The Incentive

I’m sitting here chuckling to myself about the way our morning came together. I don’t like to think of myself as the “bribing kind” of mom, but let’s be honest, does there not come a time for EVERY mom where you perhaps have to give a little extra incentive? :)

I’m in desperate need of clothes. My clothes from last winter? Too tight. So I can either wear sweaters that are too small and jeans that hike up my rear end, or maternity stuff. Umm, neither are very attractive! So I needed clothes. I wanted to go today. Seeing as how my day began at the serious butt crack of dawn, why not head out extra early? 8:30am came and out we went. Pretty good for having 3 kids, ain’t it? Before we even left home, having a few minor meltdowns (Mike), some egging on (Jack to Mike), and attitude (Jack thinking he has to do everything ALL the time) – I really wondered if it was smart to go for it. But what could I do? I NEED clothes. The incentive? “If you are good, we will go to lunch after mommy is done shopping. If not, if I have to tell you one time to drop the attitudes, we will come home.”

Out we went and one stop shopping – Target. Gotta love that store! We got inside after a nice peaceful car ride and Mikie right away had to go potty. Fine, in the potty we went, big ol’ shopping cart with Mol in her carseat, hit the head. Back out into the store… We aren’t even 3 minutes into shopping in the women’s department and I hear “I have to go potty.” Umm, HUH? You just went! It was Jack and yes, he had just gone when Mike did. But he insisted he had to go, had to go poop. So back to the front of the store, wait outside of the bathroom door this time cause I had sweaters in the cart that hadn’t been paid for. Mikie and Jack come outta the bathroom again, and off we go. Not another 4 minutes into it “I have to go poopies Momma!” This time Mikie said it. “You’re gonna have to hold it buddy!” And he did. Sheesh – can a woman have a minute to shop? :) So I piled the cart with many items, a dress (which was cute and pretty flattering by showed too much cleavage for my liking), shirts, sweaters, pants… We wheel on over to the dressing room and pile into a handicap stall with 3 kids and my cart. Nothing like having my 4 year old say “you’re naked Mom!” I wasn’t naked, but I guess to him I was. On we went, I hurried and hurried… Molly started to fuss, I knew it was around her time to eat. Sure enough, I was 5 minutes past her 3 ½ hour interval :). Back out into the store we headed while I’m feeding her, pushing the cart (which had Mikie playing garbage man on the side) and off to the shoe department we went. Now keep in mind, I only kept 2 items of the clothing to maybe try again. But by that point, the boys were done with the fitting room and quite frankly, so was I. Down to the shoe aisles and got the boys new tennis shoes. On the floor I sit, feeding Molly, tying shoes for both boys. Back to the women’s department we head and I simply put different sizes in the cart of what I had tried on, a few other odds and ends and figured I’ll just try it on at home and bring back what I don’t want. Over to the toy department we then head, the boys were wanting to check out the “cars.” So we did – even decided to buy one cause they were being so good – and when they weren’t looking? I piled a few in the cart that “Santa will bring.” NICE. As we are wandering out, we bump into Kristen (my sis-in-law for those of you who don’t know) and said hello. And out the door we went.

Now I’d like to think the boys are just plain good and that’s why the morning went pretty smoothly. But I’d be lying if I said the McD’s lunch promised afterwards didn’t help them along :)