The Eventful Walmart Trip

The craziness of parenthood. Just had to share.

We rushed inside the building because it was windy and starting to snow. I was carrying the baby carseat in one hand and holding onto Annalee with the other. When we got to the carts I tried to pull one out, but it was stuck to the others. With a mighty jerk I pulled it free . . . and ran it right into Annalee's face. She was pretty brave about it, only crying a little. I got the carseat in the cart and then we walked inside.

Right up front they had a tempting display of giant strawberries. Annalee was so excited that she ran in a big circle around the display, giggling.

"Can we get some, Mommy? Can we? Can I put them in the cart?"

"Oh, I suppose."

At which point Annalee threw the item into the cart and the package burst open, sending strawberries all over the cart. Lovely. We laughed and cleaned them up. A lady stopped to talk to Annalee.

"I saw you get hurt back there. You were so brave."

"I'm twree! Today is my birfday!"

After that we headed for the party supplies to get some party hats, which Annalee has been telling everyone she was going to have. (It was news to me.) On the way there, Annalee kept saying "Hi! Hi! I'm twree! It's my birfday today!" to everyone. Everyone. It was so cute.

They didn't have any hats, so we made our way to Electronics to look at batteries. "Stay with me," I kept telling Annalee, who was running around and having a great time being three. I couldn't find the batteries, but I got interested in some mouse pads. A minute later I looked around. No Annalee. I looked in the next aisle. And the next. I back-tracked and looked in 3 three aisles on either side. I headed toward Grocery. When I got to Pets and didn't find her in front of the fish tanks I started to panic. Then I started to swear. (I never swear. Even when I was in labor I didn't swear.) I dashed back to Electronics.

"I can't find my daughter! She's three and blonde and she's wearing a brown coat and brown pants."

The three associates behind the counter stared at me as if they didn't comprehend what I'd just said. I wanted to scream at them to hurry! Finally one of them said to another, "So, do we need to call a Code Adam?" "Yeah, we have to." "Can we do that from here?"

Just then, someone tapped me on the shoulder (thereby preventing a triple homicide.) "Are you looking for a little girl?" "YES!" I cried, relieved. "She's over there." The woman pointed down the long, long aisle to where Annalee was leading another lady by the hand from the Grocery section. (Both of the ladies were customers.) I told the Three Stooges to forget the Code Adam and pushed my cart to meet Annalee.

"Where was she?" I asked.

"Far," said the lady. "She was by the pop."

I was just about ready to yell or spank, when the woman added, "She came up to me and said she couldn't find her mommy."

"Thank you," I said, and had Annalee thank the woman too. Then instead of yelling or spanking, I burst into tears and we had that "You scared me so bad don't ever do that again and that's why you need to stay next to me I don't want to lose you" talk. For her part, Annalee had stayed calm during the whole ordeal, but now that she saw me crying she was upset. She kept touching my tears and saying, "Mommy, don't cry. I'm not lost. I was worried for you. Don't cry."

I tried to calm down, but my nose kept running as we walked back to Electronics to look for the batteries. "There she is!" one of the guys joked. Hilarious.

Later, with Annalee securely riding in the cart, I was looking at jam. Annalee struck up a conversation with a nice woman on oxygen, riding on a scooter. "It's my birfday! I'm twree!" The sweet lady pulled out a dollar bill and handed it to Annalee, who was very excited about her "birfday monies." A few aisles later we ran into her again and I was able to help her get something off the top shelf.

For the last 15 minutes of our trip Vander was loudly proclaiming his desire for us to leave. We made it home without further incident, where I sat down to feed Vander as I ate two cherry cutie pies. Yes, I'm an emotional eater. And may I say, perhaps today was not the best day to try to cut down on my antidepressants.