This is an atypical shopping trip…but I just thought I’d share that Murphy’s Law (what can go wrong will) was applied to our outing today.

So, it’s the first of the month and I thought I would try and get ahead of our monthly shopping and hit some stores by myself. One included a quick trip into a grocery store to see what their price was on organic/”green” beef…we’re trying to decide if it’s worth the increase in price to purchase this beef compared to what we get at our wholesale store. It took only a few seconds for me to see that their prices were more than what I could pay at EarthFare (our organic/health food store). We left there, change Josiah, fed Josiah, and headed to Sam’s.

Sam’s is always busy but even more so at the first of the month. As we walked through the parking lot, I had Zoe holding Liam’s hand, Ace holding onto my pants and Liam was holding my hand. Of course, I was carrying Josiah. As Ace continued to pull my pants down, I asked him to please stop. He didn’t and shortly after this, he tripped on a parking block (you know the ones that keep you from driving onto a curb, etc). As he tripped, he jerked my pants with him. Thankfully, they didn’t come all the way down, but I was showing a little belly and undies for a second. I got angry (because I lost sight of what a blessing he was at the time) and decided he couldn’t really be that bad hurt…it did look a little dirty but that was it. I made up my mind to proceed through the store and get what we needed…however, Liam saw someone’s bicycle parked outside the store and decided to touch and play with every part of it. After dragging him into the store and safely secured into a shopping cart, I bent down to check Ace’s knee. And Liam kicked me in the face (not on purpose). I finally get a good look at Ace’s knee and I saw that he lost a good bit of skin…now I’m mad at myself for getting angry with him for declothing me. We rush through Sam’s while I try to keep Zoe from being an annoying big sister and bugging Ace. Every time I mention getting to the car to doctor up Ace’s knee, he moaned in pain…or drama.

After doctoring up Ace’s knee, changing Liam’s training pants (soaked…and we were out of disposable pull ups), we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up the aforementioned disposable pants and to get some lunch. Boy, that’s a run on sentence right there! Sorry, mom! Anyway, back to the story. So, we’re happily eating our greasy burgers, chicken, and fries, and Liam announces that he pooped. Which meant that he teeteed. Common terminology for him. Let me back up for a second, I only brought in the stroller, my wallet, and the kids because it was going to be a quick trip in for food and pull ups…no diapers, no cloth training pants. A couple of seconds later, he announces he pooped again. And sure enough…he did. We finish eating, Josiah’s fussing for a nap, and I rush to the bathroom to dump Liam’s disposal and slap the dirty pants back on…sorry, but that’s all I could think to do at the time. I secure Liam into the stroller and we head to get our items. After that it was pretty uneventful since I was tired and ready to head home!

Such is life, shopping with four children under five!