A trip to the market and other such fairy tales........

Today we headed to Value Village and I was going to stop at the small farmers market there and grab some milk and a few other things......yeah, "going to" are the operative words here.

As we were walking to the place the children were happily discussing what they might find to spend their money on and so on and so on. We arrived and headed straight to the Toy section (I figured I wouldn't make them wait any longer) they had a tough time deciding what to get so as to stay within their budgets, but at long last, they all had treasures. Now, I say we need to head over to the clothing section so I can find some clothes for Mariah. No such luck, apparently someone had been there recently, looking for the exact same age range of little girls clothing and had tossed everything here and there, I tried to sort through things and sift, all the while I am attempting to make sure I don't lose any children, which have decided that they need to go back to the toy section to exchange an item for that other thing that was much cooler than what they originally had....grrrr. Kayla has decided that hiding in the clothing racks is just TOO MUCH FUN, especially when Mama get's all panicked and starts yelling her name!! Then Alyssa has to pee (and suddenly Robbie and Alex have this uncontrollable need to pee RIGHT NOW too)At which point Mariah feels it necessary to begin ripping her seatbelt off and throwing all my neatly collected items off the stroller at innocent passerbyers and screeching as though her toenails are being ripped off one by one. As we are making our way to the OTHER side of the store where the bathrooms are located, we soon discover that the ladies bathroom is OUT OF ORDER and that we need to use the MENS bathroom. Which of course is LOCKED and we need to find an employee to come and unlock it, which turns out ot be an adventure all on it's own. So here's is this crazed Mama with five children wandering around Value Village, which includes a 2yo not so graciously dancing around, screaming at the top of her lungs that she needs to pee NOW, while her 8yo is telling her to just hold on while he's chasing her around and the 5yo is whining that if he doesn't pee soon he is just gonna 'implode', and of course the 6yo who started the pee scene is hanging on the stroller moaning about her urge to pee. Finally we find an employee who graciously takes time out of her OBVIOUS coffee break, to come and un-lock the door. I'm not sure which motivated the young lady more, the fear of 4 children peeing on the floor or the daggers that were by now shooting from my eyeballs.

After we survive the torturous ordeal of deciding who was worthy of peeing first on the one and only toilet available, and succeeding in no pee appearing on the floor, we proceed to the women's section, where I'm hoping to find something for me. BIG mistake, the children are now starving and are loudly protesting their anguish over the rumbles in their tummies. Of course all the strangers who by now are glaring at me seemingly because of my horrible mothering and inhumane treatment of these poor creatures, has no clue that I fed them a nice BIG snack of cheese and crackers and fruit and juice at the table OUTSIDE of the store BEFORE we entered the store!!!!

Okay, fine, we will leave and go get lunch. We head over to the til to pay. Each child has just got to pay for their items on their own, so as I am organizing the chaos, Kayla apparently had plans of her own, and they did not include any of us.
After I got the kids all organized, I turned around to tell Kayla to move up beside her brother.....uh, Kayla? Um, no Kayla to be found. Just as I am about to SCREAM her name, a lady walk into the entrance of the store with my little blonde renegade, who has a gloriously triumphant grin on her face. As I am about to thank this 'kind' lady for rescuing my daughter, she loudly retorts "IS THIS ONE YOURS?" to which I reply "Why yes, thank........." and I'm interrupted with " I FOUND HER OUTSIDE THE DOORS" okay, I realize that this could have easily been a very tragic story, I realize that my little blonde sweetheart could've disappeared without a trace, I realize all the terrible things that could've gone wrong, but they didn't and I'm thankful that this kind lady brought her back to me, she on the other hand was obviously disgusted with my negligent parenting. (remember, they are starved, I don't let them use the bathroom and now I don't even keep an eye on them)
Of course, the punishment for such a heinous crime is banishment to the stroller!!! *GASP* yes my friends it was a truly horrific scene...........
Crazed mother whisk two-year-old up off her feet and FORCES her into the stroller, thus rendering her un-escapable and unable to move. The two-year-old LOUDLY protests and screams and yells, to which the mother only responds with a stern look and quiet words. As the toddler screams and arches her back, the innocent baby sitting next to her is bashed in the head by a flailing arm and this begins her screams of agony.

To the sweet lady who was standing behind me:
Thank you for your *kind* smiles and eye rolling, as well as your deep and heavy sighs, as you may have noticed they helped the situation immensely. Either you never had kids, never been around kids or you gave birth to a perfect child, in which case, I'm glad you were exposed to this gruesome scene!!!

To the kind lady who was standing beside me at the other cashier:
Your tongue clicking and toe tapping was almost as entertaining as my two-year olds temper tantrum, I was most impressed when you flipped your hair back over your shoulder and gave me a great big "PFFFFFFT", once again, please read above note.

To the wonderful cashier: Thank you for attempting to get us through quickly, I know you may have thought I was some out of control whack job of a mother, but I assure you, that is not the case. Normally my children are somewhat rational and can endure the painstaking process of mama shopping, however this was obviously not that time.
It was most beneficial though, when you took it upon yourself to offer me the un-solicited advice of taking my children home and putting them to bed....THANKS!!

Oh, if only to have been a fly in the wall at that store as we exited stage left.HA!!

We made our way to McDonalds so I could feed my poor starving children, who weren't sure if they would have enough energy reserved to make it the 5min walk. But alas, they survived and lived to tell the McDonalds cashier what they would like to eat and which junk collecting Neo Pet they would like, to which the cashier looks my way with his pimply face and braces and doles out the wonderful comment..."ARE they all yours?".....Ahhhhh, yes and so it goes.