I’ve had people comment before how well-behaved my kids are. Sometimes this is true. I usually laugh and respond with, “it depends on the day”. Because let’s be honest, kids will be kids. Any parent knows. I figure, with a lot of kids, my odds of one being well-behaved at any given moment go up. Truthfully, so do the odds of a mis-behaver, but hey, you can’t win ‘em all.
Let me tell you about what happened last week. I had quite the morning at Target, actually. Usually my problems at Target are centered around finding way more than I came for and being surprised at the total at checkout. Have you ever added up your receipt once you got home, because you’re certain the computer must have made a miscalculation? No? Yeah, me either… Anyway, back on track. Last week my Target issues ran deep – like drown in a Bloody Mary deep.
Our Target in town has a Starbucks inside. Since I needed to grab just a few quick items (ha!), I suggested the Starbucks for a long overdue coffee date with a friend. When I say long overdue, I’m talkin’ like trying to get together for at least 6 months overdue. We had things to talk about y’all. As it was a weekday, per the usual, I had the girls with me. Usually they stay pretty happy with a muffin, pink drink, and Mickey Mouse on my phone. We were about 40 minutes in to our lattes and chatting. The girls had temporarily relinquished the phone and it happened to be in front of me on the table when I saw my sister’s call come through. Not wanting to be rude, and knowing my sister was likely calling with a non-emergency, I quickly hit decline without breaking stride in the conversation. Calls from my sister are not unusual. What was unusual though, was the immediate call-back. I quickly recalled an unusual image on the screen between the calls. Realizing that my toddler must have speed-dialed her on accident, prompting the phone calls, I answered her 2nd call. THANK THE LORD.
“Hey, sorry, did Tenny just call you?”
“No. You’re live on Facebook”
And then my life flashed before my eyes. I honestly have no recollection of what I said before disconnecting and immediately ending the livestream and deleting the video. I relayed the revelation that our conversation had been live streaming and my friend and I laughed until I had tears streaming down my face. HOW my toddler managed to start a live video is beyond me. Likely a stroke of bad luck, but the way she navigates that phone, I’m not fully convinced she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. Just the day before she responded to my sister-in-law’s text with a Honey Boo Boo GIF. Do you know how long it took me to figure out how to send a GIF?!
A quick check of my phone revealed another well-meaning family member had messaged me a friendly warning also. We wrapped up our coffee date as I messaged her back trying to decipher exactly how long we had been broadcasting our conversation. Still drying my tears, I moved on to the Target portion of my morning after promising to get together again, preferably toddler-free and with less life to catch up on.
Now allow me to circle back: Tenny was not misbehaving during the coffee date, per se, save the few times she ran away from us because she thought it was hil-arious. But that little nugget can be a true handful. Especially at the store. This particular day, when trying to get just the few things I needed, she started to throw a mini fit in the cart. Because I have an aversion to allowing my children to scream and create a scene in the store, I allowed her out of the cart temporarily while I called my sister back. Turns out the girl loves shopping just as much as her mama, and before I knew it, I owned almost all of aisle B19. School supplies, in case you’re wondering. I contemplated just buying it all, but I’m pretty certain there was about $150 worth of Ticonderoga pencils in my cart. After Tenny and I calmly returned all the supplies to their respective places in the aisle, we moved on to get the rest of our list.
She still didn’t want to sit buckled next to her sister – shocker, I know. As I was balancing her on the handle of the cart, her legs straddling my hips for balance, I ran into another friend. While we chatted very briefly in the main aisle, I commented how well behaved her son was as Tenny smacked me square across the face. In the middle of the store. In front of my friend. Not her finest moment, to be sure. Clearly this was not a day I would receive any compliments from strangers.
At this point, it’s Target run, and I’m done. Unfortunately, I still had to grab most of what I’d come there for, so we got the handful of things and got the heck out of there. Once home, I found myself trying to rationalize a Bloody Mary to drown my morning in, but since it was still before noon, I cracked open the Coke I had hidden in the fridge instead.
Sometimes you just have to press the reset button on your day. I always try to look on the bright side: I wasn’t talking about my sister, so she called me instead of listening in on the LIVE, I managed to return a cart full of school supplies to their rightful place without creating a scene, and my friend assured me everyone’s been slapped in the middle of Target. I’m pretty sure she was lying, but hey, isn’t that what friends are for?!