Day Seven: One week and ready to surrender.

This was my first official day on the job as "mother of two". Everyone had gone home. I woke up with a ball full of hormones and a dose of anxiety to go with it. I tried controlling everything Jadyn did around Jaxon. I cried about everything. If milk had spilled...I would have cried.

I got ambitious and decided that we need to get out of the house. We first went to the park, where a crazy wind storm broke out about 20 minutes later. So we headed to the store to take back some things. Jadyn held on to the stroller and stayed by my side like an angel the first two stores. I was feeling pretty good. Then there was Kohl's. I knew this would be more of a challenge because we were going to have to walk all the way to the back of the store where they do returns. Oh wait, where they DID returns. Walking all the way back to the front of the store got Jadyn's two year old juices flowing. She wanted to touch everything, grab everything, run ahead of me as fast as she could, then refuse to move at all. The only motivation I could think of was a promise to buy her a toy after we were done returning things (she had put up with my blubbering self all day after all).

After much debate over bubbles versus a giraffe, she picked a stuffed sheep. In the check out line she twirled to the side of me and tossed her sheep in the air, giggling the whole time. After the day we had been through I didn't have the heart to stop her for the sake of the scowling customers behind me (remember I was emotional. They were probably smiling too). And then SMACK! Her face met the tile. I rushed over to her and pulled her into my arms where I was greeted with a bloody mouth. Her lips began swelling immediately.  For about 45 seconds, my body with a weird tango motion as I held her, tried to push the stroller, and decided whether or not to buy the sheep or run to the hospital. All I had was a burp cloth so I shoved it in her sippy cup and let her suck on it to stop the bleeding. I called my mom, crying (duh) and she snapped me back into reality. I did not need to go to the hospital, her lip was fine. I needed a Popsicle! As I folded the stroller to put it back in the car, I found a pile of merchandise Jadyn had stashed. So I drove as close the front door as I could, ran inside and threw the clothes at the cashier, muttering an apology as I ran out again.

The drive home was just as frustrating. Whatever lane I was in was always the opposite side of the store with popcicles. I finally made it to a drive thru and asked for a kid's size cone. They handed me the most giant ice cream cone I ever saw. But it had to be done, so I handed the abnormally large ice cream to those two pudgy hands that could barely hold it up. Jadyn was instantly happy. All the way home I heard "UH OH! Dropped it. " "Okay, got it" "Uh Oh!"....and so on. The car seat was covered.
I gave her a bath and put her to bed. She fell asleep clutching her bag of ice I told her to suck on.

And that was the end of week one. No pictures.