it started out with being woken up several times in the night by Porter who apparently was having some bad dreams but not really waking up. This is okay, it just meant that I had to get up quite a bit and go into his room to comfort him which equals less sleep for me. Then, of course, bouncing Porter was up at 6am and ready to go. I get up, take my shower and make breakfast. Gracie’s been having trouble eating lately so I’ve been trying to get her to try at least one bite of whatever I make. This morning it was simply cereal with milk and she refused to eat it. So we had a great little power struggle where I ask her to try ONE bite and she pitches a huge fit, cries and ultimately throws up because she’s trying so hard to make herself cry harder. That was about five seconds before I walk out the door.

Then I drop Porter off at preschool, late of course, and head over to ALDI  to do some grocery shopping. Aldi, in trying to keep costs down has a quarter return cart system. You stick the quarter in, you get a cart, you return the cart, you get your quarter back. I always keep a few quarters in my car so that I never have the issue of being cart-less with a toddler in tow. However, my son has recently gotten very interested in money, what each coin is worth and the history behind the faces on the coins. In getting into this, he’s also decided that any money left unattended is his. So I get to Aldi and sure enough, all of the money in my car has been confiscated by Porter and is probably residing in some secret place where he keeps his stash. I figured I’d wing it and go in anyways. I carry in a few reusable bags and start filling them with milk, bread, eggs….. then do a myriad of sprints and dashes as I chase Gracie all over the store while lugging the bags behind me.

After that we decided to go to Walgreens to get the pictures developed that I have been taking of my son’s baseball team. I decided to do a scrapbook as a gift to the coach and wanted to have enough pictures that I could fill in any missing spaces. I had taken about 114 pictures and instead of going through them all, decided it would be easier to transfer them to my card and take them in to get them developed. I really didn’t want to have to come back later with both kids so I waited for them to finish. Gracie has really been loving her independence and when it isn’t necessary to strap her in a cart, I enjoy letting her wander the stores while I follow behind and see what interests her. This worked up until about the last 15 minutes when she ran up to a plate of syran wrapped brownies and started taking gigantic bites out of them while I run up and try to grab them away from her. The store manager was less then pleased and made me pay for all of them. I didn’t want her eating this food so I took it away from her, placed her in a cart so that I could keep her from opening anything else and then she started her 2nd meltdown of the day. For the last 10 minutes of trying to check out and pay, she is screaming and crying and won’t let me console her at all. We walk out of the store, my nerves are shot, I’m frazzled and I’m ready to get in the car and get Porter picked up from school. I pick up the huge box of 114 pictures and realize that the developer forgot to seal the box. It promptly bursts open from the bottom and 114 pictures are picked up by gusts of wind that are around 25 miles per hour and scatter the pictures across three parking lots. I start frantically grabbing the pictures, running after them and dragging Gracie behind me. The best part was that not ONE person stopped, for even a second, to help me, offer to help or simply grab the pictures gathering around their feet before the wind blew them off again. Not only that, but after seeing me rushing after said pictures, several people had no problem simply driving OVER the pictures and ignoring the fact that I was trying to save them.

I picked up Porter from school and decided to hide at home for the rest of the day as clearly yesterday was DEFINITELY not my day.