, I regretfully declined saying that we would be happy to sit with him as he ate later, but we were going to have our meal NOW. After we finished eating, we made our way into Payless to look for school shoes for the girls. While we were in the store, Elliot made his presence known once more and I decided that it was time to make our way down to the food court to wait for daddy. Pushing the stroller and carrying the baby, I encouraged Brenna to slow down and Ethan and Maya to hurry up right up to the point when I spotted our dining companion. At that point, all three made a mad dash to be the first one to give their daddy a great big bear hug. After Aaron finished eating, he took Ethan with him and I took the other three to Gordman's to allow Brenna to purchase a Webkinz. This may have been the worst idea of all. Once we located the Webkinz in the store, Brenna couldn't decided whether or not she wanted to spend her money on one and Maya was upset when she learned that she was not going to be getting one. We walked through the store for a bit to let Brenna think about it for awhile, but in the end she decided not to buy one. We left the store with Brenna sulking over the price of Webkinz and Maya complaining about the fact the I had not purchased a Webkinz for her. By this time I was completely DONE and decided that Walmart and Sam's Club would simply have to wait for another day. If I'm lucky, that day will not involve my four darling munchkins.