One of those days

I took Isaac and Melissa to Wal-mart yesterday while Matthew took a much-needed nap. Isaac is a handful at the store now -- too big to want to stay in the cart, too little to be trusted out of it -- but Rachel needed a break, so I took them both.

Isaac lasted a few minutes in the Kid Chair part of the stroller, but as expected he quickly tired of that, so I sat him down in the business compartment, trusting that I could confiscate anything he looked close to ruining and move it to the underside of the cart before it was too late.

Butter: he tore it open, but I got it before any butter was actually eaten. Heavy cream: saved. Simply Lemonade: hahaha, good luck opening that one kid. Pork chops: I knew better than to give him the chance; those went directly to the underside. Can of frozen grape juice: saved, with the opening zipper half opened.

Can of frozen orange juice: not saved. Oh, and it wasn't frozen, either.

Isaac spilled a third of it down his pants, where it dripped through the cart mesh onto everything I'd stashed underneath, including Rachel's valentines day cards. (Crap!) I took the juice from him and just stood there, at a loss. There was so much sticky, everywhere, that I didn't know where to start. So I cursed a little, in French. If you're going to raise a child bilingual, you might as well be thorough! I didn't yell at him, but he could tell I was upset. (Ça ne va pas, non? Ça ne fait pas! Merde alors!)

Eventually I decided that there was nothing I could do to ameliorate things, so we got moving. Fortunately we only had Rachel's flowers left on our list. When we got to the checkout counter, trailing orange dribbles, the cashier saw the puddle we'd formed while waiting but didn't realize the source immediately. She bustled over with a roll of paper towels, and had satisfactorily contained the mini-puddle when she noticed the cause standing in the cart, watching her. "Oh, it was you!" she said, in an aren't-we-cute voice. Isaac was in a friendly mood, and rattled his cart at her in approval. This knocked the rest of the juice off of its perch, right at the cashier's feet. Now that was a real spill. I think even she was daunted, momentarily.

She got the "hazardous floor" flags, closed her counter, cordoned off the spill with the towels, and paged the mop guy. Unfortunately he was busy with a spill over near the floral section. Gee, wonder who could have done that?

We were at a lull in the action, so I took Isaac off to wash off his hands. For a kid who likes to get into stuff as much as he does, he actually hates having sticky hands, and he'd been brushing at them futilely trying to get them clean(er). So I hoisted Melissa into the cart with instructions to load stuff onto the conveyor belt while Isaac and I washed up. He was happier with his hands clean (his clothes were a total loss), and kept patting me anxiously to see if we were still friends. I reassured him that I still loved him, and we collected our groceries.

Fortunately, the woman in line in front of us whose shopping we'd interrupted by showing up and leaking all over had a sense of humor about it. I think she might have worked there, since she and the cashier were chatting away the whole time like old friends.

I took Isaac's clothes off before depositing him in the van.

Then we got home and Melissa broke the silverware drawer by dancing on it too hard, but that's another story.